Only The Novice Competes

Imagine a time long ago,

When there was no such thing as a competition.

With no prizes to be won, man played the game for the game.

Playing the game for the game, all of his talents were available to him.

 

Then man became clever.

He decided to create something known as a “prize.”

It would be rewarded to the “winner” of the game.

This one act set humanity spinning on a different course.

The game was never the same.

And the human was not either.

 

What was once a game had now become something more.

A fight for survival.

A race to the finish.

And suddenly, man’s talents drowned in an ocean of fear and anxiety.

 

What was once innocent, became “competitive.”

What was once pure, became “strategic.”

The game was no longer about the game.

The game was now about the prize.

Fellow players were no longer fellow players.

They now became “opponents.”

 

There is a Truth that one do well to understand:

Man does not “defeat” his opponents.

He becomes them.

This is the reason for parity in all domains.

 

The man who plays in order to win,

The man who plays in order to defeat another,

Becomes subject to a torrent of anxiety and fear.

A man who is under the spell of anxiety and fear cannot have a clear mind.

The man who cannot have a clear mind cannot gain access to his talent.

 

Clever as he is,

And given that man searches for prescriptions rather than The Truth,

Man tries various treatments in order to clear his mind.

For the whole of his career, he suffers a roller coaster of clarity and fog.

For the whole of his career, he suffers a roller coaster of good performances and bad.

He never comes to own anything.

He never gains full access to his talent.

And never gains the glorious opportunity to learn how skilled he could have been.

His entire career is reduced to a monumental distraction.

 

Being better,

Or being the best,

May provide a modicum of reward in the societal world.

But it has nothing to do with one’s True Potential.

 

All things depend upon a man’s DNA.

All things depend upon what strikes a man in his heart.

 

The Master seeks to Master, so that he may own.

The novice seeks to compete, so that he may win.

The Master does not resort to competing, for he has come to hold the entire game in the palm of his hand.

The novice has no choice to compete, for it is the only game he knows.

The Master sees that competing is a never-ending game, which leads only to an empty scorecard of wins and losses.

The novice sees the scorecard as his life. And the tallies of wins and losses as his self-image.

The Master has the eyes and the availability To See the game.

The novice is too consumed with scorecards. Thus he misses it.

For the Master, the win that comes through effort and struggle is a lie.

For the novice, winning through effort and struggle is the only way there is.

The Master devotes himself to learning the Secrets of the game. So that he can come to own it.

The novice spends his life “working hard,” because he has not learned its secrets.

 

Man has been sold so many lies that there is no clear cut place to begin.

He has been taught to work himself into the ground, and consider himself noble for having done so.

Understand this: There is no nobility in failure.

 

Everything has a Truth.

There is a way to Master even the most mysterious of things.

But it requires a Seriousness that is uncommon in the world of men.

And a purity that is considered necessary rather than noble.

 

Virtually all men that you meet in your life,

And with almost complete certainly, you yourself,

Are common.

 

Common people do not in a single lifetime become Uncommon.

And if they do, it is because they were Uncommon all along.

 

Truth is not for the meek.

It is no democratic.

It is neither kind nor benevolent.

It is as the lake that drowns, and as the wind that destroys.

It is as it is.

 

Society is a man’s greatest enemy.

Coaches and teachers are one’s greatest foes.

Let a man go through his entire life and find but one man amongst the millions, who will tell him The Truth.

 

The wise man burns his books, covers his ears, and blindfolds his eyes.

For all that enters into him, from his home to the office are an endless series of lies.

 

Competition is for the mediocre.

It is for the peasant.

It is for the novice.

 

But, truth be told, it is the order of the day in a world of men who seek to be novices.

 

Namaste.