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The Art of Self-Reliance: 8 Steps to Inner-Genius With Emerson

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Reporting from Pedra Branca, Brazil…

“Do that which is assigned you,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay Self-Reliance, “and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”

Early this morning, we attended a philosophy discussion regarding Emerson’s meditation on self-reliance. It’s one of our favorites, so we were happy for the discussion.

Today, in appreciation of Emerson’s timeless treatise, we present to you eight ways to cultivate your inner genius, courtesy of the man himself.

To set the groundwork…

Emerson believed knowledge —  true, original knowledge, that is — comes not from external influences like media, books, or lectures (nor from hacks, like yours truly, with laptops in their carry-ons), but from within you.

“To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius.”

According to Emerson, genius comes from within. Genius is that which you intuit, but often cannot clearly articulate.

Yet.

When we experience genius in a masterful work of art, for example, we recognize it as genius because it reveals hidden truths from beyond the veil of the mental and emotional curtains.

Aha! Yes!

“In every work of genius,” he writes, “we recognize our own rejected thoughts: They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

There are certainly more major insights than just eight. But here are the rays of light which caught our particular interest.

Step #1: Accept where you are

Accept where and who you are without reservation. You will not and cannot (and should not wish to) be anyone else than who you are.

You are unique. And that is your power.

The only way forward, then, is through. And the only way to get started is to begin exactly where you are in this moment.

Emerson writes: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

Step #2: Tune into your intuition. Tune out the distractions.

Although one might get accolades for copying and remixing the work of his or her contemporaries, genius never comes from imitation. Instead, says Emerson, genius can only be discovered in spontaneity, instinct and intuition.

He explains: “We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin… Here are the fountain of action and thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism.”

Modern thoughts, especially those spewing out of mainstream culture and poli-ticking, keep you distracted from this wisdom within. The only way to return to the source of all wisdom, Emerson opines, is to remove your faith in all external authority and unhesitatingly bestow it to those subtle voices within.

“These are the voices,” says Emerson, “which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Step #3: Trust thyself and face the Chaos and Darkness head-on

Again, the only true authority is the authority which guides you from within. The only choice, if you seek true greatness, or even mere peace in your life, is to trust yourself completely.

Man is his own star. Though the stars upon the arbitrary pedestals of Hollywood and the honorary annals of history compel him, he should put none above the light of his own brilliance.

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” Emerson scrawls. “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.”

Moreover, in order to draw out your fullest potential, never run away from the chaos and darkness of the world. Embrace it. Stand in the center and let your light shine upon every square inch of its circumference.

“And we are now men,” Emerson goes on, “and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.”

Step #4: Embrace the infantile

According to Emerson, children are the greatest non-conformists and have much to teach us pruny, withered souls about the art of self-reliance.

Watch, then, children in action.

They are not aware, nor do they care, about what you think about them. They just do whatever emerges from within.

Moreover, they will, despite great resistance, do whatever compels them. Whether you give them permission or not. It’s this sense of wonder and daring which is essential to drawing out your full potential.

“Infancy,” says Emerson, “conforms to nobody: all conforms to it.”

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, along those very lines, has written: “A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.”

Step #5: Forge the path given to you alone

Refuse to let anyone turn you away from your “spark,” no matter how silly the Naysaying Nancies might believe it is.

“What I must do,” says Emerson, “is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Trust your own voice, opinions and attitudes. Know there is wisdom hidden inside of you begging to be expressed. There is something very unique and original about you. Follow that, Emerson says, and you will find peace and purpose.

“Do not go where the path may lead,” he suggests, “go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Step #6: Revel in the “sour faces of the multitude”

Rather than being afraid of the inevitable resistance from those who disapprove of your personal path (and subsequent power), begin to silently (and humbly) wear it as a badge of honor.

Not a single being holds any true power over the sovereign individual whose power comes from within: “The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.”

Revel, instead, says Emerson, in the “sour faces of the multitude.”

“It is easy enough,” he says, “for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves.

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Step #7: See that the thing which you seek is seeking you, too

Everything you need to be great is already within you. In fact, the only way to become great is to rely completely on the greatness which you already are.

Said a different way: You’re already great. Self-discovery is the process of manifesting your unique greatness into the physical realm.

Trust in those things which attract you to them. That purpose which you seek is also seeking you.

Emerson says: “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.”

Rather than focusing on the passions and interests of others, what strikes a thunderbolt down your spine? Follow your natural interests, even into the dark forests of chaos, wherever they lead you.

“The eye,” Emerson goes on, “was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.”

And as Joseph Campbell put it: “Follow your bliss.”

Step #8: Don’t be afraid of contradicting yourself when necessary, just do The Work…

First of all, in your seeking of your own personal Truth, don’t worry about always being consistent.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”

Conforming to those things which do not resonate with your being scatters your power. “It loses your time,” Emerson writes, “and blurs your character.”

If you work to maintain things which give you no individual power, you will be seen as an individual with no power of his or her own. Moreover, you will only live and appear to others as an abstraction.

“But,” says Emerson, “do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman’s bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument… Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four is not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin and set them right.

“Nothing,” concludes Emerson, “can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

Fiat lux,

Chris Campbell
Managing editor, Laissez Faire Today

The post The Art of Self-Reliance: 8 Steps to Inner-Genius With Emerson appeared first on Laissez Faire.


Source: http://freedombunker.com/2017/01/16/the-art-of-self-reliance-8-steps-to-inner-genius-with-emerson/


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