STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD

“From the earliest times man seems to have been endowed with a conscience. When we penetrate the wisdom of the truth-sayers we discover that conscience was not meant to be a burden, that it was to be used instinctively and intuitively. It is only in periods of decadence that truth becomes complicated and conscience a heavy sack of guilt.

He need not and should not think of making a good living, but rather of creating a good life for himself. The wise men always return to the soil; one has only to think of the great men of India, China and France, their poets, sages, artists, to realize how deep is this need in every man. I am thinking, naturally, of creative types, for the others will gravitate to their own unimaginative levels never suspecting that life holds any better promise. I think of all the budding American poets, sages, and artists because they appear so appallingly helpsless in this present-day American world. They all wonder so naively how they will life if they do not hire themselves out to some taskmaster; they wonder still more how, after doing that, they will ever find time to do what they were called to do. They never think anymore of going into the desert or the wilderness, of wresting a living from the soil, of doing odd jobs, of living on as little as possible. They remain in the towns and cities, flitting from one thing to another, restless, miserable, frustrated, searching in vain for a way out.


Each one of us has a totally different life to lead. We should not strive to become like Thoreau or even like Jesus Christ, but to become what we are in truth and in essence. That is the message of every great individual and the whole meaning of being an individual. To be anything less is to move nearer to nullity.” Henry Miller