“I must perfect myself.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Become who you are!”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Whoever must be a creator
in good and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator
and break values.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“But whoever would become
light and a bird must love himself: thus I teach… One must learn to love oneself
with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Break, break, you lovers of knowledge, the old tablets!”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Beyond Good and Evil.” It’s the title of another great book by Nietzsche. The theme? We do not need a priest or others to tell us what is good and evil. WE need to discover it for OURSELVES. When we touch the eternal and internal truths of our own deep knowing, we don’t need a “mole or a dwarf” or a priest to tell us what is good and what is evil. We say with force, “This is my good and evil.”
Lies
“Whoever does not believe himself always lies.”
Do you believe yourself? Or, are you living someone else’s truth? Beware… If you believe Nietzsche (I do), then, if you do not believe yourself, you always lie. Be in integrity. Know your truth. Live it.
“But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!”
“The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.”
This is the theme of the entire book. The time has come for the “Overman”—for us to overcome our fears, our conditioning, our blah and plant the seed of our highest hope. That passage is followed by the fact that we must still have some chaos in us if we want to give birth to that dancing star:
I Am Who I Must Be
“Call me whatever you like; I am who I must be.”
The fact is, we must become independent of the good or bad opinion of others if we have any chance of progressing very far on our path. It was Deepak Chopra who first introduced
me to a mantra I have repeated (tens of?) thousands of times:
“I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.”
“I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.”
“I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.”
“I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.”
“I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.”
Steel yourself from being dependent on the opinion of others. Do what your soul commands you to do and leave it at that.
Rumi says it beautifully: “This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver
from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.” And William James shares this brilliant comment: “You have enormous untapped power you’ll probably never tap, because most people never run far enough on their first wind to ever find they have a second.”
Flying & Looking Up
“The higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.”
Ah, Friedrich. Never one to mince words. Ayn Rand likes to say that it’s easier for people to look down. It hurts their necks to look up. Guess what? The higher you ascend, the smaller you will appear to those who have chosen (yes, it’s a choice) to not fly. You hurt their neck when they must look up to see you. They hate that. This, of course, is not what is said. Rather, you’re just ridiculed and made to feel foolish. … Anything to let them look down rather than up.
Your Worst Enemy
“But the worst enemy you can encounter will always be you, yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caves and woods.”
ANYTHING WHICH IS A LIVING AND NOT A DYING BODY WILL HAVE
TO BE AN INCARNATE WILL TO POWER, IT WILL STRIVE TO GROW,
SPREAD,SEIZE, BECOME PREDOMINATE-NOT FROM ANY MORALITY
OR IMMORALITY BUT BECAUSE IT IS LIVING AND BECAUSE LIFE
SIMPLY IS WILL TO POWER....EXPLOITATION....BELONGS TO THE
ESSENCE OF WHAT LIVES, A BASIC ORGANIC FUNCTION; IT IS A
CONSEQUENCE OF THE WILL TO POWER, WHICH IS AFTER ALL
THE WILL TO LIFE.
THE IDEA IS THAT EVERY SPECIFIC BODY STRIVES TO BECOME
MASTER OVER ALL SPACE AND TO EXTEND ITS FORCE (ITS WILL
TO POWER) AND TO THRUST BACK ALL THAT RESISTS ITS
EXTENSION. BUT IT CONTINUALLY ENCOUNTERS SIMILAR
EFFORTS ON THE PART OF OTHER BODIES AND ENDS BY COMING
TO AN ARRANGEMENT (UNION) WITH THOSE OF THEM THAT ARE
SUFFICIENTLY RELATED TO IT: THUS THEY THEN CONSPIRE
TOGETHER FOR POWER. AND THE PROCESS GOES ON....
THE MECHANISTIC WORLD IS IMAGINED ONLY AS SIGHT AND
TOUCH IMAGINE A WORLD (AS MOVED) SO AS TO BE
CALCULABLE--THUS CAUSAL UNITIES ARE INVENTED, THINGS
(ATOMS) WHOSE EFFECT REMAINS CONSTANT (TRANSFERENCE
OF THE FALSE CONCEPT OF SUBJECT TO THE CONCEPT
OF THE ATOM)... IF WE ELIMINATE THESE ADDITIONS, NO
THINGS REMAIN BUT ONLY DYNAMIC QUANTA, IN A RELATION
OF TENSION TO ALL OTHER DYNAMIC QUANTA: THEIR ESSENCE
LIES IN THEIR RELATION TO ALL OTHER QUANTA, IN THEIR
"EFFECT" UPON THE SAME. THE WILL TO POWER IS NOT A BEING,
NOT A BECOMING, BUT A PATHOS....THE MOST ELEMENTAL FACT
FROM WHICH A BECOMING AND EFFECT FIRST EMERGE.
