12 · Borrowed Trophies

Pride just seems to come from a fundamentally flawed, atheistic view of how the world works. You take the gifts, the blessings from God, and give credit to yourself — the flesh — not God. Which is wrong objectively, existentially and morally. God gave that gift to you. The fact that you might be studying mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge is a BLESSING; the dream itself is also a blessing — not the other way around.

Don't leak that you are making good money. The best things in life must be kept between me and God. They are gifts from God. I am okay with doing stupid things in public, but the greatest blessings seem meant to be kept between me and God. Don't leak that you are great.

I think God is waiting for me to kill my pride and truly accept that status is meaningless — to know the real truth.

If you did something to show it to someone else, to portray it, you are a clown taking pride in your prison. Pride is the stupidity of thinking that what God gave you came from you.

The Christ-like extreme: Christ never got compensation or credit for his effort, for his wrestle with God. When Christ died — after that, he became the most legendary figure. The second batter at this extreme is Nietzsche. Do the work. Get no reward. Die. Maybe history remembers. Maybe it doesn't. Do it anyway. It's so hard — almost stupid, dumb and psychotic in the normal person's eyes.

Every interaction with a master is God's circumambulation, giving you a glimpse of what your mastery could look like in the future — and the conviction that you can transcend their level with consistency, discipline and iteration.

You can't hate on the glory that God has revealed in other people. Look at the level of abundance God can bring into people's lives. See it as a circumambulation, a glimpse of what God can do with your life. Then lock in.

If there is one lesson I've learned, it's this: if there is something you love so much that you would do it for free, voluntarily, in solitude — that is your thing, and it will blossom into your universe, and it will be profoundly meaningful.

Love transcends pain and suffering. If you love what you do, patience comes much more easily. I was looking in the totally wrong direction. Whether Imperial or Oxbridge is in or out of the equation, I will do my thing. If God thinks — or at least knows — it works for me, then God would put me there. But maybe not. So not only is it intellectually stimulating, it makes a lot of money, and there's status attached. But the most important thing is doing what you love and loving what you do. It's a scientist's life, which was my original dream — you get paid to think, read and write code. A lot.

You will get what you want when two paradoxes are both held truthfully: you live for and die for that goal — and you are also willing to live without it and die without it. Fuck happiness, fuck meaning, fuck everything other than God, and just pray something happens. Work like you live for and die for it, obsessing brutally over the process — while letting go completely of the outcome, giving no emotional weight to it at all. Those who attune to that frequency make it.