Of course the reader is nothing like the picture of the idealist portrayed here. It is unlikely that a person who believed they were always right would be drawn to read this book. The perfectionist who feels they know how others should run their lives is free of self-doubt. However, if you meet someone like the perfectionist portrayed here take a good look because here you have an extreme example of how crudely the laws of balance can be disregarded. We are all guests in this world. We have the freedom to choose our own path but no-one has the right to judge others, to sentence them or to label them (with the exception of criminal law).
What starts as an innocent striving for perfection ends in claims to the privileges of master. Accordingly, the resistance exerted by balanced forces which initially takes the form of minor problems increases in intensity. If the idealist is protected by a pendulum they will get away with their behaviour for a while but eventually the time will come when they will have to pay for their deeds. When a guest forgets that they are just a guest, and makes claims to the role of master they run the risk of being thrown out altogether.
Importance
Finally, we will look at the idea of importance as this is the most common cause of excess potential. Importance arises when something is attributed excess meaning. Importance represents excess potential in pure form. In the process of eliminating importance, balanced forces create problems for the person that created it.
Two forms of importance exist, inner and outer. Inner or personal importance represents an overestimation of your own virtues or shortcomings. The formula of inner importance goes along the lines of: “I am an important person” or “I do important work”. When the arrow of perceived personal importance goes right off the scale, balanced forces get involved and the “hot shot” gets a disappointing slap. They will discover that their work is either not needed at all, or that it is done badly. Puffing up your chest and sticking your nose in the air is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is excessive modesty and self-deprecation. The reader already knows what this leads to. The amount of excess potential is the same in both cases, the only difference being its positive or negative value.
Outer importance is created when a person attributes huge meaning to an object or event taking place in the external world. In this case the formula goes: “such and such means an awful lot to me” or “it is really important to me to do such and such”. Consequently, excess potential is created and things go wrong. Whereas the feeling of inner importance can be controlled it is much harder to do so with outer importance. Imagine that you have to walk along a plank lying on the ground. Nothing could be easier. Now imagine that you are forced to walk along the same plank which has been placed between the roofs of two high buildings. Walking the plank will have escalated in importance and there will be nothing you can do to persuade yourself otherwise. The only way of eliminating outer importance is to have a safety net. The form the safety net takes will be subjective and depend on each situation. The most important thing is not to place everything on one side of the scales. There has to be some kind of counterbalance, protection or alternative plan.
Essentially everything that can be said about importance has already been said above. There is nothing more to add. You may have made the connection already that in fact everything we have been talking about in this chapter is one variation or another on the theme of importance, inner and outer. All unbalanced feelings and reactions such as indignation, dissatisfaction, irritation, restlessness, anxiety, despondence, embarrassment, despair, fear, remorse, attachment, admiration, exaggerated affection, idealization, worship, delight, disappointment, pride, conceit, contempt, disgust, resentment etc, are all manifestations of importance in one form or another. Excess potential is only created when you attribute excess importance to an object or event that exists inside or outside of yourself.
Projected importance creates excess potential which calls forth the winds of balanced forces. These in turn lead to a mass of different problems and life becomes a battle for survival. Now you can judge for yourself how much inner and outer importance complicates your life.
But that is not all. Remember the puppet strings. Pendulums hook into your feelings and reactions: fear, anxiety, hatred, love, worship, call of duty, guilt etc. As you now know, all these states are as a consequence of projected importance. This is a description of what happens. Imagine an object is standing in front of you. On an energetic level the object is neutral: neither good nor bad. You approach the object, wrap it in importance packaging, step aside to look at it and gasp. Now you have created an attachment to the object you are willing to give the pendulum–your energy. Importance is like the carrot that makes a little donkey obediently plod along behind. A pendulum uses the same carrot to lock onto the frequency of your energy, drain it and then lead you wherever it wants you to go.
To return to a condition of harmony with the rest of the world and free yourself from the burden of the pendulum you have to be able to diminish importance. You have to be able to keep your inner Guardian from dozing off so that it can observe the level of importance you place upon yourself and the world around you. By reducing the level of importance you place on things you immediately re-establish a state of balance. The emptiness (absence of excess potential) gives pendulums nothing to hook onto and consequently, no means of establishing control over you. You may protest that I appear to be suggesting that we all numb ourselves into being lifeless statues. I am in no way urging anyone to reject all emotion or even reduce the intensity of the emotions they experience because, generally, it is futile to fight your emotions. Trying to keep yourself in check and struggling to stay calm on the outside, while everything is bubbling over on the inside just creates more and more excess potential. Emotions stem from attitudes, so rather than fighting your emotions it is more purposeful to change your attitude. Feelings and emotions are simply a consequence of your relationship or attitude to something and that attitude is caused by one thing – importance.
If for example, someone in my family has had a baby, a relative has passed away, or there is a wedding or other family gathering planned, these things are neither important to me nor am I indifferent to them. Do you see the difference? I do not make a problem out of the event or torture myself and those around me with my emotional response. So, what of compassion you may ask. I think I would be correct in saying that compassion and helping those who truly need it never did anyone any harm but it is still important even with compassion to observe how you attribute importance to it. I mentioned helping someone when they really need it but sometimes, people just want to suffer. They enjoy it, and evoking your compassion is just a way of indulging in self-validation at your expense. Or, for example, you see a cripple begging on the street and give them some money but the cripple smirks at you as you move on and it turns out that it is not a cripple at all but a professional beggar.
Importance does not exist in the animal and plant kingdoms like it does in human society, with the exception of pets that so closely identify themselves with humans and adopt aspects of human behaviour. Society affects pets as well it would seem. In the world of the wild behaviour is based on the fulfilment of purpose from the point of view of maintaining the laws of balance. Animal behaviour is purely guided by instinct. Importance is a solely human invention that is enjoyed by pendulums. Any extreme bias of assessment towards outer importance makes a person a fanatic, whilst any extreme bias of assessment towards inner importance makes a person a despot.
From the way I have portrayed reality you may be under the impression that one can hardly take a step without fearing the consequences. Fortunately, things are not that bad. Balanced forces will only noticeably affect your life if you are very strongly attached to your own ideas of how things should be; you are obsessive; or have just gone too far. The role of pendulums is also clear. We all come under their influence. The main thing is to be very aware of the mechanism for control; how they hook into you and how far you will let them go.
Reducing importance does not just significantly eliminate