IT’S GOOD TO BE RICH
 
 
 

            The benefits of being incalculably rich are: 
              You don’t care what happens,  and:
              You don’t care what happens to possessions.
 
 

When the bourgeois are burglarized 
they invariably take it personally, 
and will whine that they feel, “violated;” 
while a rich person will show no reaction, 
only coldly say to an aide: 
“Call the insurance company.” 
Their attitude toward possessions, 
(be they vacuum cleaners or van Goghs),
is that anything can be replaced, 
or its purchase price recouped;
everything was originally traded for mere money 
--  which proves its true value;
it’s all just --  stuff  -- 
and everything, ultimately fungible.
 
 

So too is the attitude of a 
man-with-the-understanding
toward mental possessions:
opinions, beliefs & knowledge-of-non-tangibles.
He feels no personal attachment to the ideas which
furnish his normal neural residence;
they are like non descript, rental-quality furniture
that came with the place;
it’s just STUFF --  it’s just THERE.
It fills up the space & gives dust something to sit on. 
 
 

A man with the understanding
understands  --  above all  ---   mind,
and in so doing, obviously understands the value of
the mind’s stock in trade.
He realizes that everything he, 
and everyone else can think 
is replaceable, interchangeable, 
meaningless knick knacks, available on any corner,
and their possession or loss is without relevance.
 
 

Should such a man be told that some idea he had previously expressed, had today been denounced,
his reaction would be: 
“Talk to my insurance company.”
 

Having some idea that once passed through his mind
be attacked by another idea that happened to 
pass through someone else’s mind
would be of no more interest to such a man
than would the theft of a penny be to a trillionaire,
(and a counterfeit cent at that).
 

The benefit of being incalculably rich in the 
mental realm is that burglaries, (and attempted break-ins),
that so distress the ordinary 
are of no significance whatever.
A man who knows-what-is-going-on
(in the mortal neighborhood),
knows the true value of everything in his 
mental possession;
knows where it came from;
how he obtained it;
where to get more, and best of all:
even how to recover its purchase price.
(Can you sing:
        “Nothing from nothing equals nothing,
          but it becomes SOMETHING
          if you realize the math involved.”)
 
 

If you could get in, and plunder the 
in-town mental place where such a man stays,
it would disturb him not a bit;
you could believe that you had insultingly trampled all over his expensive carpets, and he’d pay it no mind. 
                   Mud does not mud deface.
 
 
 
 

The benefit of being incalculably rich-in-understanding
is that it is always open house at your house;
it doesn’t matter if strangers --  even those with ill intentions --  roam through your public residence,
pilfer your stuff; break your stuff; criticize your stuff --
--  it means nothing: it’s all just stuff.
(“And if you think I have incurred some loss, 
don’t bother me with it: 
             talk to my insurance company.”)
 

                                       *
 
 

The other, more expansive benefit of 
infinite mental wealth is beyond insouciance regarding the ephemeral comings, and the 
eternal goings of meaningless possessions:
it is the reward of not caring --  period!,
(about  everything meaningless, that is.)
 
 

Everyone with sane DNA cares about staying alive,
and everyone has their individual intangible interests,
(such as sports, music, movies, and other matters of
a mentally entertaining nature),
but ordinary men are also wired up to give attention to intangible creations of their own mind 
which they subsequently take to be of a quality far removed from mere entertainment.
They take, quite seriously indeed, such ideas as:
men live again, as men, after they die;
what other people think about me 
has significance to my life;
what other people believe about life 
compared to what I believe, is significant to me;
I am what I think  --  thus are ideas in general 
of particular significance to my life.
These concerns, 
(along with their lesser, internal variations),
occupy an ever increasing portion of 
routine men’s speech, and attention,
and is obviously, (as witnessed by the fact that
this is how it is), how life wants it,
and for everyday people it is neither hot nor purple,
but for a man who wants to get his hands on 
the understanding, 
(or perhaps in the alternative:
have it grab him by the clavicle),
this matter is of --  GREAT IMPORTANCE!
(or in the alternative, worth maybe…ten seconds
of an alert man’s time, [but neverthemore]),
if you think-about, and are concerned-over 
the same things that everyone else is,
you will never leave the ranks of: “everyone else.”
 
 

To have the-understanding-of-what's-going-on
is to realize for yourself that the only thing 
of any significance going on is -- living.
If politics is important to you, 
then politics is important to you;
if what people say about you is important to you,
then what people say about you is important to you --
--   but X is X:
if you look at X and call it Y --  it is Y;
if someone else looks at X and calls it Z  --  it is Z --
--   but it is still X.
 

This is what having-the-understanding
makes impossible to any longer ignore.
It gravely interferes with a man’s ability to continue
pretending that there are some things in the realm of things-you-can’t-touch
that are of extreme, if not --  supernatural --  importance.
(like maybe, Santa Clause’s TRUE birthday!)
 

Compared to the best in-town, sophisticated minds,
a man-with-the-understanding 
doesn’t care about anything  ---- superfluous.
He may even therein sometimes indulge --
but knowing-what’s-going-on restrains one from 
taking the merely mental for --  something substantial.
 
 

A man-who-understands, 
has in his neural townhouse,
copies of every mental brick a brack 
ever produced by man;
he has held them; read them; listened to them,
examined them in all needed detail,
and has complete, uncompromised knowledge of 
their value --  which is totally spurious, 
and individually specious to each person.
Hence to him, their possession, or loss 
could not be less meaningful: 
he doesn’t care what gets newly cooked up 
by ordinary minds, nor its fate in the marketplace;
he has no mental furniture of his own to which he is attached, and would not be bothered at all should you come in and sit all over, criticize and make fun of it,
even spill your own ideological drink all over it.
 

Living is the only recognizable, OBJECTIVE meaning 
to life;
compared thereto --   everything else is simply
a way to kill time.
Ordinary people take the time killers seriously,
(which is their business);
a few men are born uniquely uneasy,
and with a singular hunger for a great wealth --
a wealth of mind such that 
everything a human can potentially think 
is found therein;
thus are no mental possessions unknown, 
or foreign to him.
Having had at one time, possession of them all,
he now has no personal feelings as to whether they 
stay or go;
concerns of acquisition & loss in this area, are to him,
                      totally without meaning.
 
 
 

       Test: Can you tell the difference between:
                       breathing and praying?
                         eating and fasting?
                           doing and dreaming?
 
 
 
 
 

           IT’S GOOD TO BE RICH
 
 

...(and same as in the physical world:
   you're not TRULY rich unless
              you don’t even know how rich you ARE.)
 

                                             J
 
 

Behind your back (behind everyone’s back), 
a man with The Understanding is laughing at you --  Oh! not personally at you;
he is all the time laughing at what purports to be --    
--  HIMSELF,
which eventually trickles on down to what claims to be you, and everyone else. 

...(And by the by: you can use this profitably on yourself.  Try it  --  you’ll like it….
….at least more than you do trying to stay jammed into that straightjacket of an apparent-self 
that life’s outfitted you with now.)