Genius and Humility

By Steve Beckow -  February 22, 2013 

I awoke at 5:55 from dreaming I was attending a conference of geniuses. The meeting was open. Anyone could attend but it was intended as a forum at which geniuses presented their ideas.

I was enthralled with one man’s attempts to describe a new way of experiencing time. It seemed to me that what he was describing was Fifth Dimensionality but without knowing that Fifth Dimensionality existed and attempting to overlay Fifth Dimensionality on Third Dimensionality.

One of the key ingredients that was being requested from those in attendance was to cross-fertilize each other, to assist each other to see whatever was missing to make these notions that were being discussed fully potentiated and actualized.
That seemed to be the intention behind staging the conference.

But there was another dimension to the conference that was even more important but went undiscussed. It was so important that it was as if the conference itself was only a testing ground to see who went on to another conference of even more significance.

The people attending were being brought together to see who had transcended self-importance and who had not. No one was discussing the second dimension of the conference. But it was clearly there.

And I somehow knew that those who had not transcended self-importance would never know about this dimension to the conference. Their lives would go on uninterrupted or jarred in any way. But those who had succeeded in transcending it would find themselves invited to a second conference.

And the invitation would be both subtly extended and accepted without fanfare or drawing attention to oneself.

This transcendence could be spoken about in other ways. It could be called the presence or absence of compassion. It could be called service to others rather than service to self.

The Buddha was once approached by a man who said “I want happiness.” The Buddha replied: “First remove ‘I.’ That’s ego. Then remove ‘want.’ That’s desire. See? Now you are left with only ‘happiness.’”

The people who went on had transcended the pull and centrality of “I want.”

Anyone who approached their work as a way of demonstrating how important they were remained behind. It wasn’t a case of having mastered selflessness. It was a case of being aware of its existence and being committed to it. Mistakes were allowed. Imperfection of mastery was accepted.

But awareness of the existence of the issue and a commitment to leaving self-servingness behind was the real though unspoken issue at the conference. The actual ideas being presented were simply secondary.

Only Neary was taken aboard

One of the ways that a lack of self-servingness was measured was in who was listening. Those who could come to a conference of geniuses and simply listen became a special object of interest to whomever was behind the scenes observing.

Surprisingly to themselves, those who possessed the most interesting of ideas but craved a forum or had to have a podium were passed by. I was reminded of the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where all the well-disciplined astronauts are passed by by the space visitors and only the focused Roy Neary, the invited guest, was taken aboard the ship.

It wasn’t after all about genius. Or perhaps it was but it was also about something more.
It was really a new-paradigm conference and the new paradigm really was the divine qualities. In this case the divine quality of humility was what was being quietly sought.