Deadwood - Akira the Don

What should move forward in time with me

And what should be let go

As if it’s deadwood

The more deadwood that you let go of and burn off

When you have the opportunity

The less it accretes around you

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Here’s something interesting about forest fires

People have been trying to prevent forest fires for a long time,

it’s because forest fires burn up the forest and that can’t b good but here’s

what happens if you don’t lt forest fires burn

Forests collect a lot of dry branches, right 'cause tree branches die and wood

falls on the forest floor and collects

The amount of flammable material keeps increasing with time

And that’s not so bad if it’s wet but if the amount of flammable material is

increasing and it gets really dry and then it burns, then you have a real

problem

The forest fire can burn so hot that it burns the top soil right off

In which case you don’t have a forest at all anymore, you just have a desert

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Lots of trees are evolved to withstand forest fires of a certain intensity

And some won’t even release their seeds unless there’s been a fire

And so a little bit of fire at the right time

Can stop everything from burning to the ground

And that’s also a really useful

Insight a metaphorical insight into the nature of sacrifice, right

It’s also a lot easier to let go of something when you’re deciding to let go of

it

Because you’ve decided yourself that you’re done with that

It’s a weak part of you, it needs to disappear

You do that yourself it’s much better and much easier than it is if it’s taken

away from you forcibly in which case you’re very much likely to fight it

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As you elevate your aim

You create a judge at the same time

The new ideal, which is an ideal you

That becomes a judge

Because it’s above you

The judge tells you what’s useless about yourself and then you can dispense

with it

And you wanna keep doing that and then every time you make a judge that’s more

elevated then there’s more useless you that has to be dispensed with

And then if you create an ultimate judge which is what the archetypal

imagination of humankind has done, say, with the figure of Christ

You have a judge that says

Get rid of everything about yourself — that isn’t perfect

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It’s a Phoenix-like process, right

You’re shedding all those elements of you that are no longer worthy of the

pursuits that you’re valuing

And then I would say the idea here is that as you do that, you shape yourself

ever more

Precisely into something that

Can withstand the tragedy of life

And that can act as a

As a beacon to the world, that’s the right way of thinking about it,

maybe first to your friends and then to your family

It’s like it’s a hell of a fine ambition

And there’s no reason that it can’t happen

You know every one of you knows people who are really bloody useful in a crisis

and people that you admire, right, you can think of all those people as partial

incarnations of the archetypal messiah

That’s exactly right

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And the more that, that manifest‘s itself in any given person then the more

generally useful and admirable that person is in a multitude of situations and

we don’t know the limit to that