Importance
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 fulfillment 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 problems from your life. Once you have let go of inner and outer importance you obtain the treasure called freedom of choice. But, I hear you say, according to the primary principle of Tran surfing we automatically have freedom of choice. This is true, we do have the freedom of choice, but often we do not know how to use it because balanced forces and pendulums get in the way. By projecting importance our entire lives are spent battling with the actions of balanced forces. There is simply not enough energy left over to make conscious choices or think about what we really want in life. Pendulums go out of their way to gain control and enforce their own ideas. What freedom can there be in this?
All the importance we attribute to things, be it inner or outer is simply a projection. No-one is of any true importance in this world and yet the riches of life are available to us. Children playing happily on the beach, splashing about and having fun in the waves do not think about whether they are good or bad, whether the water is good or bad or whether the other children are good or bad.
Whilst the situation remains unchanged, they are simply happy and in harmony with nature. We all came into the world like that, as a child of nature. If a person maintains a state of harmony the best that life has to offer will be available to them but as soon as a person begins to project importance problems arise. People fail to see the causal link between their projections and the problems they experience and so they buy into the idea that the world is a truly hostile place, where it is really hard to get what you want. In fact, the only obstacle on the path to fulfilling your desires is the projection of artificial importance. I may not have managed to convince you so far that this is the truth of things but I have not run out of arguments yet!