05/06/2023
You have a lot of biological potential. It’s hard to know what potential is, but part of it is that you’re capable of generating proteins that you haven’t been generating—so you should get right on that, by the way. But the way that works, in part, is that, if you put yourself in a radically new situation, there are genetic switches that turn on—because of the demands of the new situation—that code for new proteins. So it’s as if you have latent software—that would be one way of thinking about it—that will only be turned on if you go into the situation where that’s necessary.
So then you might think, ‘well, if that’s the case, how much of you could be turned on, if you went to a whole bunch of different places?’ That’s a profound question. One of the deep answers to how you should get your life together is that you should go to a very large number of places, and turn yourself on. I want to walk through that, a little bit. There’s a very rich symbolic world that expresses that.
One of the things that these old stories are trying to express and figure out is, ‘how is it that you should act?’ which is the same as, ‘what constitutes the ideal?’ Those are the same question. The hint, here, with Joseph, is that you should wear a coat of many colours, which means that you should be able to go have a drink in the pub with the guys who are drywalling your house, and you should be able to have a sophisticated conversation with someone who’s more educated in an abstract way. Maybe you should be equally comfortable in both situations, right? One of the indications that there’s more to you is that you can be put more places and function properly. That would be a good thing to aim at.
Here’s the other issue. You know perfectly well that the fundamental tragedies of life, and your exposure to malevolence in the course of that life—so those being the worst things—cannot be altered, fundamentally. They’re conditions of existence. You’re going to be subject to your vulnerability, and you’re going to be subject to malevolence. That’s that, and you can’t hide from it, because that actually makes it worse. So you’re stuck with it. So then the question is, well, what are your options? One option is to curse the structure of Being for being malevolent and tragic—and fair enough. The other is to make yourself so damn differentiated, dynamic, and able that you’re more than a match for that. Now, that’s not an easy thing, but it doesn’t matter, because what’s the alternative? There’s no good alternative, and that’s also worth knowing. - from Biblical Series XV: Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors by JBP
