Keys

• Thinking is invisible, but the thought-rich life makes materiality invisible by contrast. The thinker experiences thought as the most solid reality.

• Simplicity strengthens the mind through stripping away external paraphernalia.

• Turning inward strengthens the soul, but one must reinforce this by abandoning and ignoring society and its bonds. Never smile, never look into another's face with desire.

• Evening and night-time are my favourite times: there is no glare and noise fades. Use a blindfold and earplugs through the day if it helps. Camp in forests regularly, lying under the stars, wakefully and thoughtfully reviewing progress and marking out areas for improvement.

• Other people are useless in regards to your own soul. Soul is one's own concern, and soulcare is purely individualistic. So ignore others. Never seek approval in others. Also, it is worthless to worry over your reputation: e.g. being marked out by others as troubled or nasty. Clearly, they aren't interested in wisdom, and they will never be remembered by eternity. Their choice to be insane and arrogant is their own responsibility, not yours. Abandon them.

• Your character is your own responsibility. Do not be reckless, impulsive, lazy, apathetic, fatalistic, and undisciplined. You get what you want.

• Do not use samadhi for worldly goals, because birth-and-death will inevitably result. If you use mental brightness and energy to fulfil materialistic plans to solidify the ego, you will be overly active, and soon become fatigued - thus, the buoyant active life will die, and the depressed, passive, cynical life will be born. Only use samadhi for Godliness, and escape rebirth.

• Command yourself and obey your commands. Do not listen to ignoble thoughts.

Individuality

.....it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world.

So let the die be cast — I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past — why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill.

 

— Kierkegaard, 1835