a bear with a fish in its mouth.

A bear catches a fish,
and the river flows beneath it.
I suffer a great sorrow,
and the world continues to turn.

A bear with a fish in its mouth.
An ego under a mountain of suffering.

Which is greater?  Which is more worthy?

Those who suffer are ignorant.  They are ignorant of the Greater Knowledge, of the Tao.  They are the ones with eyes to see, yet are blind--with ears to hear, yet are deaf.  They are the seekers who will never find.  The finder never seeks.  The Greater Knowledge is spontaneous.  It cannot be grasped and will only slip through you fingers if you try.  It is there, ever present, ever friendly, ever waiting.  It is nowhere, ever elusive, ever malicious, ever fleeing.  Good and evil.  Yin and yang.  Nirvana.

Experiential.  That is the key.  All your intellectual exercises and hours of deliberation will get you no closer to the Greater Knowledge.  Only experience will bring you close.

Rule of thumb: Be humble!  You know nothing.  You are nothing.  Accept that and let go.  Let go of ego, etc.  Give yourself to no ideology, god, or man.  Accept the merit of ideas, but never believe in them.  Engage in intellectual exercises and debate, but remain one step removed.  Be God.  Accept the paradox of your own insignificant nothingness and the fact that you are God Himself.  It is only when you have reached the very deepest level of the Void that you will know this.  It is only when you have reached the very deepest level of the Void that all will become light, and the darkness will disperse.

This is the demolition of ego.  Retain individual identity--be yourself--but be humble!  Once you have killed God, so to speak, your soul will be open to the sincerity of a spontaneous existence.

A side-note on the "death of God":  The death of God is, superficially, a completely atheistical concept, BUT it is not as opposed to theism as you would think.  It is, on a deeper level, an abandonment of ego itself.  For what is a better representation of man's ego-centric view of the world than his creation of a God?  Man placed himself in the center of the cosmos when he created the gods.  He established himself as the chosen species.  The Israelites went so far as to believe themselves to be the chosen PEOPLE.  The god-creators fulfilled a great need that virtually every person experiences--that of existential meaning--but they also created much bigger problems because by filling that need they made it valid, relevant, and ever-permeating.  The need for existential meaning is, by my assumptions, the very root of all egoism and the cause of most of the anxiety which the Western world faces every day.

On the other hand, rather, in the other hemisphere, the East has handled the problem of existential anxiety in a very different way--by calling it stupid.  More exactly, they have broadly defined all of existence to be "suffering."  Now, this can be--and for the most part has been--literally interpreted, and as a result many people subscribing to Eastern thought have turned to lives of asceticism in order to "escape" the body.  However, if taken with a grain of salt and Taoist philosophy, the "suffering" that the Buddha talks about becomes nothing more than an expression of the absurdity of life itself.  This absurdity is manifested in the petty sufferings that man goes through every day in the broader context of the great eternal scheme of things.  In this context, even the most horrific acts of human atrocity are reduced to insignificance.  For those of more philosophic temperaments, this is an absolutely relevant issue, and requires a solution of sorts.  This is exactly the crisis of existential meaning every intelligent human being experiences.  As mentioned above, the West has reacted to this problem with the creation of gods, goddesses, and other imaginary ideals, and the East has solved it by resorting to reductio ad absurdum and admitting that the question is unanswerable in any intellectually significant way.  Either way, the problem has been addressed adequately enough that most of the population, East and West, are able to move along with their lives and direct their attentions towards more intellectually appropriate and socially important things--like politics.

Ok, the two preceding paragraphs definitely could be more organized, but give me a break--I'm making this up as I go.  Maybe I'll revise it later, but for now, whatevs.

Most of my small audience believes in God, and I respect that.  I would not change that belief if I could, and I encourage everyone to explore and learn and grow in their own ways, and in their own faiths.  My truth that I preach is mine, and I like it.  You don't have to, and I'm open to criticism because I enjoy being proved wrong even more than being proved right.  I, unlike so many on this beautiful planet, have acquired the ability to laugh at myself.

A bear loses a battle
and walks away in shame.
A boy makes a mistake
and loses himself in laughter.

A bear walking in shame.
A boy shaking in laughter.

Which is greater?  Which is more worthy?

Man alone determines his own fate.  Man alone can choose his own course.  Man alone can laugh at his own follies.  Man is greater.  Man is more worthy.

We are Man.