Introducing Ryan Mill

Good morning! I'm Ryan.

I heard about this platform about a year-and-a-while ago, on account of being involved in the transcription of an interview with an (evidently) accomplished 'Steemian.' Since then, I've done some reading on how to be successful on Steemit. Lazily skimming the odd piece here and there on tips and tricks to earn the most money here, I decided to throw most of it out the window.

I'll format my posts and structure my content however I happen to wind up doing, and it'll be a sincere social expression of something-of-this-Ryan-fella that you'll find here. Hang on a second and lemme give you some little fragment before I go on.

I'm a bit of a lazy intellectual, and a repentant idiot. If I don't reign it in, I can spend as much time as any politician spewing words upon words and saying not a damned thing. I don't want to talk too much right now about repentance or idiocy, but I will anyway.

"The origin of the word idiot is beautiful to remember. Idiocy means something private, something special, something that is your own, something eccentric. That is the basic meaning of idiocy - to function in an eccentric way." - Bhagwan.

Maybe you didn't need to be told what idiot and idiocy means, like I did, because of your prior familiarity with idioms. I'm hanging on here 'by the skin of my teeth,' so I suppose it's 'better to let sleeping dogs lie.' So idiocy ain't such a bad thing, as far as it goes, but maybe it don't go far enough, ultimately. Hence repentance - I'd like to be a bit less of an idiot as time goes by.

I actually read something once about repentance being less of an asking for forgiveness and more of a going back for correction. Maybe I actually read something entirely different and filled in the blanks improperly - I don't know. In any case, another insight provided by dear Bhagwan sheds better light on the utility of repentance. I'll put it in my own words this time.

In typical contemporary reckoning, the Christian notion of repentance and forgiveness seems to look like one prostrating oneself before the Ultimate Arbiter, an individual and distinct God working his individual will over you whether you will or won't. Immediate and unsolvable paradoxes arise in a model as silly and childish as that, obviously. But the truly repentant individual is not merely appealing to some greater force for personal intervention, it is the act of honest repentance itself which reorders such a person's 'soul' or 'inner being' or 'psycho-spiritual makeup' or however you want to describe a person's personal experience of being.

Basically, if I am truly repentant of some error, the fact of seeing it clearly and honestly enough to be in such a state is itself the transformative condition allowing my next decision to either accomplish correction or frustrate the same with continued denial. On my knees, in pain and knowing that my pain was not thrust upon me from without, wailing in submission to what natural law causes the whole setup, in the spirit of 'I see now that I do not see; please show me' then the possibility of error is removed. Bhagwan spoke something of partiality and totality. A person who is absolutely whole and undivided has no opportunity to make a decision, because no degree whatsoever of doubt arises in one who is whole.

So anyway, maybe those weird metaphysical notions can be better explored another time. For now, I think I've given a fair-enough account at least of what goes into the repentant idiocy of yours truly. I am partial; I am as-yet not whole. I err, and my errors are often quite unique to me, and particularly embarrassing for that reason. So be it!

I'll say something about you now, whoever you are. Having ever been embarrassed before, I've also been extremely privileged to find that the persons outside of me whom I can count on to ridicule and condemn a guy like me for the sorts of glaringly unflattering misstepping or misspeaking or completely misapprehending are far, far outweighed by those who simply get it and laugh over it and let dumb things go. I think of it every time I hit a submit button without careful editing, whenever I ask a question that's sure to reveal an ignorance or naivety I'd rather not be there. It is by your grace that I've come so much better to know myself, and to wholly accept myself, partial and dim as I do be. I can't thank you enough.