New Proverbs for New Men

2

My brother, do not take my word for it:
listen to other men who have harkened to wisdom,
to the hundred, and the two hundred;
listen to men who have been broken by the fathers,
and to those transformed by the voice in the night.
Yes, if you cry out for insight,
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like the silver lode
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will hear the voice of the god
and find the truth of the spirit.
For the god of the night gives wisdom,
its voice leaks hope and healing;
in the deep recesses of the darkness
it stores up the knowledge that brings soothing;
it speaks out of inward integration,
and comes to the man for whom thinking and feeling are one.
Then you will understand love and forgiveness
and fairness, every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Trust will watch over you;
faith in the truth will guard you,
delivering you from the concealment of fear,
from men of perverted speech,
who close their eyes to their darkness
so as to walk in the ways of false light,
who say they do not have a problem,
or if they do, it is not theirs but yours;
men whose paths are tortured with pretense
and who are wracked with the lies of self-protection.
You will be saved from the manipulations of the needy woman,
from the mothering of the woman who was not loved by her father;
you will see her need, and see that you have it too,
without believing that only you can save her from it;
for her need is a well without bottom,
and the man who would save her will drown in it.
If you go to her, do not try to save her,
or fill up the depths of her need;
only love her, and hear the voice of the goddess
in her cries in the dark of the night.

So you will wander onto the way of new men
and walk through the forest of healing;
And some day, if enough of us listen,
the broken will inherit the earth,
and the healed will rule in the land;
and the sickness will pass from the face of the earth.

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