In the same way that the underlying character and implications of one’s choices during speech acts themselves comprise a language often more comprehensive and accurate than the words being spoken, a ‘promising condition’ appears conflicted when viewed from the positions of the guide and the seeker.

For the seeker, who has cultivated and is usually carrying fetishes of success and glory, a promising condition is usually modeled as one where the seeker’s innate excellence is obviously coming forth into expression and recognition. At last, their efforts will be rewarded and properly applauded.

For the guide, however, this matter is quite different. The guide would most often see the seeker’s fetishes as deadly enemies. A wise guide might often use those specific fetishes to lead the seeker again and again into the distress and confusion which is their natural outcome, hoping against hope that the seeker will activate the primary phoneme of the word: see — from within, rather than from the estranged position of performer.

As with anything else, excellence arises when the performer is completely obliterated. So, too, the performance. Gone. Erased back beyond the beginning. Empty. Ringing. Clear. Flowing without hindrance. This is not going to happen while the seeker entertains delusions of grandeur, celebration and glory.

For the guide, the ‘promising condition’ is often when the conflict within the seeker is brought forth into stark emphasis by… struggle, confusion, trials and an intense desire … not to acquire something, though it is often framed thus in the beginning … but to clarify, which is to ‘make transparent’ certain other active obstructions to insight which are, until thus treated, so compelling and tyrannical that all development other than their own is largely halted.

For the seeker, a promising condition (often) masquerades as impending success. For the guide, a promising condition is something closer to ‘great impending intimacy with the nature of the mind in relation’. This is most often found in trial and conflict, not celebration and joy — though these too have their place.

“You say you had a beautiful dream? By what measure did you count this a blessing?”