The Black Second Of The Passing Time

Moderate your need to acquire the highest knowledge, so that you avoid that conflict with yourself that can take you on the edge of a sad ending.

Johann Friedrich Böttger was an alchemist, chemist and German inventor. He was the one who invented the porcelain of Saxony, leading to the founding of an industry that has become traditional in Europe. However, his fate was unexpectedly deceptive. Here’s what we learn about the famous alchemist from the writer M. Solomon in the book “Lights in Retort”:

On January 23rd, 1710, Frederick Augustus, King of Poland, signs a decree establishing a porcelain factory, whose income would contribute to improving Saxony’s financial situation, severely shaken by the invasion of Carol XII of Sweden. The decree confers special rights on eminent people who are involved in the production of white porcelain.

But Böttger is in custody under the threat of death penalty for a hypothetical scam. He serves the king only to gain his freedom. Thus, encouraged by the success of his discovery, the alchemist moves to new trials. He is haunted by the thought of finding a clay with the same vitrification properties, but white. And he succeeds.

The King is very pleased with Böttger’s work, who, in turn, feels within his right to demand his release. But Frederick Augustus does not want to get rid of a man of such value, he always imputes a hypothetical guilt, or a debt or various mistakes. Böttger did not know how to make gold, but knew how to make porcelain. And this secret had to be kept.

Böttger remained the king’s prisoner all his life. At age 35, in 1719, he dies a poor man, tormented by his desire for freedom, ruined by the alcoholism which pushed him to his tragic fate. After Böttger’s death, the king continued to collect revenue coming from the manufacturing in Meissen.

Can you improve your ability to respond effectively to less predictable life situations so you can get a clearer view of the “conditioning-sacrifice” relationship?

In understanding the dependency between developing social and culturally-professional life, I don’t hesitate to warn, and even to reproach someone with a much too rich vision on the relation conditioning-sacrifice. This kind of a man walks on the most advanced line, which happens to be the thinnest, self-reducing himself to the prototype of a modern human, of the discoverer, of a scientist who can stoically go against any emotional drawbacks.

The essence of his life can get lost in the essence of time, for satisfying his noble desire to know, to pierce through the secrets of things, in the center of the great conquests in the backstage of science. In all this time of searching the unknown truths, his spiritual and emotional force can gradually fade. A crown of laurels that hardly ever withers and leaves deep marks his being, all the more because the knowledge of accepting who you are is covered by the knowledge of living in harmony with a self-imposed reality.

Every time you try to escape the routine you’re used to, in the attempt to develop your leadership potential, you find yourself in front of the opponent’s gate: logic and reason. After you have superbly passed all the opponents, you want to open the score. Your reason of being and your own identity suddenly change. And everything you do gravitates around your new moment to score a success. But they can be in contradiction with everyone else’s reason. You are happy, but at the same time, someone loses – your Ego.

Do your discoveries force you to contribute to creating a new image of yourself as an addict to a significant life-saving "cost" in terms of validating a single possible option to justify non-capping decisions?

The enormous mistake made by Böttger was that the result of his experiences came to the ear of powerful people without proposing a contract to the extent of his discovery. And not only that, he was “taken” from the plane of normal life because he claimed he could get gold by translating brass, an attitude that at the time was just a delusion. Practically, he lacked the ability to perceive the value of his discovery.

And when he discovered the porcelain formula, which cost almost as much as his weight in gold, it was too late to change something. His image of the world had gained the aura of a gladiator cast into the arena by a system he can no longer stop, and the only “cost” of his life’s maintenance was merely his affirmation in history, he’s entering a legendary status.

The Ego is the measure of your own lack of knowledge and your own ignorance, contributing to the validation of a single possible justification for not limiting your decision: “Be special by not making yourself known too early”, otherwise you risk becoming a prisoner of a time when “they all want to take advantage of you”.

The more the Ego pushes you to be prouder of yourself, from the very first discoveries, the more you have to keep away from the eyes of the world. Otherwise you risk not being able to separate yourself from other people more capable and more powerful than you, who will know how to take advantage of you.

What can be the measure of your own happiness at the height of prosperity if you cannot enjoy the benefits of an investment that you have gained in time through an internal reconfiguration effort?

Consequently, the fire is out of control. You enter this temporary loop; you’re suffocated by a bunch of difficult questions, paradoxes, ambiguities and deviations between meaning and direction. Misunderstandings of causes and effects. This rises an unjustified fear similar to the question "who could save me?", which reduces your activation energy and orientation reaction.

And leadership, thus, limits its quality, because you can’t detach from that part of yourself that commands to throw yourself in an endless battle. A fight in which knowledge can always make you knockout, because you will never fully comprise it.

Moderate your need to acquire the highest knowledge, so that you avoid that conflict with yourself that can take you on the edge of a sad ending. The personal reconfiguration effort requires you to evaluate your chances of success in a certain direction, so as to not contradict the image you expect to see in case of failure.

The first law of alchemy is related to how you use your ability to perceive the value of your discoveries so that you do not get converted into the prisoner of your limitation in the various aspects of life.

The Black Second Of The Passing Time brings forward that moment in the life of someone who wants to become an exceptional leader, which determines him to find answers to absolutely all the unknowns in his and others’ evolution, dissecting the past, the present and the future. Of course, throwing a glance in the past means to remember the important mistakes of others in order not repeat them in your life.