The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Okay, so good to sit with you.

So I read Rachel Kushner's recent novel Creation Lake last week. And there's a line that struck me.

She writes, one of her characters says,

charisma does not originate inside the person called charismatic.

It comes from the need of others

to believe that special people exist.

Kind of heart leapt up at that line.

And it invites the question in my mind, like, what is my need to believe in special people?

Is idealization making of special people, is idealization making of special people, is idealization just a facet of the human mind?

And there are certainly people who express particular gifts, certain, we could say paramis, you know.

But special people, special people, that gets us into the realm of projection and idealization and comparison.

Special people turns a quality into a person, turns a verb into a noun.

So what is it? What is it about our need to believe that special people exist?

Where does that come from?

And what are the pleasures and also the cost of idealization?

And for each of us to consider, you know, like what is your default assumption about yourself,

your power, your relative place amongst the special people, wherever they are. And how do you position

yourself in relation to specialness? Some people identify with the special ones. I want to be on that team. Some people want to own the special

ones. Some people are sexually titillated by specialness. Some people get competitive and want

to tear something down. Specialness evokes jealousy in some self-doubt in others, arrogance,

...