I've been reading this book by D. Brooks. Does read a bit like pop psychology at times and kinda self-helpishy or new agey at others. But for all the cheesiness I'm actually finding it surprisingly interesting.
"There is trouble in your soul, and it keeps you awake."
The idea is that the first mountain is worldly success, narrow versions of a good life that we simply grow into, unreflectively endorsing the scripts that keep the ego satisfied with itself. Linear progress, individual rationality, stages in life to be ticked off: move on up: freedom, control, and work are the 'big swim to nowhere'. But really they're just a mask for boredom, or the indifference that stems from not being deeply interested in things (or other people) or the lack of courage to ask the big questions (Augustine: "I have become a question to myself").
In other words: Acedia: sluggishness of the soul, indifference, drift. Keep it neutral, keep it light, dude. Keep it anything but real. But out of the corner of your eye you sometimes glimpse the leopard on the high mountain, the second mountain. You know that leopard somehow, you sense you've seen him before or know him or would know him if..And then one day he comes down to you, stands in the open doorway and asks you: who do you really think you are?
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