┌─╷─┐ ╵┌┼┐╵ polyphanes.smol.pub ╷└┼┘╷ by polyphanes └─╵─┘
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The vision: sitting at a small, humble gazebo in a loosely-kept field of grass, led to by a humble dirt path veering off from between the well-manicured bushes of the canal-gardens. It's some ways out from any trees to the left or the right, and a good few dozen yards away from the proper garden behind, but an equal distance before is a narrow strip of sand and smooth stone forming a shore of an immense river-sea. The brightness of the golden sky and the ever-suffused light obscures the far shore, and the calm water itself glows like oil lit from a blessed olive tree. Dipping your hands into the water, you can catch little flakes of gold suspended among the waves.
It's a dangerous thing to cross, this river. Those who do are those lost in the light, blinded in radiance as a blessing, but one hard to bear by most. They're the ones who become immersed in Apollonian frenzy, in the mania of beauty, who live out their lives serving a greater vision and are taken care of by the same; they become immersed in the phenomenon of divinity, and become eternal children thereof. These people do not try to swim over the water, but are guided there, accompanied and shepherded there to the other shore, borne across the water as they bear their own burdens of their own Sun.
On the other hand are those who try to swim the river. They sink—the water weighs them down, and the gold accumulates upon them and within them, dragging them down in their own ambition. Rather than letting that which should flow to flow, they impede it, and rather than letting gold shine, they hoard it; they end up stagnating themselves, even to the point of falling out of the world entirely, never becoming able to taint the river-sea with stagnation. Why this fate? Because they become choked with their own arrogance, declining to participate int he free-flowing of light and the radiance of goodness which is the proper activity of the Sun, both in the world and in us all.
We all risk becoming choked by our own arrogance; it's an issue of self-centeredness, thinking one to be the most important and therefore the only importance of all else. Yet, we should all remember "noblesse oblige", and that kings are the ultimate servants. It's when one hoards power, money, resources, time, energy, you-name-it that you stagnate yourself, holding all else up to serve yourself, but that's not what any of this is for. The Sun is often held to be a model of kingship, but the thing about the Sun is that it shines freely for all: it might hold the planets in their orbits and steer them all together through the dark of space, but it gets nothing from doing so on its own, and yet gives itself entirely to the planets. The Sun simply shines, as effortlessly as it does limitlessly, and so do should we. It's when we become bathed in gold and bring others to shine as well by shining on them, rather than becoming choked up with it and away from others, that we can truly become dignified. As the opposite to arrogance, humility is to be aware of only what you are but also all that you are by that same token, and thus to act accordingly in whatever way is right and proper for you. The Sun doesn't demand tribute from the planets; how could any of us from another?