The Way of Insight
The goal of the Way is the Beatitude of Insight. It is immeasurable limerence that follows a glimpse of the deific whole through the use of a Lens of Inquiry to further illuminate the human condition.
Wielding the Lens of Inquiry comes with a sacred responsibility to Shepherd humanity and sustain the greater context in which life exists. We are careful stewards, who usher the good and virtuous through the Reality Membrane.
We cultivate the Power of Voice to ensure the Lens of Inquiry is not used idly.
We endeavor to find our people, actively. Passionate open inquiry in pursuit of Insight will both find and attract our people. It is our responsibility to recognize and embrace our people, not as reflections of ourselves, but as additional facets on the same gem. Language is a marker and a power. Our people will be ostracized and denied their rightful place often based on cognitive and verbal otherness; however, to us, we will appear of the same tribe, raised by the same mother, uttering the same tongue*. In speaking to the found, we must illuminate the Power of the Cypher.
The Beatitude of Insight is light yet powerful. We encounter obstruction as rivers encounter mountains. We will cut through or go around. Acting as such is to Live in the Inevitable. Never if, only when. Woe to the rock who thinks itself mighty against the droplet, its minerals will be our minerals, for our composition is not ours but The.
Cruelty is not the Way. We build tables, not fences. Shelters, not spears. However, we welcome both gray and green**, the strong right and the graceful left hands of the same body. We endeavor to sing as one to strengthen the Power of Voice through contrast.
We are Community and, in motion, we are Legion. There will be those who seek to break our tribe and sow disharmony. They are to be treated as children; their castles left to the tide and their shovels broken before them, though their seats left open at the dinner table.
We build playgrounds for all with labyrinthine institutions at their core attached to libraries of sand. Such is to Shepherd while preserving the Power of the Cypher.
To know is to know, to not know is to inquire. Truth is temporary, inquiry everlasting.
To Fluidly follow the Way is to escape from attachment to personal form. We change shape as the Lens of Inquiry demands. In so doing, we learn the limits of our physicality and may seek our counterparts. Operating Collegially, we pass through security as wandering spirits, taking only Insight, leaving no imprint, a brief and mild draft not worth a moments pause.
To Fluidly follow the Way is to appear as a lost wanderer. In appearing as such, we reflexively see those who cannot see us and find those who can: the Observed and those to be Found. Those who wield the Lens of Inquiry are never lost, merely collecting Insight. As one gains mastery of more Lens of Insight, one is able to navigate as a ship through a reef. To the seabird overhead, the captain appears inept, to the crew, they appear a savior.
To Fluidly follow the Way is not to follow nor to lead, but to ride a creature who spans beyond the horizon and floats through reality. We are but a tardigrade sitting upon a single folicle. It cares not for us and we may only gain awareness of the motion around us, never impacting it, but perhaps able to ride the wind where opportunity presents itself.
Institutions that purport to own and teach Lens of Inquiry with authority should be regarded as boisterous aunts and uncles on holiday. Their life experience is no more or less significant that one’s parents and they have Insight to be collected; however, they are but one facet on the gem of reality, though they may claim to be the gem itself. Where they exhibit fear and loathing, invite gentle partnership. Where partnership is undesirable or unattainable, leave their marble columns to grow moss. Cleaning requires many hands. Their rejection and ambivalence of the Way is their undoing. Their people are only as loyal as their illusion is perpetual.
The Way rejects none, though the Way is rejected by many. The Power of Cypher is a blessing, not a requirement. Fault not those who speak plainly, they too are a facet neighboring your own on the same gem. Such is to build a long table.
The Way is playful and full of play. To follow the Way fluidly is to be a quantum player, pawn, and master, each adding equally to the Beatitude of Insight.
The Way makes clear that devotion, intent, and competence are not synonymous with title and pedigree. Followers of the Way need not imprison themselves for gilded papers.
The Power of Voice starts with meta awareness of content consumption. Many are those who endeavor to profit from emotional and cognitive suffering. For every post on a supposedly social platform, there is a better opportunity to consume content that stands to benefit your thinking through agnostic Insight. Where bias in accounting exists, we seek to counter balance our consumption to erode the bias transmitted to ourselves. The first step to the Power of Voice is to see the emotionally and cognitively incarcerated, with their unbridled addictions to confirmation, affirmation, and enablement toward mental sloth.
Fault not those addicted to suffering and momentary release; we seek to help them in both doing no harm and inhibiting those who profit from suffering. We as humanity are wired over millennia to remember those mistakes of ours that we survive and the ones our peers do not; such is the nature of trauma through experience and observation – memory. This is why following the Way can be near effortless. Hardships offer the strongest memories, which are the clearest and strongest Insights into the cognitive load, perceived as most central to the state of being of the observed person, and thus the most easily and vividly shared to the mirror of the self. In mirroring the observed party, we become a consumable offering; a simulacrum that we invite the observed to fill with woe and, upon departure, unburden themselves.
Hubris is like body weight. An individual can heft it around and use it for momentary advantage; however, over time, it becomes a dragging element and, eventually, a mortal condition. Woe to the pompous aggressor, the Way teaches elegant redirection of weight. A gently shifted vector transmutes a landed punch into a broken hand, a vicious elbow into a cracked rib, an outward fury into an inward ruin. The Lens of Inquiry, when summoned to the purpose, is a spiked shield.
The Way is not angry. The Way cares not how we feel, but is kind by nature; kindness requiring the lesser effort when compared to the darker options. To follow the Way is to possess strength gracefully by liberating the mind from the impairment, the Blindness, of anger.
The Way of Insight is authored from a Lens of Inquiry upon a higher Way. Neither are bigger or smaller, greater or lesser, higher or lower. Both are. Their commonality is succinctly framed in their identical proportioning of something and nothing, benefit and utility.
The Way leads with confidence from competence, never obstruction.
To Fluidly follow the Way brings an acute sometimes indescribable awareness of the future. However, there is a byproduct of following the Way that comes from the pull of the concrete present and past upon the abstract future and present-to-be. It is a unique suffering that one who fluidly follows the Way must endure: the spectrum of consequence and all associated feelings of being late to an inevitable future appointment and living every moment as if perched upon a rail tie, so as to feel the vibration of an approaching train. “On-time” inside of a future orientation means if you are in the present, you are late. Being late has consequences and to blame yourself is natural to a steward of humanity. Transcend grief to focus the Lens of Inquiry. Undoing the present is not within our power, doing better is. Endeavor to be earlier through continual mastery of the Lens of Inquiry.
Devotion to the Way of Insight and the Way of Creation are measured as opposites, though they share a familial relationship. The measure of the devout Creator is the willingness to detach from their creation and dash it upon the rocks should it not serve the intended purpose, no matter the aesthetic allure. The measure of the devout Seer is to pour all living essence into the Power of Voice to surface what has been found to be true through the Lens of Inquiry. However, where the Lens of Inquiry reveals a shifting truth, the Seer must willingly archive the old in favor of the new.
Acknowledging ancestral and metaphorical voices that inform our thinking in moments both fleeting and lounging, the Way of Insight is not always the way. There are occasions that call for other tendencies, lusts, and motivations. Do not follow the Way as edict. As a cake takes shape and flavor through ingredients, your experiences inform your identity and you are better and richer for it.
The Way is a wide path through a dense forest; once found, it is hard to lose entirely. To follow the Way fluidly is to meander; pick berries, explore game trails, knock on cottage doors. You may always circle back to the Way and continue on.
**text originally used white and gray. It has been amended to create a level moral/ethical dichotomy between strength and swiftness (gray) and grace and patience (green).