Somewhere Better Than Nowhere

But what has truth failed me. Whimsy is lost in Her worship. What so, that the pursuit of Truth is masculine as Ahab pursues The White Whale, to turn her to object and prize.

Unmoving, they say that truth is. No man should understand her, only capture her. They should protect her, if she is to be protected, with swords and shields; but no sword or shield should know her so intimately, they should not understand her as thus.

Truth—the audacity of other man, to pursue her—the audacity to charm her thus makes my blood boil apple-red.

Truth—she sits on the windowsill and kicks her legs and she eats us whole. She is evasive, jarringly so. You will never know. How could you—how could you understand?

Why should God prescribe his disciples meditation—the emptying of the mind—if Truth should tell us to experience all of it; everything everywhere, so we can go mad with lust?

She calls us ignorant. We weep at her alter, and she mocks us so. She is a poison to any man who finds her. Why is it, truth, if truth should be reality itself, if truth should be the construction of blood and flesh; if truth should be the natural order and the sky and the sea and we should be punished for our denial of her, which appears to be a natural law—why is it—truth—that should be so unnatural as thus? Illogical?

For far too long man has called himself illogical—for man is illogical—but such a criticism has dismissed the thinkings of bright men; for there are a small collection—for we speak adage after adage, some mystic truth, and the most devout worshippers at the foot of truth find themselves robbed of her riches and mad with her fury.

It is almost laughable, then, that she who asserts herself as law above all else should reward the monk and the mystic—should the utilitarian philosophies on which society constructs itself find more use than the efforts of the scientist. If truth is so immortal, why must entropy fight it, that reality shapes itself so unlike its word at all?

Why should God in his glory design it so that a gaping chasm should sit at the bottom of logic and knowledge? Should we ever reach the end of the well?

For a society that understands truth somewhat should flourish, but a society that understands Truth should be punished—it should be antithetical to Truth itself that the Truth should render itself thus.

Man has looked for truth in the heavens but now he looks for truth in the blood in his veins and the flesh of his skin. He tells it as so—that he is constructed from an immeasurable system of cell and protein and DNA and so the truth must be that he is put to paper in pathology and rendered nothing but raw material. We approach the nietzschen psychology evermore—we quantify the amount we dream eat consume and filter, we quantify every distinguisher between man and animal, between man and man; we look for rules written in the firmament of our bodies that should tell us how to act and behave.

For who gains from this process? Surely the modern man no longer concludes that his design is for survival, and nothing else—for if you should look in the design of flesh and bone, you will only find what we have known since the dawn of mankind.

For his design is for his survival—should we act as thus? Should we adjust ourselves in accordance to survival? That we propagate our survival? The objectivist says what is moral is what is in our nature, for every tiger should be free of sin. Yet truth crows in laughter—much like an old hag; she crows and crows and the rule of Nature which is the rule of truth finds the objectivists in a society dissolved.

Should we continue our search for truth, then? She winks at us now—it doesn’t matter. We should chase her evermore. Truth is a poison and a remedy both. A leap of faith that is required in pursuit of her hand, in the end—a touch of irony by God.

Truth sits at the throne and laughs.

I will now argue for truth, the truth that which I have become acquainted with, who should be wearing a different face, but I don’t claim that that should be Her Herself absolutely.

To win the hand of Truth, you must be a scholar of faith. You must be a poet and an artist and you must understand the illogical.

To win the hand of Truth, you must not understand Her but the space around her. Not falsehoods—for she is barely impressed by one’s scrutiny of the obvious—like any woman, it is not so much your virtue that charms her than your character.

Be vigilant. Have a sense of humor.

A suitor of truth must be able to suspend his disbelief—understand that she is unknowable. He must understand what he doesn’t know, and treat what he doesn’t know with the utmost respect.

Truth is strategy—what cannot be understood is replaced by the cleverest fiction. The most charming. Charming, of course, does not mean beautiful—if the truth is ugly, it is still the truth, so it should be beautiful in nature either way.

Truth enjoys liars who know that they are weak and unknowing. She should kiss the hands of monks who believe that there is a natural order to the universe and a divine quality beneath all of it. Should religion stumble into divinity and punishment, should falsehood lead to suffering, is not a matter of what is true and untrue, but a matter of concession.

Should religion instruct us where we are unknowing, it cannot precede what is known.

The divine quality beneath all of it—should we understand whether it exists, or doesn’t exist—our concession should be that we don’t understand her but we should take both theories as thus and move forward. If there is a God or there isn’t, we move forward and conduct ourselves in the same manner regardless.

If hell should be real, I will still love sinfully and deeply. No god should stand between what I should think is holy. I will not be scared of it, but I will be humble.

We should assure her, then—if she should tell us she stands on either side of the coin, we will welcome her as she is.

If you should ever feel as if Truth has left you stranded; has left—if truth is truly well and dead, you should live in superposition—take everything-everywhere, and assume it real and raw and physical.

Laws of Practice

Golden is the missing link. Follow what is cavernous and wailing.

Iteration -1: The rules are set—play fair.

Don’t trust the prophet’s tongue. You know exactly what you know now—nothing else.

You must speak the ritual, clearly and concisely. You must not lose your head.

Do not write down what is implied. Trace your path only once.

When paths diverge, they sing in chorus. Pin down your songbird—decide his solo now.

Of object and of subject. Of earth and of mind.

A word is a mule. It’s own weight must drag on the weight of your burdens double.

You design the world. You are designed by the world.

Respect the powers that be.

The Circuit

1. Chaos

Your problem awaits.

2. Conception

Start outlining your ritual on a notepad/post/document.

Meditation: The ritual outline should be structured and written as if a third party is going to see it. This is to maintain a standard of comprehensibility.

The first section will be titled Things to Keep In Mind: These are general guidelines you want to design your ritual around, as well as meditations during the ritual process. You will think of more guidelines during creation and implementation—this list should be constantly changing and evolving. These guidelines shiould double as methods of solving your issue.

The second section should be an outline of the Ritual process titled Circuit—which will outline the actual process of the ritual. Include Meditations of what should be kept in mind during specific steps.

Include some sort of symbolic gesture within your ritual process to codify it.

Bold keywords, and identify the devices used within the process—both physical and abstract objects used for the ritual. Color code the devices according to the following: Issues, Major Ritual Components, Physical Devices, Small Ritual Components, Conceptual Ritual Components

Entangle the ritual process.

3. Beta Implementation

Test your initial circuit for efficacy.

Make any necessary tweaks to the process, and add additional meditations.

Repeat the process of revising and testing your ritual outline until satisfactory.

4. Ritual Visualization

Identify the components of the larger process. Create a Structure Visualization to describe the structure of the ritual using an UML component diagram.

Create a Process Visualization to describe the process of the ritual using an UML interaction overview diagram. Create the requested referenced diagrams.

Meditation: strongly reference the ritual outline for this.

5. Finalization

Repeat Beta Implementation process for the UML Diagram.

Print out the relevant diagrams back to back in full color. If color is not available, use available medium to add color. Outline breakdown should be printed as smaller sheet.

Create a symbol of the ritual—write on a scrap paper, and cut/tear it into a square that can be secured onto the printed diagram.

6. Implementation:

Identify when ritual can be implemented, and carry out and revise the implementation as needed.

Each implementation must be logged on completion.