i’m laughing at the title i give this post. when i explain, you will, too.
i’ve recently completed series of posts at tribe that upset a few folks. it was not done to upset them, but that was an expected result because of the nature of the discussion and the things known to be involved in any such discussion.
at the end of the massive exchanges, very simply and clearly, i admitted that what was done was carefully crafted as an object lesson. an example within the example. it was expected there would be a range of responses to this as well.
finally, the real post, the one that all this other was endured to make room for presented itself. set here as well for the ‘grand-daddy catfish’ that i find it to be… a massive, unexpected insight that arrived when i first read the first post from which this cascade of exchanges was birthed.
the ‘real’ point behind it all was to get to the place from which it would be possible to explain how and why all such instances of alienation, anger, disdain, annoyance, rejection, hurt feelings, and the resulting lancets of reaction occur.
in a word, ego. some call it pride, but it all rises from ego – that which insists it exists, is apart, and in that apartness, is entitled to give offense or take offense on behalf of itself.
the opening presented when another wrote saying an apology was necessary and i wrote:
there is no wrong, there is no offense, and there is no motivation to choose it but what ego readily supplies.
words were presented. nothing more. nothing less. nothing chosen will make them real. they do not exist.
can there be knowledge without insight? no. one may look for knowledge, thinking it is found in every pebble, thinking it is found in every other, thinking it is found in layers and layers of thinking. one may get lost in those thoughts. many do, because knowledge is often thought to rest in many things, but eternally it rests only within.
can there be understanding without knowledge? no. one may weave understanding, thinking because one has twisted the thread with one’s own hands, it is real, it is solid, and cannot be disputed. but all threads unravel with time, and understanding without knowledge is like a fraying rope.
can there be honesty without understanding? no. one may speak all one’s words like a rooster speaking to the dawn, but does the sun hear? the sun does not care for anything other than being what it is. this being, as if the sun, this is honesty, and without understanding, it cannot and does not exist.
the words set here were not and are not of these things. but it is not a thing one is willing to accept without a willingness to be honest. those who are willing find it easily because willingness makes its own way.
there are no ‘first steps’ to take. there are no ‘next steps’ required. when there is understanding why this is so, there will be no more desire for the reconciliation that is itself, unnecessary, because there is no injury except to that which would proclaim itself as itself.
i wish i could say i wrote those words of myself. for all they are “my words”, the simple fact is, i had no idea i was going to write them. they were somewhere, hiding, in the back of my head… throughout this exchange. i meditated every step of the way before putting even a single word out there, asking only that whatever i did or said, it would lead to something that would bring benefit.
i cannot say i will ever know it has done so, but it seems very auspicious that events steered themselves very precisely to the moment wherein this monster catfish of a thought had only just broken the surface of the mind.