Deeper Things, Stranger Things, Nothing (folly of woke think)
“We begin to see and feel the tunnel that was made for us to travel is not for us to understand.”
What is it we believe? How do we decide what to believe? How do we navigate through life and make good choices for our lives? Philosophy tells us the nature of things and how people should live, often trying to help us find the root of it all, those “deeper things in life”. You can find many writers teaching and explaining how to navigate and read what we are seeing and how to interpret the path we travel. How much do we really understand about what we are seeing and how does it help us move wisely through life? So, we seek to be wise as we move through our lives. We try and move in manner that benefits all of us.
We gather in our groups and communities, looking and searching for meaning and knowledge of how life should be and how it should go. We seek out others who think like us and who are following the same paths. We ask, can we join you in your quest to understand or would you join us? We walk the surface of our cities and towns, looking for enlightenment and a sense of accomplishment. Together with our tribes, we look for a better understanding, a clarity that brings determination. We search for things about ourselves through the eyes of others, hoping they could help us, hoping that they might give us clues for directions in how to find deeper things.
As our groups gather, they watch in anticipation for something that makes sense in the way we move through life; how to act, what to believe, how to live life. We search together. Some take on the responsibility of leading us in the endeavor to find the deeper things. These leaders get us excited about knowing, and they look for openings of understanding so that they may entice us to explore! Leaders insert themselves and others into narrow openings that they have found, scooting along, hoping to straighten up and walk, and eventually help the group run through these narrow opening that lead to the hollows of deeper understanding.
We find ourselves crawling to find new and amazing things. We travel with maps of historical significance. We read these maps, interpret them, hoping to find a new tunnel, fresh paths to a new understanding of how to fathom the deeper things of life. At times the darkness or uncertainty echoes back at us as we move forward. The echoes rattle around in, vibrating within the vague places in our thinking, stirring up doubt and questions.
But our supposedly new and original thinking calls us together in believing in the new way. Our community has given the leaders the authority to move us forward on our behalf, seeking the deeper things.
We collect essential tools and assets to move us forward together. This makes sense. Followers are willing to give material goods to keep the passageway alive. We feed the need to prod and poke to investigate the deeper things. We find ourselves gathering around places we think we have never been before. We adventure into areas of newness, a deeper well of thinking that we do not understand yet, but we must intellectually move forward. We become smothered by activities of a woke mind. Wrapped in our own thinking, we rationalize ideas or concepts that seem new, not quite believing fully that what we are hearing and believing is nothing new and that there is nothing new under the sun.
Leaders start asking question. How should we interpret what we see? This trail will take us somewhere. It seems right? Others are seeing the same thing as us, right? Multiple wind blows through our community, ideas that keeps us moving forward, meandering through the tunnels by the latest diagram, plan, book or movement. We think deeper and deeper things. We cannot stop thinking, “I know the way forward”, finding ourselves in territories that stretch the imagination and annoy traditions. But we keep trying to frame what we are seeing through the realities of our own capacity to understand and to explain. “Let us understand the experiences we are finding in our lives” we say. We find ourselves seeing what we want and believing what makes sense to us.
As leaders lead and followers follow. Leaders feel a sense of being out of control, but they push back. We deny the inconsistencies in our own ideas. Philosophies that are outside ours to attain suddenly seem attainable. We cannot find peace and a sense of wellbeing to satisfy us. But we continue to think that we understand, we choke up on the bat for balance and contribute the negative thoughts we hear about our understanding, as old Ideas and of the traditional intelligentsia. We continue to walk. We have a sense that we can put a picture around what we are seeing to explain it to others; that we can understand it, in a linear sense. We reach for new empathies, better content for us to filter into the context that teaches a better understanding. We think that this better and more insightful content leads us to the tunnels of deep thinking.
One, two, three and four years go by, and our experiences rush back and forth in our minds. We begin to see a pattern erupt in our lives. Hurt, anxiety and confusion pop up in our followers. We begin to think we understand the tunnels we explore and if the follower doesn’t, teach them. These tunnels we are trying to make our own. We say, “We must understand, we must be certain”, “We are the captains”. It is our voyage! We come to appreciate our traveled roads, the way that we travel to go deeper, to find more meaningful things about who we are and where we are going.
We search to find and understand this confining path we walk with its ill-advised navigation. We find ourselves in the very passage of our own design and not the way of a greater design. The way of deeper thinking, that one we wanted so dearly to be a new revelation, is now the one way we hoped to avoid. A parallel tunnel that runs within reach, that has always been there is now looking better and better. We begin to see and feel the tunnel that was made for us, to travel, is not for us to understand.
Our new path seems strange, its narrows and widens and falls off. The path is wet, cold and nasty. It has twists and turns that we do not understand. It seems the path is unjust. Somehow the way, our way, is not right. The very route we are traveling that we made has become an exercise of uniformity. We become trapped by our own desire to experience utopia. Our outlook is deceptive, the tunnel seems contrived and we seem to always be defending its cost.
We continue to navigate, these paths of our own finding. We call others to work harder, we issue stricter controls. Our confidence takes us deeper, our training tells us to ignore hesitation, we are right. Confusion begins. Followers begin question the leader’s skills to navigate. Followers begin to say and ask, “If only we were trained to navigate, to understand”. And suddenly it is not about us as a group of travelers anymore, it is about us, as leaders.
Wait! The map, that map, that navigates, the way we seek, is it ours? Somehow in some way, in some strange way we begin to ask, are we not in control? Are we being guided? Can the way we travel be understood? Are these ways not our ways? It appears The Way has a clearer understanding. A longer vision for where we need to go and how all the trails connect. These tunnels we travel are dark, scary dark. The tunnels are all intertwined with others and other travelers on similar path like ours, but not the same. How can we lead and follow at the same time?
So, we struggle, we push back, we do not want to give into The Way. Remember, we have been given an understanding.We want to know better, to understand more, we want the knowledge that we have acquired to be more important. We want to design our own maps, our own twists and turns. We go back, we recalculate. But the ever so slight turn we took has become a problem. For the slight turn has become a problem for all of us, those that are left and still following, are now questioning and lost. Does the path return? Can we be restored to the path that leads all of us. Can we ever be restored to our community or are we separated by the idea of “getting it”.
The one true Guide’s ways are not our ways. The Way knows which way to turn, when to slow down, when to move up, what will help and when to jump off into the abyss. Our ways are not The Way. We do not understand The Way. Only The Way comprehends these tunnels we travel. The turns that we take seem right but, in the end, they are detours of denial of The Way and they lead to destruction. The Way knows which direction we should go. The caves of The Way cause delay that lead to trust. This is the issue, this is the problem, this is the confusion. But it is also the answer. The only thing The Way asks of us, is to follow.
Yes, The Way has rules to be followed, but these rules are meant for our protection, not for our knowledge or understanding. The do's and the don’ts, the in’s and the outs, these are meant to watch over all of us, not just a few. These constraints are there to keep us safe, to keep us together, and to keep us of sound mind and in one Spirit. When we think we know the way, we push for our way. But our way becomes convoluted with our thinking and divides. We are stuck in our understanding.
So, as we develop our understanding, we find that we don’t need to understand at all. We are in these places, on these roads, exploring these trails, tunneling through these caves to find a deeper understanding, which is the recognition that we must simply connect with The Way. Usually when we find that our path of our own choosing is short sighted, we find ourselves in that place, that lonely place that is recognizable, that wide open chamber of, thinking too highly of ourselves. Then we’re caught, we retract with pride and arrogance, just to stay on our path. But The Way sees every angle, every turn, and it begs us to just move forward. The Way allow us to be caught up in the many different circumstances that we are led to where by, just moving forward we become wise. Following The Way can be a raging river, a slow walk, a steady stream, or a wide berth of nothing. We must follow The Way. The trail of The Way is not to be selected but traveled.
So, how do we find the remedy of having to be cerebral and to know the deeper things. How do we get back to the surface? What path or tunnel leads to proper justice? It is right before us. We say it, but we do not mean it. We talk it, but we do not walk it. When will we learn, when will we just let THE Way take us to the destiny already measured for us? That the meaning of life is The Way? The Way has a road in store for us.
Our path narrows and that gate to our path is wide. We are limited in our understanding of deeper things, if we constantly use our outlook for direction. Our senses and imaginations are self-designed and restricted by our finite thinking. We only navigate where we can understand and miss out on what could be because we lack understanding.
The Way’s gate is narrow and only has enough space to follow. But The Way knows. His ways are not our ways, and we should not try to suggest that we understand His ways. We only need to explore the beauty of the tunnels that connect all communities. A way back to the surface and away from the deeper things of knowledge. We need only to Know God. Trusting The Way and Knowing God are the same and as deep as it gets. Its folly to seek the deeper things, endless folly.
