V

The Way

The diagram below may or may not be self explanatory. In brief, this is a road map of "The Way" - the Way to Engrayment (see the essay Be Gray Every Day elsewhere on this site)... as well as a Social Reality of life and living. Is this "Way" the same as The Way of other philosophies? In some ways it is, and in other ways it is not. By being a road that offers two directions of passage, this map is both a way to Engrayment, as well as a map of the here and now... of the One Reality which can carry us in either of two directions - to Humanity or Divinity. Enlightenment, Endarkenment, Engrayment... life and living... as one or many, tools of perception come in many guises.

The Way. This diagram is a blend of other diagrams seen elsewhere around this site, like those found in the essays Totality of Reality, The Three Unities, Stop Being So Human and Be Gray Every Day. All of those essays describe portions of The All Things Are Numbers Way.

There are a lot of philosophies for living to choose from out there in the world. Some of the more spiritual philosophies of the world have clearly stated goals like... ending all of human suffering. Some want to empower us. Some want to spread love across the land. Some want to provide hope, and will claim to cure cancer. Some try to promote faith by trying to prove the existence of God. In the process of putting forth their ideas, many of these philosophies will also make the claim of attempting to look at things as they really are. But... with such clearly stated goals, they often end up distorting what they find if it doesn't quite fit the stated purpose of the philosophy - like ending suffering, empowering, spreading love, offering hope or proving the existence of God etc.

When I first set out to invent an underlying structure for a tarot deck, all I wanted to do was organize some thoughts in a more systematic way than I had seen done by any of the books I had read up to that point regarding the nature of tarot. I had not read that much about philosophy - and still haven't. So, in may naive state, I did not adopt any such goals as ending suffering, empowering others, spreading love, curing cancer or proving the existence of God! All I wanted to do was explore the nature of my own existence to try and see it as it really is. The book All Things Are Numbers ends with a few thoughts about the meaning of life, and ideas about Divinity, but most of the book is devoted to describing an evolving form that is not so much rooted in explaining anything but existence itself. My stated goal is, and has always been, to steer clear of bias whenever and wherever possible - even though it's not always possible. Thus, the lack of love, and hope, and empowerment found within the ideas being presented on this site might make its philosophy unpopular among the masses looking for such things. The idea that the philosophy being presented on this site does not offer a prescription for ending individual or collective suffering, nor a cure for cancer, nor a proof for the existence of God, will also no doubt work against it when seeking interest among others. But avoiding bias is important to me. That is my bias.

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A One Way Street, or A Two Way Street?

The problem with so many philosophies, especially the spiritually oriented ones, is how they attempt to put people on a one way path away from Humanity and toward Divinity. The ones that have a bias of ending all suffering will suggest that notions of good and bad be abandoned - in other words, the denial of our human nature, will make us divine. The ones devoted to understanding reality will suggest that our human perceptions and human ideas of reality are a deceptive illusion and that the only true reality is a divine reality we can never know - once again, if we deny our humanness, it will make us divine.

Many of the spiritual philosophies come with an extreme bias toward "knowing" or being "one" with some notion of Divinity, or God, as some call it. In building a philosophy with such a bias, they typically construct a hierarchy of ideas that place our human nature in a lowly realm of filth, and the divine in an exalted realm of absolute perfection. I drew the "Way" diagram above to appease those of this mentality. To those of this mentality, the "Way" diagram above would be incorrectly oriented if it were turned upside down, or drawn horizontally. But to me, it could be drawn in any of these ways and still make perfect sense, because... in the philosophy being presented on this site, no one state is any more exalted than another. Ideas like The Absentia may be considered somewhat special in their transcendent nature, but it is not the goal of the philosophy being presented on this site to convince anyone that Divinity is superior, and that their human nature is wrong, a burden, a fall from grace, a cosmic mistake, filth to be washed away or a cloak of suffering to be abandoned. The philosophy being presented on this site sees "The Way" as a two way street (see What is an Archetype and Content + Context = Meaning elsewhere on this site).

I started out trying to understand my own existence. Eventually I had to explore the other end of this two way street, and understand things like Nothingness and The Absentia. But, unlike so many others, I did not return from that journey to see my human nature as something inferior to be abandoned. Is this wrong? Have I made a mistake? Am I unenlightened? Instead of preaching an abandonment of things like Duality, I continue to embrace duality for all it can show me about Humanity. I also embrace things like Oneness, and The Absentia for all they can show me about Unity and Divinity. To me it is all One Reality, to be known and utilized in its entirety.

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The Way

For those who think that indeed I am unenlightened to not view my human form as filth to be washed away, the "Way" diagram is correctly oriented as vertical. Like the Qabalah that is utilized by so many tarot systems, it puts the mundane at the bottom and the Divine at the top, with a progression of dualities between. At the bottom we find what enlightened people mostly consider the most primitive, unenlightened, Human way of thinking - good and bad. For many, declaring anything as good or bad is to perpetuate all human suffering. Those who like or dislike anything, those who love or hate anyone are said to be motivated by fear... fear of death (see Stop Being So Human elsewhere on this site). Thus, The Way to enlightenment - or what this study of tarot and life calls engrayment - is to abandon all notions of good and bad (see Be Gray Every Day elsewhere on this site).

The next section of the "Way" diagram is about the dualities that come from examining any manifest entity - exclusive of any good or bad judgments. The five dualities shown come from the Five Ways of Being used to describe any manifest thing: Up/Down, Left/Right, Front/Back, In/Out and On/Off (see The Planetary Model elsewhere on this site). They are used in numerous locations around this site as Quintagrams, to describe the compound influence of duality upon any manifest entity, or our Human psyche (see Numbers In Space elsewhere on this site). These Quintagram dualities are positioned on the LIGHT side of the "Way" diagram, because they are used to describe the dualities of LIFE. Our human nature to survive death makes us characteristically asymmetrical, thus, the "Way" diagram is asymmetrical in its design at this stage. surviving death then becomes another concept to be abandoned on our way to engrayment.

As the dualities of life compound to create a Quintagram, the "Way" diagram also illustrates the characteristically human nature of segmenting existence into digestible portions. Some see complexity as an inevitable evolution from that of simplicity, and segmenting as a natural byproduct of complexity. Thus... we invent words, Quintagrams, and tarot cards to parse reality into little bits. However, on a path to engrayment, this kind of analytical thinking is considered misguided. As our upward progress suggests, we should abandon complexity for the simplicity of Unity (see The Three Unities elsewhere on this site). But, while many may view a path to Unity as progress, this diagram views it more as a path of regress, backward in evolution, to a more unified beginning - illustrated by the un-segmented square of LIGHT at the top of the diagram. It likewise, views the dualistic evolution from that simplicity as progress - illustrated by the square of LIGHT being progressively more and more segmented. To many this is unenlightened.

The next section of the "Way" diagram is about the Unity that we are meant to find by abandoning duality. Except... once arrived, we find that there is in fact more than one form of Unity! (see The Three Unities elsewhere on this site). The first unity we encounter, upon abandoning the dualities of the Quintagrams, is the unity of our Self. Because we are still alive, the only unity we can really "know" is the one that defines our living self, as a being of LIGHT. Thus, as an additional step toward engrayment, we are instructed to abandon life itself. To cling to life is unenlightened. Actually... to be perfectly precise, this study would consider the Unity of the Self to be absolutely enlightened... that is... on a path toward engrayment! To this study, enlightenment means the understanding of the unity and identity of life, self and light. An admirable accomplishment in and of itself. But... as long as there is more to be found beyond Self and Life and Light, some would still consider us to be pathetically Human. Thus, we abandon LIGHT and Life.

Once we have abandoned life for death, we understand how the nothingness of the infinite continuum makes us all the same. The uniformity of the DARK is a form of oneness that many consider hierachically superior to that of the identity of the Self bathed in LIGHT. Thus, we must abandon the "ME" for the "WE" of the collective unconscious and dissolve to nothing. But, for those who believe that death only leads to reincarnation on a wheel of endless reincarnations, it would appear that absolute abandonment of duality has not been achieved, and, indeed, might be completely impossible (see Reincarnation elsewhere on this site). Thus, we acknowledge one more thing to abandon... the life and death cycle itself. For many, to no longer be reincarnated is to be truly enlightened - or as this study calls it engrayed. This study calls this illusive state engrayment because it resides in an impossibly unobtainable state between the light of life and the dark of death (see Be Gray Every Day elsewhere on this site). Only by understanding this impossible state, and by embracing the impossible nature of it, through things like paradox, does our psyche or consciousness come to realize how to abandon the life and death cycle. Paradox is the only way to enter a cycle of infinity, and it is also the only way to exit a cycle of infinity (see The Law of the Predictable Paradox elsewhere on this site).

Once we transcend the life and death cycle, we are no longer Human... we become Divine! We trade our Relative Human Attachment for Absolute Divine Detachment... we trade our Imperfect Human Asymmetry for Perfect Divine Symmetry... we trade ordinary Oneness for the paradox of Absentia and cease to exist, relative to any Universe... we trade the possible for the impossible, and stop being so human (see Stop Being So Human elsewhere on this site). This is how we end all human suffering! NOW are we happy?

For those who want to stop being Human and become Divine, this path is there. But, on this path, there remains the question of whether being Divine is all there is, or... whether the Divine longs to become Human as much as some humans long to become Divine. The fact that we are here at all might suggest that in fact the Divine does have a desire to be Human, and that the path to engrayment is indeed a path of regress that goes against the current of creation. Which way to go is up to each individual. Personally, I see it all as One Reality with equal benefits in either direction. To some - particularly those who think they will end Human suffering by prescribing this path to others - going upstream in regression, to the source of our creation, might be viewed by others as comparable to a traumatized psyche wanting to crawl back into the womb of its mother, instead of dealing with the life it has been given (see Verse 82 and Consider the Source, elsewhere on this site). Some people suffer much worse than others, so this kind of mindset is understandable. But is it really a superior "Way" for Humans to go? I say go either "Way" and find something worthwhile. Abandon life and living, go upstream and become Divine, or go downstream and contribute to a social reality of good and bad things. Everyone has a place in this Universe. No one is wrong.

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The Way Mandala

Here is a mandala we can use to meditate on this idea of finding something worthwhile in either a progressive or regressive path along The Way. At the top are The Three Unities: L=Light, D=Dark, G=Gray/OuterAbsentia (God). At the bottom is another trinity, of mundane activity: L=Life, D=Death, G=Gray/InnerAbsentia (God). Between the two are The Five Ways of Being: Up/Down, Left/Right, Front/Back, In/Out and On/Off, with illustrations borrowed from The Dream Analysis Calculator. To the left and right of The Five Ways of Being are: B=Bad Negative, G=Good Negative, G=Good Positive and B=Bad Positive - a spectrum of possibilities.

With the concept of "moderation... in moderation" our focus should be on God's Gray Graces.

At the top are The Three Unities: L=Light, D=Dark, G=Gray/OuterAbsentia (God). At the bottom is another trinity, of mundane activity: L=Life, D=Death, G=Gray/InnerAbsentia (God). Between the two are The Five Ways of Being: Up/Down, Left/Right, Front/Back, In/Out and On/Off, with illustrations borrowed from The Dream Analysis Calculator. To the left and right of The Five Ways of Being: B=Bad Negative, G=Good Negative, G=Good Positive and B=Bad Positive - a spectrum of possibilities.

As mentioned above, this diagram/mandala is oriented vertically with The Three Unities at the top, to appease those who want to view The Absentia as the most exalted state. But, in reality, we could rotate this any old way, and it would still say the same thing - that reality is all one thing, no end of it better or worse than another.

Down the middle is a Double Helix, because the Quintagram that results from shaking THIS tree of life is a universal code of archetypal influence - a constellation of consciousness. Around the outisde is another representation of The Current of Creation from simple to complex, with a line connecting the two Absentias.