Sender Spike
2 min readSep 29, 2023

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A nice story you tell yourself there. Now, let go of that narrative, too :D

Anyway, to quote Castaneda, “A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.” And as many climbers would tell you, a climber without fear is already dead. You don't conquer fear by telling yourself that there are no reasons to be afraid; that those reasons don't exist or are mere illusions. That's embodiment of arrogance and recklessness.

Furthermore, wu-wei is the very epitome of “fear God and obey.” It's based in deep visceral respect for, and submitting to, the forces that are greater than you and which you don't understand (in full) until you eventually align with the flow (of causality). And that is exactly what Book of Job talks about. In other words, a warrior standing in the face of a powerful adversary without feeling respect (which is a mixture of fear, awe, even admiration, delight, and then some) has already lost the fight.

All in all, don't wait for reality to reveal itself one day. If you cannot pass through a wall right now, then that is obviously the world as it is, too. Is it possible to physically pass through the walls to begin with? Beats me. Maybe. It would not surprise me, but I also don't care. It's utterly inconsequential, because no such extraordinary experience makes one wiser or closer to knowing one's nature without also accepting the mundane and obvious.

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