Avast!
Readers, you are most seasoned sailors of the seas of life. It makes little difference whether you're the captain of your own ship, a passenger or merely a deckhand - if you still have air in your lungs, you're a success story. Either you've tactfully managed to navigate the treacherous pond, or you've white-knuckled your way out of falling overboard and becoming shark bait. Either way, Congratulations. Darwin would be proud.
I don't presume that all who read this are concerned with navigation. For this voyage, many of us are merely along for the ride. If your wanderlust is anything like mine, however, then you have an inexplicable compulsion to take command of your direction. For sailors like us, proper navigation is not merely advisable, it's necessary. But navigation is no easy task.
Proper navigation requires a fluid understanding of the forces of nature.
Any cretin can wet their finger, wave it in the air and tell you which way the wind is blowing. Any student of the heavens can make use of the constellations as a guide... this is The Realm of the Obvious. All knowledge of things you can see, hear, smell, taste or touch fall into the order of the obvious realm. Most conversation is concerned with the obvious realm. A pragmatic knowledge of the obvious realm is absolutely necessary in the proper navigation of the seas, but it is only a fragment of what there is to know. A quaint, poetic fragment perhaps, but hardly a shadow of the whole.
Should a sailor manage to master all the information of the obvious realm in a lifetime, she might still find that her course is being lead astray by imperceptible, powerful forces.
These forces are the tides, currents, and the rumblings of the watery depths. The ancient inhabitants of the abyss. Brooding, unsettled goliaths. The Realm of the Occult.
By now, you may be imagining masonic rituals, seances, tarot cards, ouija boards, maybe one of those cheesy psychic parlors. This is the meaning that the world "occult" has taken on over the generations. For our purpose of navigation, this definition is useless. Instead, let us imagine the occult as the realm of all things secret, hidden, or not plainly obvious.
We can observe the direction of the waves on the surface of the water, but this is not sufficient for an understanding of the actual kinetic phenomena at play. Remember the Titanic. The assumption that the obvious features of an iceberg encompass the whole reality cost some 1,500 people their lives. Not only is the obvious an inadequate picture of reality, it is often a gross misrepresentation of reality.
Readers! Friends!
We ride the horizon. Residents of Midgard... torn between forces both obvious and occult. It is essential to our survival not only as sailors, but as a species, that we come to grips with this paradigm. Too often I hear, "My generation is going to save the world! There are more and more of us waking up all the time!". As long as we identify with our generation instead of accepting the power of choice, Spaceship Earth will function as little more than a slave vessel.
It is not up to 'your generation' to take control; it is up to YOU.
The sooner we sailors stop taking surface details for the whole picture, and take it upon ourselves to seek knowledge of the finer, more nuanced things in life, the sooner we can realistically open a discussion about what uncharted waters we wish to navigate towards.
BE MORE CURIOUS. Our journey depends on it. :)
