When the Sky is Beautiful Again, Always

I want to return to my post, “Solarpunk and Vestiges of the Ascetic.” My primary point, which I believe I failed to communicate is the suffering required to attain the transcendent moment, to meet that clarity, is flawed. What I intended to say is that we should not suffer for a moment of enlightenment. To only experience but a moment of enlightenment is incorrect, and inhumane. It requires the neglect of self and horrible suffering that, is, which I stated, the vestiges of the ascetic.

There is no need to stand, starving, in anguish, on a pillar for days on end until one sees with the clarity of the motion of the universe. If we are able to recreate our bonded society with a greatly reformed educational system – a new holistic internalized syllabus – we would indeed find that we could live within enlightenment without suffering. It would simply be,….the way we live,….the way we experience every moment that passes,….and within that experience of life the sky would always be beautiful again.

Consider the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “The Andorian Incident.” When T’Pol, Archer, and Trip first arrive they do not suspect what is happening in the monastery, the place of contemplation that has been rerouted as an enforced networked spy location. Think of that: the place to find one’s self has been turned to infiltrated the defenses of others. It is an ontological contradiction. Is this workaround towards the neglect of truth not exactly the perverted prism of reality we find ourselves in?

Now: Once Archer and Trip realize what is happening, that the Vulcans are captives, they are then in the moment of awakening. They have attained awareness. They are one with the sea of gratefulness and a life of ethics has paid off. That ethics comes from being raised on an Earth without poverty, money, want, hunger, or war. Here they have arrived. They are within the moment of realization. The confrontation is irreconcilable. They are magnets to emotive action. This is proven in how the conflict is resolved. They expose the lie, the spy, the deception, and they become one with those who had taken them hostage. The aid those that took them captive.

It is this consistency of character, in helping Shran and the Andorians with their mission, that Starfleet demonstrates not a moment of enlightenment, no, but a regularity of living in the movements of enlightenment. We should never be forced to suffer for a moment of clarity. Clarity should be consistent and forever present with humanity living within that orbit. We are not close to that. Most people who have retained with it means to be neighbors within a shared community – what we learn as children, but so often forget – will see that a consistency of character is enlightenment,..where the sky is beautiful, always.