A story has a beginning and an end. Some of the greatest stories have magnificent endings, such that move or shake us, surprise us, or leave us wanting for more. In life, the story never ends. To tell a story, the storyteller picks a beginning and an ending of their choice, but the story itself – any given story - began before the beginning, and is never quite concluded by the proposed finale. Every story ever told, since the dawn of humankind and the earliest art of storytelling, viva voce, through all the legends, mythologies, Shakespeares, and Murakamis, began before its chosen beginning and went on after its presented ending. It is the storyteller who selects a range of events and it is this particular range, or spectrum, with its many intricacies, which delights us. The ending may move, shake, or surprise. It may leave us wanting for more. In life, the story never ends.

To use a quote from the book which you are about to read:

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No story should ever be considered as final, nor a rigid telling, but as a prompt to either investigate or meditate upon it. In other words, the story, provided it has at least some discernible depth, ought to be a medium, a prompt to one’s higher self to look beyond the naked narrative. Throughout the ages, until recently, the words story and history were interchangeable in meaning. Storial is now an obsolete word, but if something was, what you would call, historically accurate, then it was storial — not historical.

Stories and histories entangle. Stories can disentangle, and liberate.

This is one of the keys to conscious presence. One of the keys to lucidity.

Stories have that potential, they carry that power within them. Whether they are used to entangle, entertain, or disentangle, depends on the intent and the wisdom of the storyteller. This is an essential truth, valid for any story that has ever been told.

In choosing to let go of the stories which have entangled you into a lilliputian presence, you make room for the story which can not only dis-entangle, but expand your capacity as an individual, and bring you into the presence of ultimate realization. That is the might of the story. Remember this. As you would take a key and place it in your pocket, take this information, fully aware and conscious of taking it, and save it.

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It is the wisdom, the intelligence, and the acumen of the reader which allows the distinguishing and the sensing with what kind of story they engage. The keenness of your acumen decides everything. Is it the kind that entangles, erecting new boundaries or diminishing life to mere appearance, as in “I was here, I showed up, therefore I lived and, anyway, just do your best, whatever.” Or, the other entangling kind, which says “Join us! Elect us! Choose us! Whatever you do, just give your integrity over to us. We will protect you from them! Them! Those others, whoever or whatever they may be. You need us, you know you need us, you need us to protect you and your loved ones from the very scary, possibly-lurking-behind-the-next-corner-Them!”

Or, some other entangling kind. There are so many in the colorful fields of forgetfulness. You can investigate, lifetime after lifetime, exploring different narratives, different belief systems, and not find anything, except to maybe discover what unifies all of them. If you have already discovered that, you have maintained your own acumen and kept it keen.

A story may be of a purely entertaining kind, to help pass the time, as some say, as if time was something that needed to be shed as quickly as possible. As if the time at our disposal wasn’t one of the most precious commodities for exploration and the gaining of higher understanding. A purely entertaining story may be engaging or pleasing. It may, of course, provide some information which may be useful at parties or when you have one of those conversations or chats which, likewise, help pass the time.

An entertaining story may even provide a quick hit of that illusive sense of excitement or depth which one’s life may otherwise lack. Why anyone would seek that in a book, or a game, or a movie, rather than in the story of their life, I do not know.

Weird Genius does not begin with a story.

It begins with the Influx chapter, which was originally comprised of several short episodes or sections. Each was a dialogue between and someone else who enters the space specifically in order to have that exchange. Influx could easily have thousands of sections, each with a different individual, each coming to some conclusion without embarking on the journey they came to explore.

These dialogues reveal how it can happen that the story never even begins to unfold. Thus, Influx is chapter 0 (zero). The story has not yet begun.

Whoever is interested in the extended Influx will find it available as a separate read, leaving herein only the one dialogue which continues. Thus following its progression, the story begins.

Judge this book as you will, but reserve that judgment for when you have finished the read. Then — in honoring yourself and your own capacities, after you have given the pages the respect of your attention, which means to approach them with open-minded attention and curiosity, to the best of your ability examining all that is within — judge it then.

End of Introduction

Next:
Influx
(Chapter 0)