The Bell is frustrating to describe, for all that try resort to superlatives that ring true only for those who have also witnessed it, but which fall embarrassingly flat on the ears of those who have not. It is a startlingly beautiful place. Storm-brushed cliffs and forests roll in the golden half-light of an unpredictable sun spilling through dark clouds, washing the landscape and its many shrines in the sharp glow of déjà vu. The Kalons who reside here are keepers of the “Universal Story”, and each creates a sanctuary devoted to elaborating and retelling this story. The Universal Story is the Kalons’ gift of empathy, insight, and equanimity to the multiverse, which they offer with a quiet humility totally unlike the rapturous praise of those who experience it.
Visitors are invited to spend a month sealed ritually alone in a sanctum of their choice, reading and experiencing the Universal Story as manifested by one Kalon. The story may take the form of a tremendous illuminated tome in an empty hall, or a gallery of hundreds of sculptures covered in fine inscriptions, or a huge temple whose every surface holds intricate mosaics, or all of these at once. A visitor must remain alone with the work until the sound of a bell welcomes them back to the golden rain of the world outside.
The Universal Story is a kaleidoscopic mirror: from one angle you see the story of your childhood, from another the great foundational myth of your culture, and from another your dreams and fears, all woven into a coherent whole with overwhelming fidelity and insight. In every vicissitude of joy and despair and beauty the story seems written personally for each reader, placating impossible questions and imparting a framework for approaching one’s life and its challenges with serenity and purpose. It is tiresome but wholly warranted to describe this with such confidence. It is no exaggeration to say, despite having approached it with reluctance and all the cynicism of one who had heard its virtues extolled ad nauseam by every past traveller, that undergoing this experience has been the most significant event of this visitor’s life, and is in many ways responsible for the creation of the work which you now read.
old notes from index: They’re insufferable, but you can’t blame them. Pilgrimages and crowds. How can so many experience it without infinite queues? Everyone should experience it but it’s so cringe some people never will. They try to optimize this but can’t? Or no, do they evangelize or no? maybe they don’t but others do. Some struggle here, in the way that IJ is a struggle against addictiveness. goal is to motivate one to do better
- Name
- The Bell
- weather/light is such that you can’t keep track of the days, and you only know it’s done when the petitioner rings the bell
- The Braid - pretty good too, maybe better
- The Frame
- The Gossamer
- The Keyhole - this is pretty good, what would it be
- Demonyms
- Alters
- Apeirons (boundless)
- Kalons (beautiful noble good)
- Keepers?
- Keys
- Self-improvement? yes, and inspiration, change, rebirth
- Keepers (propagators) of the “universal story”
- maybe a book in a chamber you spend a month of your life reading multiple times
- it seems to refract everything at once, some “universal story” - you see in it from one angle the relationships in your family, from another angle the great myth of your culture, from another… etc, each fascinating and insightful
- everyone comes away with a different understanding, but with significant overlap and intelligibility with the experiences of others, so that sharing is a combo of “wow huh i didn’t get that” and “WOW YEAH ME TOO” and “wtf that makes no sense!”
- introduces a whole new way of framing things. talking to someone else who has gone through you are able to communicate yourself so much better. it’s maddeningly hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it. it’s like whenever you see something… you see your understanding of it as simply a story, and you can rotate your understanding and see it as a different story and this exposes new perspectives and insight and provides emotional succor and wisdom applicable to many life experiences. reading the universal story seems to train this capacity.
- maybe come up with some of the terminology and framework that people can communicate about this with
- question do the petitioners help administer it?
- no explicit drugs
- it is a narrative/story
- like scribes rewriting? they spend the length of a mortal lifetime writing and illustrating one. each is slightly different. embedded in the landscape, you are invited to wander until you find one that suits you
- they take different forms, most are books in chambers full of murals, but one is a cave full of hundreds of sculptures each covered in finely carved writing.
- you are sealed in, physically, for one month alone, you are allowed out at any time, but if you leave you can’t return to the experience. a petitioner waits and will listen to you when you are done
- simple lodging and some mana-like food
- enormous book
- BM/meditation-esque peaks of joy and despair, dark night of the soul, cried a crazy amount. this visitor not ashamed to she wordlessly embraced the petitioner outside her vault TODO/term for what seemed like hours.
- can you journal/write stuff? or are you not allowed to bring anything in. it’s too much to try to capture and trying to capture is a distraction.
- i felt like i burst and in my place bloomed a fruit i did not know i was
- you can’t go back?
- Is the insight real, or is it the feeling of insight.
- Pilgrimages
- Everyone should experience it but it’s so cringe some people never will. They try to optimize this but can’t? Or no, do they evangelize or no? maybe they don’t but others do.
- beautiful, like the mechanical monk image
- “A vibrant worldview is strong enough to persuade via reason to some and via aesthetic to others”?
- a place to go to seek forgiveness? or to learn a lesson from something? could be here or elsewhere
- personality
- There is something to struggle against here, in the way that IJ is a struggle against addictiveness.
- goal is to motivate one to do better
- they are humble
- their fans are insufferable, but you can’t blame them
- petitioner asks supplicants weird questions to judge them?
- abstract ideas
- the echo - hearing the source of everything?
- religion/god archetypes
- fertility and/or nurturing
- look at wisdom/tutelary
- divine twins
- triple deity
- transhumanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanist_politics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_transhumanism)
- quakerish?
- Indra’s Net
Environment
- storms
- misty yemen
- braid bg - gold, clouds
- FALLING GARDEN, different rooms, each falling thing is… something for beasts and baubles
- smells
lush misty gold light stormy mountains?
Perpetual Dawn
Cloudburst
monsoon, mist, dew, skyfall
Culture & Paradigm
Retelling the Story
each kalon making their own
Peregrination
kalons explore others?
Visiting
Choosing a Sanctum
The Universal Story
related here for the curiosity of those who will never be able to go but i beg of you if there is any chance you may go, skip this blah blah
The Bell
Locations
The Golden Spine
The Golden Lake
maybe this is what catches all the falling rain? Beautiful underground cave river system that feeds the bottomless underground Golden lake? but if underground why golden, maybe shafts of light come through, sunbeams
The Golden Sound
is this a sound as in an inlet, or a place where a certain sound manifests?
The Golden Landing
maybe - some kind of resting/meeting place where people meet and debrief? beautiful tavern overlooking….
Tutelary Council
Orators
kalons who don’t do sanctums, you just talk to them? they crazy?
History
The First Story
Fruitless Apostles
those who tried to evangelize and it messed things up
Rumors & Mysteries
The Illusion of Insight
Kalon Intentions