{"id":25175,"date":"2026-04-19T23:05:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T23:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/?p=25175"},"modified":"2026-04-20T04:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:17:02","slug":"the-cliff-ive-stood-on-since-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/2026\/04\/19\/the-cliff-ive-stood-on-since-four\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cliff I\u2019ve Stood On Since Four"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What Remains After the Comfort Carousel Stops<\/h3><\/span><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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There\u2019s a line from Marcus Aurelius that\u2019s been echoing for me lately \u2014 the one about objective judgment, now at this very moment, being the thing that stands outside all events. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cObjective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance\u2014now at this very moment\u2014of all external events. That’s all you need.\u201d<\/span><\/div><\/blockquote>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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I\u2019ve been trying to live inside that space: the pause before reaction, the breath before certainty, the clearing where ego and hubris get stripped down to their bones.<\/span><\/p>

For me, that pause is the bridge between the historical Jesus and the Stoic frame. Not the neo\u2011modern Jesus of branding and performance, but the one who knelt in the dust while the accusers slipped away one by one. The one who didn\u2019t need a steeple, a lawsuit, or a PR arm to validate authority. Just presence. Just clarity. Just restraint.<\/span><\/p>

So when I\u2019m confronted with something imperfect \u2014 in myself, in institutions, in the world \u2014 I try to run it through a simple sequence:<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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    1. Pause.<\/span><\/p><\/li>

    2. Reflect.<\/span><\/p><\/li>

    3. Ask whether this is actually mine to carry.<\/span><\/p><\/li>

    4. Strip out ego as best I can.<\/span><\/p><\/li>

    5. And then apply the hive rule: what is good for me must also be good for the hive, and what is good for the hive must also be good for the bee.<\/span><\/p><\/li><\/ol><\/li><\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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      That hive rule is just the Golden Rule in work clothes \u2014 the whittled\u2011down heart of the commandments, the part Jesus said mattered most. Treat others as you\u2019d treat yourself. Everything else is scaffolding.<\/span><\/p>

      And yet the scaffolding is where so many systems get stuck. Institutions that once promised agency now struggle at the execution layer. They default to the comfort carousel: because I said so<\/em>, trust me, bro<\/em>, this is how we\u2019ve always done it<\/em>. Those answers might work for children, but I\u2019m not looking for child\u2011logic. I\u2019m looking for daemon\u2011logic \u2014 the inner confirmation that precedes prophetic guidance, not the other way around.<\/span><\/p>

      My wife and I were talking about this the other day. Yes, you can always layer in the children\u2019s responses \u2014 the ritual, the reflex, the unfettered belief \u2014 but that\u2019s not the point. The point is to cultivate access to the daemon without compulsory culture getting in the way. To let revelation arise, not be manufactured.<\/span><\/p>

      Maybe that\u2019s why I\u2019ve always felt out of sync with the \u201cif all your friends jumped off a cliff\u201d clich\u00e9. I\u2019ve been at that cliff since I was four. I\u2019ve been jumping long before the crowd arrived. This isn\u2019t peer influence. This is the only way I know how to metabolize the world: take in information, run it through a different current, and see what remains.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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      It\u2019s also why I get stuck watching institutions fight over symbols, steeple heights, or trademarked interpretations of sacred things. If those details truly mattered to a deity, they\u2019d be universally enforced. But they aren\u2019t. Humans enforce them. And humans, by definition, can\u2019t arrive at perfection \u2014 yet we demand perfection from each other through cultural performance. That\u2019s the cognitive dissonance pushing so many people away. Not doctrine. Culture.<\/span><\/p>

      The irony is that the entire proposition of atonement is built on the acknowledgment that we can\u2019t perfect ourselves. That\u2019s why a savior exists in the first place. But somewhere along the way, the scaffolding became the point, and the scaffolding began to crack.<\/span><\/p>

      So I keep returning to the buffet metaphor. If you put a hundred people in front of a buffet, you\u2019ll get a hundred different plates. And when they sit down together, you\u2019ll see unexpected common threads across all that diversity. That\u2019s the part we forget. The threads. The shared humanity. The patterns that emerge when people choose freely rather than perform collectively.<\/span><\/p>

      Strip away the power dynamics, the economic metaphors, the control scaffolds, the \u201cthis is how we\u2019ve always done it\u201d reflex \u2014 and what remains is the thing I trust: the daemon\u2019s whisper, the prophetic nudge, the Stoic pause, the Jesus who wrote in the dust instead of arguing.<\/span><\/p>

      That\u2019s the framework. That\u2019s the cliff. That\u2019s the current I run on.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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      That hive rule is just the Golden Rule in work clothes \u2014 the whittled\u2011down heart of the commandments, the part Jesus said mattered most. Treat others as you\u2019d treat yourself. Everything else is scaffolding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[444,811,814,819],"tags":[824,825,826,828,832],"class_list":["post-25175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","category-2026-check-ins","category-ads","category-rsnmt","tag-tag-st","tag-tag-agency","tag-tag-discernment","tag-tag-reflections","tag-tag-rituals"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25175"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25189,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25175\/revisions\/25189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}