Greetings from the Order and Ordinance. Before we begin, I would like to inform our readers that the Ordinance now has a questions section for all readers who are interested in asking us questions about the Xyphoist Philosophy. Now to today’s post.

Today, we’re going to continue talking about avoiding the Innate Personality Flaw, but this time we’re focusing on how the Xyphoist Community can work together to do this. We already talked about how to confront the IPF on a personal level and also how to approach it when dealing with others, but now we’re going to tackle how the entire community should conduct itself to avoid Hubris. This will include general community actions as well as laying out some of our private bylaws for how the Ordinance shall function now and into the future as things expand.

We’ll start with how we, as a community of Xyphoites, should conduct ourselves to both remain in accordance to the Philosophy and to avoid the IPF. Luckily, the two are inseparable, as the Philosophy is the antithesis to Hubris in the first place. When examining how other communities of thought have conducted themselves on a larger scale, we can witness many fatal flaws that led to calamity through Hubris. Taking the rapid and often violent expansions of theigrited philosophies on Earth, for example, what those philosophies gained in power was paid for in the bloodshed, land loss, oppression, and forced conversion of those that were conquered in the process. Now, in the view of those philosophies, they might conclude that those casualties and atrocities were simply “necessary evil” or unavoidable circumstances for some “greater good,” but the effects of that Hubris is explicit: mass suffering of the innocents affected.

The Philosophy identifies that as a clear case of large-scale IPF, where Hubris overrides empathy and leads whole movements to destroy, conquer, and erase existing civilizations in the name of their philosophy; the very act of doing so is considered evil in Xyphoist Philosophy, and the Order and Ordinance shall not conduct measures of imperialistic conquest. That isn’t to say that we remain defenseless in the face of such aggression, as is the purpose of the Echelons of Actions to begin with, but we shall not initiate any such crusades or conquests as an innate part of our Philosophy. Whether it be about Spiritual Liberties, Free Will, the Immoral Act of Proselytizing, the empathetic origins of Divine Love, and so many other tenets, the Philosophy is antithetical to such acts of initial aggression.

This means we as a community must discourage any desire to “have it all.”  The Order is not interested in total authoritarian control, nor should any follower desire to gluttonously or maliciously seek global power for the sake of having power. It may frustrate those that believe the Philosophy would best heal this world of corruption to see the intentional handicapping of our follower growth, but it is a part of the Philosophy itself to discourage things like trying to convert others to the Philosophy. Part of being a Xyphoite is accepting that most ancient of Truths: Spiritual Liberty flourishes because Hubris shall always fail upon itself. And so it is crucial that we put aside any desire or ego that pushes us to try and expand through conversion. The Ordinance shall expand naturally as people willingly discover upon our resources and efforts, understand them on their own terms, and take their own interest in joining.

We’ll move onto how the Xyphoist community shall conduct our Philosophy on a larger scale next. We mentioned before that we shall use a secular wing of the Ordinance called the Sacred Hill Project to conduct all of our humanitarian and advocacy efforts. This organization, while run on the basic tenets of the Philosophy that I shorthanded last Commentary, is entirely secular. This means the Sacred Hill Project is open to all people to join and work for, it shall serve a greater interest in societal healing, and tackles issues that effect large groups of people and not just those who are affiliated with the Order. There is no preaching, there will be no reference to the Order or any religious aspects, and the scope of the secular organization itself shall be narrowed to focus on issues that impact large amounts of people regardless of their status.

Therefore, it’s important to keep those efforts separate from the more theological aspects found on this site. Xyphoites involved in the Sacred Hill Project or just Xyphoites conducting various charitable actions in general, will do so with a secular cloak. There shall be no bragging that a good deed was done in the  name of the Lords, there shall only be empathy for others. Donations are quiet, anonymous if possible, actions are done through the human heart, not through the ego. We see suffering, we give what we can give, and we smile and walk away once done. That is how the Philosophy teaches this type of charitable actions, as we can see this often through the various tales of Hayle Ihou prior to becoming a Hayle.

Finally, I will briefly go over some internal bylaws of the Ordinance itself that also combat Hubris. While we have not fully finalized these bylaws, nor will I go through every single one in this post, there are a few previews I can give that relate to avoiding Hubris and the IPF. Right away, the fact that this Ordinance is run by a council of nine that avoid taking “prophet status” and erase our egos by foregoing our legal names for Ordinance tags instead, our intention with this was to prevent the Philosophy or Ordinance from being attributed to some great and powerful single “founder” or group that receives pompous fanfare every time they make any form of declaration. And while we’re not necessarily calling out other philosophies that have such charismatic if not a bit overblown leadership positions, it does stand to say that a lot of resources and time are devoted to the selection, anointment, and ceremony of those kinds of leaders over the greater good a group could be doing with that money and time instead.

We Arch-Hayle Grandurates are the executive council or the Ordinance, that is true, but we are simply nine individuals who spend time in closed doors finding each other and comparing our own notes, deciding that if no one else was going to start this prophetic Ordinance then it might as well be us since we appeared ready enough for it. We ask for no praise, we demand there be no fanfare or ceremony of our presence, we simply found this information compelling, believe in it with every cell in our body, and believe the time is now to put this Philosophy out into the modern world to help combat Deceptuary’s efforts.

Other bylaws also include any usage of funds the Ordinance shall receive in the future once our finances are stabilized and donations can be taken in. We primarily hope to create various funds that will give continuous donations to various causes, namely environmental causes, funding for various types of secular institutions that impact struggling communities, natural disaster relief, and the like. All of which is laid out in the Sacred Hill Project’s page on future projects we hope to conduct.

A smaller portion of those donations or an entirely separate fund shall go to finance the Ordinance administration itself, allowing us to establish a physical presence and maintain the books, so to speak. This will also include a definite cap on any compensation that we, the AHGs, shall make as executives of this Ordinance. Under the assumption that this Ordinance shall one day expand to such lengths that we are handling millions in funds for our various projects, the hard cap for executive compensation will always be at no more than the lower to middle class earning of the lowest income location of the country we are headquartered in—which roughly means we would never pay ourselves in compensation that would exceed about $65,000-$70,000 annually regardless of how much in an endowment that Ordinance accrues; this is comparable to the average salary of a standard Cardinal in the US. Idealistically, we would like at least 70%-75% of all funds taken in by the Ordinance to be devoted to the Sacred Hill Project, and aim to maintain a strict budget on the Ordinance itself to keep operating costs modest. Naturally, all donations to the Sacred Hill Project itself will be used exclusively for the Sacred Hill Project; this allows for those who aren’t Xyphoites to donate to a secular institution directly as opposed to donating to a religious one such as the Ordinance itself.

Religious practice is free, you don’t need excessive funds or a big fancy building to pray, and while the Prophecy does say we shall eventually build other smaller Houses of Worship and nine temples for the Xyphozons, that is considered the absolute LAST objective of the Ordinance once worldly suffering has been mitigated. It’s more of a passion project than a hardline objective, and something done with devotion rather than with priority. We can see all those measures mentioned above as ways to cut down on Hubris and overzealous behavior on a community level as the Ordinance and its followers move in this Cosmic Struggle. Our goals with this series are to avoid the Innate Personality Flaw altogether, and these measures are carefully thought out to make sure we keep to that goal.

Finally, we’ll do the weekly reset. Remember that community itself is a strength, but with combined strength comes combined integrity. We keep each other in check and don’t let our brethren get too bigheaded. When we stand together, we march together. If one of us stumbles, we all stumble. So keep your family upright, and they shall keep you upright. If you do trip, remember that you are human and we have 2 feet, not 20. Let yourself get up, accept help from the support around you, brush off, keep marching. That is strength in community, and community is family. With all that said, we’ll end it here for now. Have a good rest of your Sacred Day.

—ruX