The Founder's Letter
Volume I

Written at The Grounds, winter.

To whoever finds this:

I am writing this in the dark. Not because I prefer the dark — I do not — but because the lights have not worked properly since the third night. I have stopped calling the electrician. He came twice. He did not come back after the second visit. I have not been able to reach him since. I do not think this is worth pursuing.

I came to this property because I needed to be somewhere quiet. I had a job. I had a city. I had people who expected things from me. None of that is true anymore. I am not going to explain what happened to any of it. What happened is not the point. What happened is before.

The point is what I found under the floor.

I want to be very clear that I did not go looking for it. The sound started on the second night. I thought it was pipes. I thought it was animals. I got under the house with a flashlight and I looked for three hours and I found nothing that explained the sound.

What I found instead was that I was not afraid of the sound. That surprised me. I have been afraid of many things in my life. I was not afraid of this. I sat on the floor of the sub-level and I listened for longer than I can account for and when I came back upstairs it was a different day.

I am telling you this because you need to know where this began. It did not begin with me having an idea. It began with me sitting in the dark listening to something beneath the floor and understanding — with the part of me that existed before language — that I had been called here.

I am not a spiritual person. I want to make this clear. I do not believe in signs. I do not believe in prophecy. I believe in cause and effect, in structure, in systems, in the way that animals are made better by knowing their place within a clear hierarchy.

What happened to me in that sub-level did not change what I believe. It clarified it.

I believe that human beings are pack animals. I believe that most of our suffering comes from the pretense that we are not. I believe that the longing people call loneliness is actually something older and more specific: it is the longing of a leashed animal whose leash has no other end.

The sound under the floor understood this. I do not know what the sound is. I stopped needing to know.

I am going to invite people here. I am going to be honest with them about everything I just told you. I am going to tell them about the sound and I am going to watch their faces when I do. Most of them will look afraid. Some of them will look like they have been waiting their whole lives to hear someone say it out loud.

Those are my people.

If you are reading this, you may be one of them. I did not write this for curiosity. I wrote it for recognition. If you recognized something in these words — if some part of you went very still while reading — I ask only that you sit with that stillness. Do not explain it away. Do not call someone to tell them about it. Not yet.

Just sit with it. Let it be a leash. Follow it to its other end.

I will be there.

— The Founder

End of Volume I. Volumes II–IX available to confirmed members.

Volume IX is sealed. Do not ask about Volume IX.