Upright - On Standing When Everything Pulls You Down

Before a builder lays a single stone, he reaches for a plumb line - a cord, a weight, and the one force that does not deceive. Gravity. It does not tell him where perfection is. It tells him where true is.

In this ninth book of the Seeking That Which Was Lost series, S Y Kelake draws on forty years of formation, thirty years of martial practice, a terminal cancer diagnosis that reframed everything, and formal studies in Forensic Psychology.

The Upright is not a self-help manual. It is a sustained, honest examination of what it means to find your own centre - and to build your life from it. Drawing on the wisdom of PTAH, the Buddha, Christ, and the Hermetic tradition, and grounding those teachings in lived experience, Kelake traces the human equivalent of the builder's plumb line: the internal vertical that tells you when you have drifted into rage, into submission, into excess, into denial - and calls you back.

Who built you? What foundation did they leave? What is solid, and what is cracked? And what will you choose to build from here?

Personal, philosophical, deeply humanistic. For those who are ready to look.