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Skipping the purifications is what we are already good at without meditation, right?
Do you mean practice mindfulness without cultivating virtue? Virtue is the foundation of the practice. It might be hard to see exactly why virtue is needed but there should be some subjective intuition that virtue is important for the beginner.
Virtue is simply about how well one deals with suffering: both own and that of others... this is the stage for meditation.
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I'm starting to get the feeling that you haven't studied the seven purifications at all... numbers six and seven are equivalent to "straight insight into phenomena", so no, it is not by definition possible to skip them and still gain insight into phenomena. As per the sutta:
“So too, friend, purification of virtue is for the sake of reaching purification of mind; purification of mind is for the sake of reaching purification of view; purification of view is for the sake of reaching purification by overcoming doubt; purification by overcoming doubt [150] is for the sake of reaching purification by knowledge and vision of what is the path and what is not the path; purification by knowledge and vision of what is the path and what is not the path is for the sake of reaching purification by knowledge and vision of the way; purification by knowledge and vision of the way is for the sake of reaching purification by knowledge and vision; purification by knowledge and vision is for the sake of reaching final Nibbāna without clinging. It is for the sake of final Nibbāna without clinging that the holy life is lived under the Blessed One.”
-- MN 24 (Bodhi, trans)