July
4, 2009
"My life really began again at the time of "Measure All Things Together" and it is to that chapter 2 years back now I look to compass where I have come from and how I got here. Though my memories run back much further and around many corners, as I said at the end of the notes, "2 years in the twilight zone," in a sense I see myself in how I am now as 2 years old, and rapidly growing. I hate the term born again, but much of the lyrics of "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver I can relate to, as well as near death experiences. I don't see that time, 2 years ago, as any more crucial than any other, and don't believe in making any breaks with the past, but my perceptions and identity continue to evolve, and some points seem to have lead to newer tracks or jumps of greater distance more than others.
Why add on now to this? I found a note made in the margins of "Measure All Things Together" I thought was worth adding, since like I said, everything all goes back to that point in time to me somehow anyway, and the Notes Part II also ended with a reference to that chapter. The note was made on 4/24/04 at the end of the paragraph which ended with "No definitive line of sight or organizational factor is any more true or definite than any other."
NOTE 3 It added, "Every cork ALWAYS at some surface from some point of view. Spinning frame of reference around."
January 2005 Note added to Deconstructing the Universe
Measure All Things Together
No one is ahead of anyone and
no one is behind. No one is leading and
no one is following. We are all pulling
each other along. What's behind, beneath,
or coming up supports us. What is ahead,
above, or past us is a way to go forward.
Beyond those and that around us, the
Universe might not as well exist at all.
I have written on this before but still find need to further clarify the concept. Our capacity to exist or to have existed always exists even if we do not, nor never have, nor necessarily in any one given timeline, ever will. The potential for ones existence or creation must be present in every single moment prior to ones actual existence for it to occur. In that sense, all that has yet to be has a reality or state I refer to as pre-existent. Likewise any given reality beyond and during your actual existence must include your having existed if they spring from or run concurrent with that given timeline or reality in which you did occur or exist within.
What is actually occurring at any given time in any given reality is but a small plane of existence. To attempt to further define this plane I will liken it to corks floating on the ocean. The ocean, so large in relation to a small cork, though finite in size appears to reach infinity to our little cork both in breath and in depth.
Out of this ocean of potentiality our corks form and attempt to rise to the surface. (multiple surfaces?). (This is limited in seemingly stating that corks know or care about what we believe to be THE surface.) Most corks never do. Some get nearer to the surface than others and sink back down. Compared to the surfaces order, beneath the surface there are corks everywhere with the added dimension of depth, at least, in this case, one dimension more than appears on the surface where our given corks of actuality at any one moment in time float. Beneath the surface there are corks everywhere. Pick any line of sight, 360 degrees times 360 degrees and any one cork is just one in a possible chain with others beneath it and above it in no particular order. Beside it from one view might be another that won't reach the surface for millions of years, or had millions of years ago, or never will. No one definitive line of sight or organizational factor is more true or definite than any other.
At the surface it is quite a different story. Less dimensions, not more. At least with one less dimension, the surface shows an order, a reality. With the added dimension of depth, compared to the surface, corks can occupy the same space, one directly below or above each other in relation to the surface plane. This added depth is unfamiliar to the surface plane. With the addition of the surface plane and that empty space above it, so necessary for defining that plane of existence, the empty space, one cork floating cannot share its place with another. The act of floating on the surface means that point in space and time is occupied by that one cork. It now has actual existence which precludes other existences in that spot, at least at that given time while it is floating on the surface.
Across the surface there are now many patterns to be found. This new dimension, actually as I said, a lacking of dimension, breeds a new way of seeing the ocean across one common plane between the sea and the sky, between seemingly infinite potential of existence and between non-existence of potential, that thin line or crust or crest between the two where the water touches the air. For the corks floating on the surface, this limited lack of dimension creates a new reality, or a new way of seeing things. Other corks exist around you floating too. They define with you this new plane or way of seeing things with you concurrently. Some around you will sink back down. Others will pop up around you, coming and going from the surface, from what the surface defines as actuality. I don't mean by this analogy to imply that the cork is still the same beneath the surface as above, only that it has the same capacity or potential when it is in actual existence, as it had before or can be thought to have had after it sinks below again. The surface corks as I said because of the more limited dimensions of the surface, have a dimension of actuality, taking up that one given space at that surface at a time elbowing out itself a place at the table so to speak which other corks for the moments of its existence cannot share without pushing it aside, save for existing beside it.
Though all the corks currently bobbing along the surface of the ocean exist in a sense side by side, each defining and confirming its little place upon its surface, they share a common top down perspective, if you will. Though their actual vision is limited to the other corks and miscellaneous floating debris around them, they are capable of imagining a common top down perspective (from within or from the point of view or perspective of the potential of non-existence), how silly or beautiful they must all look floating beside each other on the ocean where seemingly infinite potential (the water) meets seemingly infinite non-existence (the air). Along with this imagined or deduced perspective they watch the patterns where these two meet, of corks and other things reaching the surface, touching the definition plane where existence or potential brushes against non- existence or a severe limiting of potential down to narrower surface actualities. (You need that negative space perspective of what is not anything or cannot happen, or what is not happening to define something to be actual or actually happening.) The non-existence plane where no corks can go nonetheless makes the corks, in this case, be corks. It provides a definition standing out beside or in relation to non-existence, or between infinite potential and total non-existence, and each cork occupies for its time on the surface, at least at one point, the defining line between the two. Without that added definition or lack of dimension we call non-existence, or all that is not, you cannot envision that view or plane so dear to us surface corks, that of where the two meet, infinite existence and infinite non-existence into that view or experience we call limited existence.
All of the corks which happen to be floating together at any one given moment in time share a limited reality in a very intimate way. They are what is that reality at that given point in time, defining and sustaining it together as one. They are also sharing in its history, both the past and the future. They have one common history or timeline of the entire Universe up to that point which they share between them all, such a small room of a seemingly infinite sized mansion of what could be or could have been to co-exist within. They also have the ability to interact with each other with a level of reality more real, in a sense, than any other within that reality and at that point in time, at least to them at that time. What they choose to do with that potential to make these interactions, these shared experiences, to become more real than any others that might have been at that time, that is the question each must and will decide for themselves.
When you know and understand it, you can't help but want these experiences to be positive, pleasurable, and fun. If not for others, the highest ideal or goal, then at least for yourself. When you can achieve both, any other reality you might envision, call it Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever, cannot compare as being better than this unless there too you are making the experiences, the lives, the realities, better for others as well as for yourself. That is the power we have in this reality, to shape it not only for ourselves but for others however we choose, to cause them pleasure or give them joy, or to cause pain, to experience these for ourselves too, and to decide which should be inflicted and which withheld, savage justice or higher compassion, and which makes the most sense for whom and to which others.
(It originally ended there. Shortly after combined with this written at same time on, seemingly at first, sort of a different train of thought.)
[Beginning part omitted from the addition to "Measure all things together"....]
Helping other people understand, making their lives a little longer or better, learning everything I can about the Universe before time runs out again, none of these things are as appealing to me as they once were. It all seems so pointless and meaningless. One needs purpose to live so I exist by past defined purposes merely to see it through, but any possible achievements in these veins seems so small, so egotistical and petty.
[End of omitted part]
But the worst possible timelines potential by any given individual's point of view occurs I believe as often as the best regardless of what occurs in any given timeline. You can't change or eliminate one over the other and neither becomes more real simply because it was experienced again, or if possible, more often. Indeed the worst possible outcomes need to be and will be experienced, and everything else in-between, equally necessary to have been lived through. As pointless indulgences go, existence is merely the most elaborate, not the most true. Truth is best read between the lines, or in existence's case, between the timelines, not your own, everyone's.
The patterns between them endlessly repeat but even they are not truth, just more and more convoluted interpretations hidden to be found by beings with every more complex and complicated intelligences capable of seeing what isn't necessarily there and creating ever more complex situations and problems to solve. The desire to be lurks behind every turn, in every shadow. To be what, to be when, to be how, that is all.
To understand it is to add yet another layer away from knowing it. To experience it fully is to know it and know it for the only truth it possesses, the experience or effect of the desire to be in yet another of endless variations it will manifest itself as, and yet another of endless ways to superimpose that upon whatever else, in any and all manners and contexts, through any and all possible circumstances and realities. One is always equally the master of this circus of frivolity and the slave of its never-ending wish to set everything in motion to see how they collide.
Get a view of it all from every possible angle, every possible perspective, and still you are left with nothing. Be what you have to be as often as you have to be it and take from it as much joy as you can while you can. It may be pointless, never-ending, and never any more real at any one time or life or way more than any other, but it need not be dull, for that if anything, is pretty much the driving point above all else.
Grab the moment, any moment, and hold onto it forever and you will see in that moment is every other and everyone. Pick the best circumstances that will make you the most happy or contented or at peace the most times if you can but know that you will only know them as such for and by the sense of having experienced and known the worst. Everything cannot help but be judged by and in relation to everything else. Everything else is the only true measure of what it means to be anything. Without either there is no set scale to measure anything by, never mind a true one. What everything else is though, is as indefinite and as changeable as what you are, and any change in one is reflected instantaneously in the other.
Also I thought I would add something which I think is nearly as good as the Introduction in defining how the 1.8 (In Wonder) version began to grow alongside the original, and what sets it apart. The following was written immediately after "Measure All Things Together", and that Introduction and is about maintaining that same sense of wonder.
"It is foolish to think that we know significantly more about the world or ourselves at 30 or 60 or 90 than we did at 3 or 6 or 9 for what we are and what it is, is always changed and always new. Socrates claimed wisdom only for the fact that he knew how little he knew. Most of what we learn as we age is far more misconceptions than universal truths."
"To think that we are or become more as we age or evolve by having greater influence over or greater power to destroy, break, subjegate, and oppress others, than those who have not nor care not for such "power" shows the limitations of our current cultures' (most all peoples' cultures) "wisdom". To believe you know absolutely nothing for sure, to wonder at the wonder of it all, is to begin to cast the potential for anything, understanding, happiness, contentment, peace, wide open again for the concrete worlds in which we build and concrete mindsets depend upon believing this has already been done to satisfaction and further input or inquiry is neither necessary nor tolerated. It keeps the future pre-determined, as nothing more than a continuation of the past set in stone."
"Such questioning may not be necessary for existence but it is necessary to live. Remember in comparison to the age of the rest of the Universe and any potentially older species, everyone you meet is but a babe in the woods, kind and aware of that fact or self-righteous and eager to have everyone else think and do as they say, namely a brat (brat means a spoiled, mean, or obstinate child)."
That about winds up this retro. Back in 2005 now, things seem pretty undefined and pretty bleak when looking at them only from the present. Yet hope springs eternal and travels out from behind and beyond whatever you can see or know. I think I said it best in the notes after the Introduction, the last time I ended it, so I will repeat that here.
"To see simultaneously and equally both with and without expectations at once is the only way to experience the Universe beyond your expectations or limits of just being yourself, or outside that bubble of reality you create around yourself to move into and inhabit. More simply put, never give up the wonder for what you will soon enough find you only thought you knew or understood. It is never a wise trade."