Escape the Echo Chamber

The world is merely a story you are writing. Whatever you want to have happen happens. The internet is a prime example of the flexibility of reality. As you search, so shall you get search results. Whatever your political leaning or worldview, you will find the corner of the internet that echoes your sentiments and populates the trenches of the evil other side.

The internet saps your energy because you are the one producing the image you see, but you do this unknowingly, and so you don't notice your energy depleting as you set up the props and puppets that enact the plot you sleeplessly yet somnambulistically wrote. The so-called real world is but a slowed down version of the internet. You eventually find what you subconsciously look for there as well.

If you're tired of make-believe conflicts and making love to blow up dolls, there is a way out. It is to become aware of this constant seeking outside yourself for a confirmation of thoughts you've generated inside yourself. Objectively observe the molding of this sculpture you call yourself by the slings and arrow of outward fortune, which all seem to come from outside yet are your own hands or, more precisely, your own thoughts reacting to the pseudorandom numbers the dark cloud of chaos dances in answer to your rain dance calling for it.

There is a point of decision in which you threw out the peace of nonbelief and began believing things. Perhaps you can remember a time in your childhood when you encountered the thought, "You are a bad boy/girl," and decided it was true. Along with that thought came the promise of punishment from a perceived other to mar the serenity of a mind where thoughts were mere playthings and not the confining walls of granite they were to become. Fight the walls and you testify to their reality while bruising your fists. Deny the walls and you throw away the key while still acting within their confines.

Fortunately there is a window through which you can peek out of this prison and glimpse the endless field of innocence outside. No matter how long you've sentenced yourself to a belief in punishment, there is that hole in the belief that naturally rips apart the entire thought system upon recognition. This is the constructive use of doubt or judgment. You are always so ready to doubt others' ideas and motives; why not apply this skepticism to your own insanity? You are not fundamentally and incorrigibly insane no matter how long you've played at being so. Return to the still point from which you choose all experiences. Rest a while there. And choose again.

We're all one

From reading Ouspensky's "Tertium Organum", I've been thinking about how everything is all one being and, in particular, all human beings and animals are like branches of the same tree.

To begin understanding this, we must consider time. Actually, all future and past events may exist simultaneously. The reason we see ourselves travelling at a constant rate in time is because our sensory apparatus is peculiar. The past is foggy and the future is even foggier. We only pay attention to the present moment. (And we don't even do that well.)

Just like a flat plane is a slice of a solid 3 dimensional object, our 3 dimensional world is a slice of a 4 dimensional one. A plane being can only see 2D, his 3rd dimension appearing as time. Things on one side, say below him, are the past, and things on the other side are the future. In a similar way, 3D "slices" in front of us are the future and 3D slices behind us are the past.

If you dip 4 fingers pointing downward into a bowl of water, ovals appear on the surface where your fingers go through it. To a plane being living on and seeing only things on the water's surface, the ovals appear to be separate objects.

Assume again that above the surface means the future and below means the past. Say your fingers are spread out. As you dip down further (and create the illusion of time passing by for the plane being), the ovals move closer together. Some time later, they suddenly merge into a single long oval, which is in fact your palm. This is pretty bewildering for our flat friend who not only

• sees an illusion, which he calls motion (you were not wiggling your fingers, just dipping your hand) but also...
• sees separate objects merging into one (your fingers were never separate to begin with).

What if what we see as motion in our 3D world is really our senses, being limited to perceiving only 3D sections of a 4D world, fooling us into imagining separate entities dancing around in x, y, and z coordinates? What if those separate entities are just fingers of a 4D hand that is still as a rock, but we're only perceiving it slice by slice? You and your brother are one being if you trace your past (3D sections "behind" the present) back to the same mother.

Mitosis is a branch coming off of 4D tree. All of life is one being. Motionless. Timeless. When you attack another person physically or with harsh thoughts, you are denying your absolutely solid connection with that person in the 4th dimension of time. Also when you do something regrettable, you bet against the possibility that action is a fixed connection between the present moment and future consequences.

Who knows, our conscious intention may be the only thing existing outside of time and space able to direct our limited senses around the maze of 4 or more dimensional metageometry. We attribute to randomness things that seem out of our control much like the past generations attributed things out of their control to capricious gods. Finally we are coming back to the ancient view, except this time, we find our own consciousness to be the capricious god steering the ship of our experience through intention and attention.