The Mission of Reality

The "mission" of reality is to create forms of increasingly complex experiences and then to recover from them -- while remaining completely able to handle the complexity.

Humans, in general, have yet to become capable of recovering, and so life seems to be a torment of complexity (with occasional, brief periods of ease and pleasure).

This piece talks about, recovering.

"To be ... or not to be -- that is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

or to take arms against the sea of troubles

and by opposing, end them ..."

~~ from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

DOES "LIFE" APPEAR TO BE "SOMETHING",  TO YOU?

Do you awaken from sleep -- and then awaken into your memory of your life situation? Is awakening from sleep into the circumstances of your life a let-down, for you?

Do you carry the memory of your life situation as a mood from day to day and from hour to hour?

Does the mood of your life taint your sense of the moment, degrade your feeling of your life? Do you feel that life involves a necessary struggle to remain positive and enthusiastic?

Do you feel that your only option is to struggle with the circumstances of life to relieve yourself of distress about life, only to find that your struggle is overwhelmed by the sheer weight of life's conditions?

Are you drowning in the circumstances of life?

What if you could relieve yourself of the sense of being dragged down? if you could refresh yourself by relieving yourself of the weight of circumstance without having to struggle with life's conditions? if you could "get your nose above the water line" by changing, not life-at-large, but something about yourself -- and feel better, for it?

Such a change has to do not just with mastering life by learning something new (accumulating memories), but mastering also the dissolution of memories (awakening beyond memory).

We're going to go into a part of the picture that you may not have considered -- that objective experience and your subjective state are two aspects of the same thing.

We start with The Big Picture.

THE SCENARIO in which ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING

As the Universe has evolved, it has generated, within and from itself, conditions of increasing complexity -- starting with an undifferentiated field of light, then developing particular points-of-location everywhere (of varying density): sub-atomic "particles", then atomic nuclei without electrons (plasma), then atoms, molecules, and at last, lifeforms. This process involved condensation, or consolidation, of a continuum from the least-dense forms (light) to the most solid forms of matter.

Lifeforms are the most complex output of Universal Integration -- and lifeforms exist in a range of complexity from minute prions and viruses to beings with complex organ systems and complex minds. (Whether or not science has concluded that prions and viruses are "lifeforms", those demonstrate the behaviors of lifeforms -- self-initiated movement and self-reproduction, and so I presume to classify them as lifeforms.)

I've just stated the evolution of Universal manifestation from the perspective of scientific objectivity -- observable, measurable things.

There exists another perspective, the perspective of "subjectivity". 

"Subjectivity" is the perspective of self, your sense of yourself, your sense of things other than yourself, rather than reference to things as you suppose they exist apart from yourself; it is the experience of most-intimate "hereness", (rather than "thereness").

You may be accustomed to regarding objectivity and subjectivity as distinctly and categorically different. But it ain't so. Your existence is proof that "it ain't so" -- to others you appear as an objective "someone out there"; to yourself, you appear as the one experiencing experience -- a "subject in-here". 

There exists both an objective perspective and a subjective perspective for every experience in existence -- but they are differing perspectives of the same thing, perspectives that exist only in mind, not in actuality.

WHY PEOPLE MAKE OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEIR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE

We have been indoctrinated by scientific culture to regard objectivity as the "gold" standard of reality and subjectivity as the "lead" standard -- objectivity being trustworthy and subjectivity being untrustworthy -- hence the division of science into the "hard" sciences (e.g., physics) and the "soft" sciences (psychology or sociology). The term, "scientific objectivity", indicates exactly that distinction.

Scientific objectivity emerged as a counter-action to religious subjectivity -- science being based upon repeatable, verifiable measurement (preserved as knowledge or memory) and religion being based upon repeatable, but unverifiable experiences emerging in the mind of humanity (preserved as doctrine or myth). Both science and religion transmit their perspectives through indoctrination.

This is how you inherited your sense of reality.

Science (and knowledge, in general) is based upon memory of consistent, objectively observable events. Religion (and myth, in general) is based upon imagination and willing belief.

This foray into the difference between objectivity and subjectivity is central to my point in this entry; the mission of conditional reality has to do with a peculiar cycle of experience: (1) the emergence of conditional reality as increasingly different forms of objective experience (objective reality) and (2) the awakening to the subjective perspective we have toward objective reality.  

"THE FOUR"
Both objective reality and subjective experience are founded on four kinds of events that they have in common, but which we describe with different terms.

I started by relating how the emergence of the physical universe involved the appearance of particular points ("particles") at particular locations virtually everywhere: "particularity" and "location".

Location is inherent in physical reality, as is particularity. Every particle has to have a particular location (even if more than one location at a time, as in "superposition", a term used by particle physicists to refer to particles measured to be in two places at once). Every location is defined (or located) in by its relation to other particular locations. No particularity, no location. No location, no particularity and no particle.

One necessary requirement for anything particular to exist is persistence. No persistence, no particularity. No particularity, no persistence.

So now, we have the four fundamentals:

• emergence
• location
• particularity
• persistence

Those four terms are objective terms, things that can be observed from the external viewpoint. Combine them together in your mind and you have the sense of substantiality that characterizes physical reality.

Do this, now: combine those four terms in your mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've identified the four terms that apply to objective experience, but I haven't yet identified how they appear, subjectively, so I'll do that, now.

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF OBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE,
SUBJECTIVELY EXPERIENCED

Every objective experience has a corresponding subjective experience. Here are the correspondences:

• emergence: imagination
• location: attention
• particularity: intention
• persistence: memory

IMAGINATION

Imagination always involves the emergence of something new. If it isn't new, it's something remembered. Even if it's something remembered by somebody else, if it's new, to you, you have to imagine it before you can remember it.

Imagination is the "incoming channel" of all experience. It is the emergence, in the moment, of unknown experience (not knowing what's coming, next) into memory -- first, short-term memory and then, long-term memory.

Imagination is originating an unknown, existing "otherness".

ATTENTION

Attention locates things. It distinguishes things from other things and from yourself. That's what happens when you pay attention to something: you locate it in your experience and distinguish it from everything else. You relate to it from your sense of "being here" (subjective hereness) in a subject-object manner: "your" sense of hereness (subjective) relating to what is located distinctly,  "there" (objective).

INTENTION

To move your attention to something requires intention. 

Intention is the word for the impulse of movement, in living beings, whether the movement of attention or the movement of an organism;  in non-living systems, tendency is the word for automatic impulses that cause movement. 

The difference between the intention (living) and tendency (non-living) is that the movements of living beings (intentional movements) are self-initiated, whereas the movements of non-living systems (tendencies) happen automatically.

Both intentions and tendencies continue until the movement is fulfilled or altered by external forces.

Intention is the intensity of a tendency happening and refusing difference.

Continuation of movement is what I mean by, "persistence" -- and persistence is the central attribute of memory.

MEMORY
Memory is persistence -- persistence is the essence of memory. 

Memory is a subjective form of persistence. Materiality is the objective form of persistence.

Much of human behavior is intended to cause things to remain the way they were for the sake of security -- by means of contracts, vows, and quality control standards.

Contracts, vows, and quality control standards are instruments of memory.

In the inanimate realm, memory is mere persistence. In electronics, the persistence of a pattern of electrical charges is what is meant by, "memory". In a Universe, persistence is continuation of patterns of activity.

In living beings, memory is persistence of a definite activity pattern that involves attention (location), imagination (emergence or the "origination" of newness), and intention (movement). Memory is mental knowledge, but also genetic patterning and physiological equilibrium states.

In the evolution of living beings, what has been evolving are THE FOUR: the capacity to pay attention to the distinct locations of events, to act (move) intentionally, to remember (and cause to persist), and to imagine (to originate -- or experience the emergence of -- new experiences).

An unexpected and interesting thing happens when THE FOUR awaken more and come to a higher state of balance and integration within an individual: Experience loses its apparent solidity and binding force, revealing the transparent, formless, free, conscious depth in which experience continually arises as the person's own, natural presence and condition.

I didn't mean to spring that, only, but that's what happens.

DEVELOPMENT of THE FOUR
It is an inherent drive of conditional reality for those four faculties to develop both subjectively and objectively. 

Conditional reality demands that development for the survival and thriving of living beings. You've got to pay attention, exercise intention, learn (remember), and imagine (create and/or problem-solve).

In that sense, life functions as "training wheels" (as in learning to ride a bicycle) for the development of those faculties of intelligence. It makes you pay attention and demands that you act, demands that you remember, and demands that you exercise foresight (future-imagining) about the results of your actions.

That's all fine, as far as it goes, but there occurs a point when the complexities of life have so accumulated in memory that life seems to be a log-jam of problems and solutions -- and in that log-jam, intelligence "seizes up". It's too complicated.

The "training wheels" have become an impediment; the training wheels must "come off".

The sign that that point has arrived is that accumulated memory starts to clog the incoming channel of imagination and overcomplicates everything, making life seem unworkable -- a kind of turbulent state: "stress craziness", if you will -- and at its extreme, "stress psychosis", a variety of denial seen commonly among conspiracy enthusiasts and Republicans.

This is the stage at which the next great leap of the cycle of evolution must occur, for people to right themselves and be able to steer through occasions of turbulence with a degree of intelligence and grace -- a leap of development in which we operate from a kind of baseline intelligence based upon integration of the FOUR faculties, so that the confusing density of memory gets clear, despite the ongoing triggering-power of experience. 

THE NEXT LEAP of DEVELOPMENT

Life continually conspires to leave its effects in us, in memory, in subjectivity.

To stay open, sane, and clear, we must eliminate those effects, just as we must eliminate the waste of the food we take in. Otherwise, we get psychically toxic, just as we would get physically toxic, if we did not eliminate.

To manage the pile-up of experience that overwhelms intelligence, we need something new: the ability to manage our memory.

Where, before, the accumulation of memory had "survive-and-thrive" value, now, the deliberate dissolution of specific memories has "survive-and-thrive" value.

The dissolution of the binding force of memory is not what you might expect. It makes room for something new while leaving your intelligence in that area intact. It allows our learned capabilities to remain, but brings activated intention to rest. Memory "noise" quiets and our "engine" moves from "revving" (being "ready for anything") to "idling" (restful unreadiness for anything) -- a state most people have lost in the "fast pace" of life -- a state most people fear in the misguided notion that being ready for anything is the same as safety.

This return to the baseline "idling" state opens space for mental clarity and for new intelligence, until then clogged by the noise of accumulated memory patterning excessively triggered by pile-ups of memory. The return to "idling" increases the "signal-to-noise" ratio (more signal, less noise) of intelligence.

This new capability has emerged from imagination into existence as something that can be taught and learned. It has been developed, tested, and found to be consistently effective and useful for recovering clarity and poise in the midst of difficulties. 

There's a "relief valve" for the pressures of an overcomplicated life. It frees us by degrees from the felt burden of life that ordinarily we carry from day to day, from hour to hour, so that we can function intelligently.

This new capability restores emotional balance and clarity in the face of life experience without having to change anything about your experience of the moment. You feel better and function better; you get relief even though nothing has improved in your circumstances.

This new capability is the part of the creative cycle of the Universe in which capacities to function appear first and then they disappear from view as the four faculties come on-line and into balance.  Then, experiences as they arise, coincide with (or appear within) the intuition of balanced integration, which moves freely and is not bound to the influential implications of experience (compulsory action signals).

The mission of reality is to manifest diversity and complexity and then to recover from entanglement in it all. It's an awakening.

Instruction for the intelligent use of THE FOUR is in line with the mission of reality.

That may sound high-falutin'. Test my words!

ENTRY-LEVEL TETRASEED AWAKENING INVOCATION