Placeholder Notes

Self-referential loop of conceiving and that literally conceives us. The experience of kid in the night is the experience of a sperm or egg.

GA - Arrogance of assuming molecules just mechanical. Everything else has an imaginary component.

Inner & outer worlds - separate but experientially connected; physical / non-physical, visible / invisible, dimension and dimensionlessness, limit (approximation) and limitlessness, everything and one, earth reference vs universal,

Scale - interdefined, interconnected,

Space between / space amongst, fields / limits, / human soul, consciousness and universal sameness, Integral / differential

Transform - wormholes though (perceived) boundaries

A Twinkling

I went to the edge in search of answers — I came back with much more.

Out here, far away from city lights, the deep, dark sky appears enormous: awash in spectacular, tiny, bright lights. Like space travelers in the distance, their flashlights twinkle in search of—

Lying here on my blanket, in the warm Canadian summer, I can’t help but stare and wonder, Where did they come from? Where did I come from? Where am I going? I take a deep breath inward and let it out, “Ahhhhh . . . .”  The space between me and them feels like pure nothingness, vast emptiness. Yet I am their witness, and they are mine. Is that not something?

The giant fir trees around me reach from the ground skyward as though they, too, wish to escape Earth’s gravitational hold – in search of the beyond. Their gentle swaying confirms the presence of wind, invisible to my eyes, moving through them. Through space. Through time. I close my eyes and still “know” of that wind’s presence through my ears as it tickles the pine needles, like a symphony of tiny string instruments. These things, these non-things: separate and apart yet coupled intimately. The melody plays with effort, seamlessly fading to and fro’. Without edge. Without boundary. No distinct beginning nor end. Just transition.

In the middle of this theatrical performance of nature, I imagine a commentator acknowledging the silent sponsors of the night, “Brought to you by—" And I wonder. By whom? Brought to me by the entire universe since the beginning of time? And then wonder, Brought to whom? Brought to this physical person lying on the ground? Or brought to this being who experiences it in this moment? Can one happen without the other: can I experience what is not there to be experienced; and can anything really “be” if I do not experience it? My mind toggles back and forth from my own, individual perspective to the perspective of everything that is NOT me. I can fathom each but can’t seem to hold them both simultaneously. Strangest of paradox: two views independent on their own yet interdependently defined: each being simply “not” the other. It feels irreconcilable in my Earthly mind. And yet here we dance, amongst the sounds, the sights, the smells the experiences, intertwined in this moment.    

So many stars. Such vitality gleaming through the darkness of nothing. I am blinded to them in the “brightness” of day, but in this black night, they speak their truth. As I stare, it occurs to me that the sky isn’t pure black. It’s more like “off black” pervaded by hints of licorice and onyx. It’s like someone added a tiny drop of white paint to an enormous bucket of black paint: it’ll never pure black ever again – tainted in the most wonderful of ways. And then I reason, “Maybe it’s just the atmosphere reflecting the light.” And I leave it at that, although I am somehow uncomfortable with that seeming simplification.

All this supposed “nothingness” is the matrix in which everything else is suspended. Without space, there could be no stars – there would just be pure light. Without stars there would only be pure blackness. Nothingness. But together these two entities somehow come into being – related, defined by one another.  

I breathe again and take in the mystical air. With Mother Earth at my back, eyes staring into the sky above, my mind releases. It rises slowly at first, then more quickly: past the trees around me, past the hills, past the land, past the wind—

I am above it all now floating high, high above. I can see beautiful Earth in its entirety. I can see how the Sun illuminates one half of her. It’s "daytime" there and, look, over there, on the other half, where my body lays in the shadow, it is “nighttime” there. But that the “night” sky I once knew as “up” isn’t at all as it once seemed: it’s all around. In all directions. No absolute ‘up’ or ‘down,’ ‘left’ or ‘right.’ Just here. And there. And everywhere. My orientation no longer seems limited to just me. Sure, there’s Earth’s relationship to me now. And there’s mine to it. What about the Sun in the distance? It is relative to me or me, it? Where’s the "center" of this crazy place called space? Me? Doubtful. Am I the stone in a river around which space flows? Or am I simply another body floating in an ocean of vastness? Once again, I have this sense of myself, and everything that is not me: completely distinct, yet somehow entangled. Necessarily. Huh.

Zoom out further. The Sun is now a small distant glow and Earth is but a speck, barely perceptible in this endless womb of seeming “nothingness.” I stretch my non-Earth mind to ‘see’ as far as it can conceive. I am traveling faster now. Further. There’s no wind to tell me of my speed but the parallax effect of accelerating lights flying past indicate that I am indeed hurdling through space. With no beginning or end does it even make sense to be moving ‘forward?’ 

On this cosmic safari adventure in my new extra-terrestrial world, I witness and speed past strange beings— Pulsar, starboard side! How strange. How . . . mystical, alive, magical. Wait . . . I can see X-rays out here? Cool! 

A little while later (which feels strange to say because there’s absolutely no sense of time out here), I see a magical beast: Supernova! I’ve only read about them. Looks eerily like a slow-motion video of a firecracker exploding: powerful, transforming. Looks like a neural brain.

It’s odd, these “things” I’m seeing and experiencing: they don’t seem to be things at all. They have perceived shape yet as I move past and through them I see they are completely amorphous. Made up of billions of particles held “together” through some relationship – some invisible “force” that I can’t see but I know of because of how things behave in its presence. Something that can never be directly ‘seen’ – only inferred: reminds me of the wind on Earth. ‘They’ flippantly call it “gravity.” “Oh,” we respond, as if that means anything to us back home. We have no idea. Easy to say, different to understand. It feels like a kind of intelligent essence that connects every particle with every other. No central authority – just an implicit agreement by all to participate according to the same unwritten rules. The rules written within or from without? There’s that paradox again. But perhaps neither is true – that the ‘rules’ don’t come from within nor do they come from without. In this magical place it seems the rules lie in the space between us – in our relation to one another. Such a strange place this space of “nothingness” which appears to be “everythingness.” Well, which is it? And who am I, but a bunch of particles stuck together in bodily form? What is the “gravity” between my cells that holds me together? Where does “it” go when I die? Where did “it” come from when I was “born?” If I can have these thoughts out here, far from my Earth body, what’s the connection between those two entities? I can’t find no tangible connection. No “thing.” Only an intangible effect that I witness in here and out there.

I zoom along. Further still. Look over there: a galaxy just like our own Milky Way. Earth would be just one of those tiny specks. On Earth, “gravity” seemed contained. Local. Now I see Earth’s gravity as connected and continuous within a galactic sea of gravity.

I continue zipping through space. It expands further. I pass thousands of these galaxies. What about gravity between galaxies? Where I once saw nothingness peppered with islands, I now understand, there’s far more in that space “between” – it’s more like the space “amongst.”

Of course! It’s not just gravity. If I can see all these stellar creatures as I woosh past them, I must be flying through all their light beams: if I can see them from any direction – any location – they must be emitting in all directions. That means this empty ‘space’ isn’t empty at all – it’s absolutely full of light. I just can’t see it . . . until I do. Unless I do. And gravity must be everywhere as well then – faint perhaps but ever present. What else can’t I ‘see’ and therefore have dismissed as “emptiness?” This ‘nothingness’ must be absolutely full of invisible “forces” that I presumed inexistent because I couldn’t or wasn’t witness to them. Now I know why I was uncomfortable with the apparent “blackness” of the sky back home – it wasn’t!

And what of these phenomena – do any of them stand alone? The wind needs the trees to be heard. Gravity only exists between bodies. Light is emanated but only comes into ‘existence’ for me when I detect it. It’s as if it requires ‘two to tango.’ It reminds me of two humans communicating on Earth – if one doesn’t hear the other, did the communication occur? The “space between” is therefore a function of the things it’s between! Then the idea of a “space between” is a fallacy – there is no such thing. What’s “between” is a field of some sort that is relative to the two things: the wind attenuates as it move through the pine needles – the sound of it attenuates depending on my distance from it. Gravity is the same: stronger the closer we are and weaker, the further apart. My memories of events in my life feel the same. All is fields, not ‘things’ and ‘space between.’   

What else don’t I understand because I am blind to its truths beyond my Earthly interpretations?  

At one level I can feel separate from everything else. Isolated. Local. Self-contained. And yet, I’m part of something, much bigger. Connected. At different levels. Necessarily. If I cause an effect, then I am. And perhaps the extent to which I am is the extent to which my effect is experienced by others. All relative. All connected. Maybe that’s what Einstein was on about.

I wonder if the sperm or egg cells being developed in humans feel the same – so separate, small and insignificant in the galaxy that is my body. Or are they wise? Do they implicitly understand they are the keys to the human continuum? After all, they are intimately connected to the entire course of evolution before us: since the beginning: the first protozoa; and before that; before Earth; before the Milky Way; all the way back to the Big Bang. I’m starting to understand that all of this is part of the same fabric, simply morphing between dimensions. Sometimes localized; sometimes diffuse, but ultimately interwoven, interconnected, interrelated and defined through one another. Nothing is nothingness. Not even me—

Look! Portside: a supermassive black hole. I shudder. I know these things exist at the center of most galaxies – even the Milky Way. Space, time, gravity, light cannot escape. But where does it go to? Where does it come from?

My vessel starts to shake. Sights, sounds, feelings are warping. Something is changing. I feel a compression – in my chest, my head my body. Everything I have known and seen is collapsing, fusing into one. Dammit – I’m hitting the event horizon. The point of no return. Resisting is futile. I feel like I’m in its death grip. All orientation melts away. I am being sucked in. I have just enough consciousness left to look back where I came and now I can see the entirety of the universe disappearing into the distance – condensing now just to one tiny white light. I go in—

Oh, now how I long for the strangeness of space! In here, in this place, all really has gone dark. No time. No night. No day. No space. No air. No dimension. Nothing. And nothing between. There is no longer any sense of me. Just that tiny white light in the distance— wait, which distance? Everywhere I look, there it is. Am I dead? I never felt more alive – one with it all. And yet, all my memories, all the questions, all the learnings, feel like they’ve been squeezed into that last speck of light in the deep, dark universe of my mind. It fades further into the distance until I can no longer see it. I wince with my heart. Yet . . . somehow I know. I may not see it, but I now know. Because I’ve come to understand it in a new way. I know that it can’t not be. If something isn’t nothing then surely it is something! Now I realize it doesn’t have to be defined by anything tangible. If al is just fields, then all I need is to just . . . believe—

There! I can see it again. That point of light is starting to twinkle. To grow. Ever-so-slightly at first. But, yes, it’s definitely getting bigger. Where have I been? I press on, moving head first, urgently toward the light. Must go to the light. But now there’s that resistance again. Great resistance. Insistently, instinctively, I press on with all my might. Puuush—

And then, just like the Big Bang, through the vortex of all dimensionality, I am thrust face-to-with the Earthly Sun. Blinding me. Burning my eyes. My memories and my past. I struggle and scream to avoid its ferocious stare. But I am being held by something, by someone, by—

The space travelers look down at me – their long appendages grasping me from the sky. With flashlights on their heads they speak strange tongues, blue masks concealing their identities. All eyes on me. What the hell is going on? 

“It’s a boy” rings out.

What does that mean?

I’m being wrapped in a blanket and then, with familiarity, laid once again against the warmth of mother Earth, who just birthed me. I see the stars in the eyes looking down upon me. I take in another gulp of this invisible life force called ‘air.’ In wonderment. Amazement. Unable to conceive it all. All of it, of course, having just conceived me—

And then, just as quickly, like the waking from a vivid dream, the memory of it all begins to fade. From these first waking moments, time starts moving forward again like before. Faster, faster. Those fantastic, otherworldly images fade ever more quickly into this localized ‘reality’ where the ground is ‘below’ and the sky is ‘above.’ Where I am ‘here’ and they are ‘there.’

I grow. I mistake us as separate. Because that’s what the space travelers have forgotten – what I have forgotten. I listen to them tell me “this is how it is” and I master this hallucination of self-orientation and limitation . . . well, Almost. Except for that little twinkling in the back of my mind that sparkles still. Ever so faintly. Back when I entered the blackhole and all was crushed into a speck of thought: even then, there was never disconnect. That thread of light was continuous, unbroken. Only disappearing when my mind failed to witness it. Invisible in the light of day, blinded only by my Earthly mindset. But at night, it is my lifeline back to that womb from which I came. Even the most powerful telescopes cannot witness what I have seen. But I now know, there is not some “elsewhere” to which I belong. It’s right here. There’s no going “to” or “from” anywhere either. It is all here and I am all there. One. Simultaneously.

I abruptly wake from my journey in to the deep Canadian night, endless sky above. A lone star catches my eye. One in a trillion. It playfully twinkles at me as though a kitten in search of a friend. I look around to see if it was for someone else. No one. Just me. I’m the witness. It reminds me that I’m a star in someone else’s world too. With a grin, I wink back at it. Together we share a moment. Forever.