The purpose after full comprehension of itself?

[Cleric K]

Your question "How many centers / how big center" was to the point, but to the wrong point, as the frame of quantification and size are in a way misleading. You being the center of the world does not imply that others are not. More important and difficult question is whether and when a center is open or close.

'Wrong center' was not the best choice of words. My analogy was that communication is like transferring state-of-being coordinates. Let's put this into physical analogy. Your sensory state of being is the sum total of everything around you, which is direct function of spacetime coordinates. You extract the most characteristic landmarks and encode them in words that you send to me. My goal is to recover you location. I take your words but they are only sparse information. I know that there's a mountain in this direction, a tree at that direction, etc. My first job is to extend the perimeter of my search. The larger the perimeter the greater the chance to include your location. Then I begin to apply resonant search, quantum annealing, gradually I begin to filter the possibilities and remain only with the locations that resonate with your description. The process finally converges I experience myself in a center beholding the scenery.

By 'wrong center' I meant that there are many different reasons that I arrive at different point than yours. I agree that I wasn't very clear. There can be many reasons for landing at the wrong spot. My perimeter might not have been wide enough and your location was simply not included in the search. Maybe the description was ambiguous - maybe there are too many places that have mountain in one direction and a tree in another. Maybe I colored your description - you said only 'tree' but in reality it's a pine tree. I didn't know that and for whatever reasons my imagination snapped to the image of oak tree and that was what my search was for.

When we use the above analogy to think not in spacetime framework but in the sense of 'states of being' as the only real elements, it becomes actually pretty powerful tool. Yet it is only that - an intellectual scaffold - and we should never forget that. "You being the center of the world does not imply that others are not" This is most elegantly solved when we imagine that the states of being are not spread out in a geometric-like phase space but all exist simultaneously one within the other as concentric 'spheres'. There's only one center. All states of being are experienced from the standpoint of that same center, only the contents of perceptions and corresponding ideas are different. Every state is interdependent on every other state, it is the 'interference' of all other states.

[Lou Gold]

Lou ... Once again you seem to be attributing quotes to Shu that Shu did not write.

AHA! I'm responding to Cleric. Now, at last, it makes more sense but I did gain something in attributing it to Shu for a bit. Thanks and redirected to Cleric.

[SanteriSatama]

'Wrong center' was not the best choice of words. My analogy was that communication is like transferring state-of-being coordinates. Let's put this into physical analogy. Your sensory state of being is the sum total of everything around you, which is direct function of spacetime coordinates. You extract the most characteristic landmarks and encode them in words that you send to me. My goal is to recover you location. I take your words but they are only sparse information. I know that there's a mountain in this direction, a tree at that direction, etc. My first job is to extend the perimeter of my search. The larger the perimeter the greater the chance to include your location. Then I begin to apply resonant search, quantum annealing, gradually I begin to filter the possibilities and remain only with the locations that resonate with your description. The process finally converges I experience myself in a center beholding the scenery.

By 'wrong center' I meant that there are many different reasons that I arrive at different point than yours. I agree that I wasn't very clear. There can be many reasons for landing at the wrong spot. My perimeter might not have been wide enough and your location was simply not included in the search. Maybe the description was ambiguous - maybe there are too many places that have mountain in one direction and a tree in another. Maybe I colored your description - you said only 'tree' but in reality it's a pine tree. I didn't know that and for whatever reasons my imagination snapped to the image of oak tree and that was what my search was for.

When we use the above analogy to think not in spacetime framework but in the sense of 'states of being' as the only real elements, it becomes actually pretty powerful tool. Yet it is only that - an intellectual scaffold - and we should never forget that. "You being the center of the world does not imply that others are not" This is most elegantly solved when we imagine that the states of being are not spread out in a geometric-like phase space but all exist simultaneously one within the other as concentric 'spheres'. There's only one center. All states of being are experienced from the standpoint of that same center, only the contents of perceptions and corresponding ideas are different. Every state is interdependent on every other state, it is the 'interference' of all other states.

My objections to that line of thinking are mathematical. I don't accept "theory" of real numbers, it is a not-even-a-theory. Rejection of real numbers has serious implications for the Cartesian coordinate system and the dream of unifying geometry and algebra. With only rational number values available, most of the pseudo-algebraic points of Cartesian coordinates don't exist. For example, equilateral triangle does not exist in the Cartesian plane.

With most of the algebraic pseudo-points missing, there is no genuine arithmetically computable continuum between states of abstract imaginations. "States of being" are no more real than pseudo-numbers called "real numbers". Real numbers and the points they are supposed to represent are not constructible, almost all of them are non-algorithmic, non-demonstrable and non-computable fairy dust. What about floating point computation and arbitrary cuts of decimal extensions to create an approximation of a real number? Well, any such cut by definition creates a cut in the continuum.

Your line of thinking stays trapped in a Zeno's paradox and can never reach its destination and goal of communication as defined. In the sensible, empirical world, already the concept of fairy dust is more real than real numbers and Cartesian coordinates. Einstein-anything is fatally incorrect, very much including Minkowski space time. The far more scientific concept of 'fairy dust' offers at least more plausible tentative explanation of measurements of ether caused inertia, as that hypothesis has so far not been empirically and logically falsified. In the empirical world we have strong evidence that a song by a fairy has the magical ability to touch a heart.

If you wish, we can continue the philosophical debate how and why "states-of-being" are not real at all, at best only abstract snapshots of processes in Holomovement. Nice attempt, which keeps the discussion going on, but your hypothesis of "same center" does not follow from your line of reasoning, and is weak also otherwise. I keep on arguing for the Savage Theory, where also each center is unique, and as such has inherent value. In your hypothesis of One and Only True Center all other centers have only relative and instrumental value in relation to that. In terms of ethically valid theory, it can be s a very slippery slope.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Thanks and redirected to Cleric.

And in return this is redirected to you from Living Mirrors ...

[Cleric K]

Really interesting how you receive or represent my dialog because I really don't feel I can judge another's process and, yet, it seems I come across that way for you. I'll surely contemplate it.

It's not my goal to simply speak out my understanding to you. I'm more interested to see the world from your eyes - as far as possible. Not in order to judge you but to judge myself from your perspective. I'm constantly trying to understand what exactly you find disagreeable. I never know, I'm ready to be surprised at any time. I take all your arguments very seriously and try to experience an alter's perspective from which all your arguments make sense. In this way I can learn something about my own position when I see it from outside. So far I tried very hard to resonate with a coherent viewpoint from which your arguments make sense through and through but I couldn't. After few steps they seem to become self-contradictory. That's what I expressed in the dialog between Lou and the People. Don't take Lou as you. The protagonist is actually me, trying to apply the arguments that I've learnt from you, in practical life. The dialog represents the imagined practical obstacles that I face when I try to change the world for the better in this way.

After you told me that you embrace contradictions everything became much more clear to me.
I must say that I also embrace contradictions. Probably not in the exact same way as you. They are the most valuable thing. All existence results from creative contradiction, opposition. Doesn't need to be painful. The sculptor uses the opposition of the hands and the wet clay to express beauty. For me contradictions are creative processes. So far my experience shows that all contradictions can be gradually comprehended. Note: they might not be immediately resolved but we can fully understand them by experiencing them from the standpoint of a higher unity. Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis. Then this higher unity in turn may be in opposition to another element, both leading us to even higher unity and so on. When we comprehend the contradictions we can also understanding how they will be resolved. The resolution may be close at hand but in other cases it may lay thousands of years from now. But even if the resolution is ahead in time, we can fully understand the contradiction now and this can guide us to conduct our activity such that we work towards this future resolution and not against it.

Now that I understand better your position on contradiction I can ask you the following: You are clearly for the choiceless-choice, loving flow with the One. You are also for the Great Equilibrium - everything having its place under Heaven. You don't take well any giving priority over anything else. Now the question is, do you perceive the polarity between choiceless-choice and conscious-choice? Instinctive life driven by mysterious necessity and life driven by individual decisions? Loving surrender and responsible will illuminated by Wisdom? Cosmic Feminine and Cosmic Masculine?
If everything has its rightful place, do you feel that you are prioritizing the surrendered choiceless-choice over conscious-choice? If yes, do you feel that as a contradiction? If yes, do you feel it's forever to remain like this or it should be transformed?

[Lou Gold]

FOR CLERIC

Lou ... Once again you seem to be attributing quotes to Shu that Shu did not write.

AHA! I'm responding to Cleric. Now, at last, it makes more sense but I did gain something in attributing it to Shu for a bit. Thanks and redirected to Cleric.

I'm not playing dodgeball with you. I'm receiving you as a prod to reveal more of my own process. It is not about your process, which is quite different from mine, often seeming to me as quite the opposite or from alien space. Nevertheless, we overlap and go bump.

I year ago I wrote a little poem and made an image. Neither are great art, just expressions of my process:

Pandemic
Sixth Extinction
World Out of Balance

First we scatter
Then we gather
Hoping and praying

Navigating events
Feeling vulnerable
Re-membering the light

Breathing
Calming
Loving



My general position is that EVERY manifestation arrives with its opposite. Yes, immanence arrives with transcendence, good with evil, vertical with sideways, blah, blah because that's how infinite love creativity works no matter where one thinks (models) that it, you, me, we might be going. Yes, the Universe is fine-tuned for life simply because a living god loves god, including the evil twin created in ALL manifestation. At the time of the above artistic dribbles, I was meditating on interesting curiosity in English word forms.

LIVE <> EVIL

DEVIL <> LIVED

So, yes, grasping or clinging to a memory is how the devil lives in the details. HIGHER levels don't resolve, they just create new details. And, yes, there are beings flowing around every whirlpool. And, NO, this does not indicate absence of meaning and favor of random accident. For me, it means that GOD LOVES GOD and I'm a participant/observer in a GREAT MYSTERIOUSNESS, which following my notion of God, I'm learning to love.

[Cleric K]

If you wish, we can continue the philosophical debate how and why "states-of-being" are not real at all, at best only abstract snapshots of processes in Holomovement.

The bold text is exactly right! That's why I said "Yet it is only that - an intellectual scaffold - and we should never forget that." So if we are to speak about this we should go about it completely in the symbolical way that we are discussing so far. Everything should be a symbol for meditative experience. The abstract terms must be read. Just as the polarity sphere is nothing but an abstraction for the materialist but can become a living projection of spiritual experience, so can we speak of states of being only if we use them as symbols for actual experiential reality. They are just 'handles' but we must find what they are handles for.

In this sense I wouldn't try to argument these things through mathematical reasoning. Why? We need to go 'meta' to see why. In any line of mathematical reasoning we experience a progression of states of being that follow one another like domino pieces. We're trying to turn attention precisely to this progression, this is the living metamorphosis of states that becomes the object of our investigation and we describe it only through metaphorical snapshots. We can't say too much about this through concrete mathematics because within the progression of states, mathematical thinking represents specific rules through which we allow the domino pieces to affect each other. For example, if we restrict ourselves in a walking pattern that can take only single step at a time and turn at right angles, we'll only be able to trace a rectangular grid. The spaces in between will be impossible for walking-experience. It's similar to any formal system of thought - we are placing restrictions on the way we allow our spiritual activity to transform our state from frame to frame. Math can give us useful language for analogies and metaphors for the flow of states but we can't produce the general flow from the more restricted flow abiding to the rules of the formal system. The general flow can be experienced only by widening our feeling for the different ways we can transform our current state into the next. Linguistic and formal tunnels shape the rules determining the next states that are possible to land into. We need to perceive through these rules in order to feel that our spiritual activity is freer than this and we can transform our state into a much wider palette.

Nice attempt, which keeps the discussion going on, but your hypothesis of "same center" does not follow from your line of reasoning, and is weak also otherwise. I keep on arguing for the Savage Theory, where also each center is unique, and as such has inherent value. In your hypothesis of One and Only True Center all other centers have only relative and instrumental value in relation to that. In terms of ethically valid theory, it can be s a very slippery slope.

Here I'm pretty sure we're not speaking of the same kind of 'centers'. For one, what I envision by 'center' is truly a infinitesimal point, so to speak. By this I mean that it has no 'features'. Since I already know your opinion on the point, it will be pointless to argue here for the One center. It'll be useless because we'll be arguing about different meanings of 'center' (and I would agree that it makes no sense to speak of 'common center' in the meaning that you imply).

From what I reckon, you take the center point more like a disc with features, which give it value. I hold that we can always 'zoom in' more towards the center and then what we've assumed to be the disc of our uniqueness becomes our periphery. Now we're still a unique disc, although of a different order. Put in other words, the unique value we experience is not a quality of the infinitesimal point but is the contents of the unique states of being that we live through. Here I should remind that by state of being I don't envision only some superficial attributes like mood, thoughts, etc. but everything. We shouldn't imagine some definite spiritual core with intrinsic character and temperament in front of which different slides of the more outer perceptions are being projected. No, we should remember that states of me, you, John Smith, aliens, angels, gods - everything - exist in the same 'phase space'. A point of this 'space' is experienced as the John Smith's subconscious temperament, his implicit knowledge, his particular place in life and the sensory world, likes and dislikes, memories, etc. In other words if the center jumps from your experience to a state belonging to John Smith, there would be nothing there to tell you that you arrived from your state. Instead, it will look like you've arrived there from some previous state of J.S. That's why we speak of existence as resulting from the gradual integration of the progression of states - every next state containing the imprint of the previous states as memory. Only this leads to stream of conscious experience.

We shouldn't confuse uniqueness with concreteness. If I'm attached to the concreteness of the color of my hair, my knowledge, my likes and dislikes, the patterns of behavior, I'm exploring very specific domain of the phase space. If I go further than that I'll remain as unique as ever - the only center I've ever known - but I'll also find new states of being that stand in certain relations to the concrete ones that I was restricted to explore - now the states I explore contain the concretenesses as possibilities and I'm free to manifest whatever I choose.

I'll now withhold any further argumentation of the 'center' problem. If we manage to work out the above, the question of the many centers will be resolved by itself.

[Lou Gold]

Now the question is, do you perceive the polarity between choiceless-choice and conscious-choice? etc ... etc ... etc

Of course I do and I practice disciplining myself to avoid the mental distraction of trying to intellectually resolve the paradox. Instead, I hold (understand, stand under) the contradiction with faith. How? My best current response comes at the end of these words from the Imaginal Realm (Everywhere) ...



Note: I'm not saying it's for all, just that it seems to work for me.

PS: Sorry Shu. Keep counting. This one has staying power.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

Thanks and redirected to Cleric.

And in return this is redirected to you from Living Mirrors ...
[/quote]

Thanks! The music of ayahuasca like the music of all soulful traditions is quite wonderful, transformational, liberating, creatively manifesting in myriad ways that I can not analyze but I can illustrate with an example from a post I made at other platforms today. I don't analyze as you do. It's more like I feel and then reveal in the artistic process of rest and movement. Here's the post...

I'm contemplating the deeply concerning covid stories from my beloved Brazil with sadness and tears. I know that, if I want to truly feel that lovely land and its beings, I must feel the pain but not so much as to make me forget the joy, which is why I am now posting again a vision that drew me to Amazônia. I painted it in my early years of Santo Daime before I had visited Brazil. There was no disappointment when I finally arrived there. May the forest and our Ever Sovereign Mother be with all of us.



Now for a back story: I experienced in early childhood two formative traumas, one in my C-section birth and the second due to a rheumatic fever diagnosis that had me prevented from all physical exercise between ages 3 and 5. During the latter, my imaginative and intuitive skills became quite developed. I can recall sitting on the 3rd floor back porch of our old-style Chicago apartment trying to figure out what the kids playing in the yard were doing. When it was finally determined that I was healed enough to go to school, I really wanted to sing and dance and make pictures like the other kids but I could not do it. Indeed, I was so bad that when 'chorus singing' arrived the teacher insisted that I just 'mouth the words'. And so I spent a life loving music and art and dance without being able to perform it.

At near 60 years, two 'serendipitous' events occurred. One was that I had encountered Santo Daime and the spiritual hygiene process of cleaning away trauma-born toxins had begun. The second event is that at an environmental gathering where I was a speaker, I wandered into a kid art workshop where the teacher was presenting encaustic art in simplified form for children who were 'painting' with a small 'travel iron' pushing around melted colorful waxes. She invited me to try. I resisted because "I can't paint." She said, "Try." I did one and another and another. She said, "Hey, you are good at this. Here is a whole kit for you. When you get back home, play with it." I did and a flow opened with hundreds of paintings. I even had some local gallery shows and sold some giclee prints. Daime cleaned the toxins. The teacher gave me an appreciative glance and told me to play. The child was freed. A healing was unleashed and I began to sing and paint and dance..

Later, I was on another roadtrip, the same art teacher was present and gave me more waxes and materials. I was telling my hosts that I wanted to visit Brazil, to go to the jungle. I suddenly had the urge to paint. We bought a 4x5 stretched canvas. Without drinking Daime, I listened to the recording of hymns received by Padrinho Sebastião who had founded a Santo Daime village in Amazōnia. As I listened, I painted the image above. Padrinho Sebastião, who long had passed to the other side, became my spirit Godfather. He taught me to "shine not whine" (still learning that one ) and, in vision space, he gave me the mantra "Be calm - Be clear - See the faults - See the suffering - Give your love" and I'm "in process" here and there and everywhere.

Here are the hymns:



Thank you, Cleric for prodding me into telling the story.

[Lou Gold]

Really interesting how you receive or represent my dialog because I really don't feel I can judge another's process and, yet, it seems I come across that way for you. I'll surely contemplate it.

It's not my goal to simply speak out my understanding to you. I'm more interested to see the world from your eyes - as far as possible. Not in order to judge you but to judge myself from your perspective. I'm constantly trying to understand what exactly you find disagreeable. I never know, I'm ready to be surprised at any time. I take all your arguments very seriously and try to experience an alter's perspective from which all your arguments make sense. In this way I can learn something about my own position when I see it from outside. So far I tried very hard to resonate with a coherent viewpoint from which your arguments make sense through and through but I couldn't. After few steps they seem to become self-contradictory. That's what I expressed in the dialog between Lou and the People. Don't take Lou as you. The protagonist is actually me, trying to apply the arguments that I've learnt from you, in practical life. The dialog represents the imagined practical obstacles that I face when I try to change the world for the better in this way.

Thanks for acknowledging that the dialogue is between you and yourself. Consider that it might be a stronger presentation if you framed it as between you and the people rather than between Lou and the people. Not because I feel misrepresented or insulted but because, except as fiction, we can not represent an other. However, and herein lies the power, we can represent our self. You created a cool dialogue. Why waste it on me? Showing our own contradictions and confusions is how we join the human race and connect. The path of personal heart simply has more soul wanting to express itself.