In my wanderings over the interwebs today, my mind spun me a little story that I think might be worth sharing here. I don’t know why this happens, pattern recognition gone wild, perhaps. But its fun to sense this sort of hidden thread and use the format of a blog post to line up the pieces.
The first part of this comes from a new post over at Imaging the 10th Dimension. As any longtime Reclusland readers know, I am a big fan of Rob’s 10 Dimensions framework, and I think this is one of his best posts. Anyway, go read the whole thing, but the most relevant part is as follows:
The Universe Loves You
Ultimately, the distinction between past, present, and future is meaningless. This means that our universe’s basic physical laws and locked-in fine structure constant have already created a set of versions of the universe that are each part of its wavefunction of all possible outcomes. From our spacetime perspective, this means that the version of our universe that lasts the longest already exists, while the version of the universe where some science experiment goes wrong tomorrow and destroys all matter is a much tinier part of that fabric. Which version exerts more gravity? Why, the one that has greater mass within the fifth dimension. The low probability science-gone-wrong scenario may exist, but it’s not the one with the greater mass because it soon ceases to be part of our 5D spacetime tree, so to speak. In that sense, the universe that lasts the longest is the one that is drawing us forward just through the weight of its existence within Everett’s Many Worlds.
Your body’s natural inclination is to want to heal, to want to thrive.
Likewise, the version of you or I that dies tomorrow in a car accident must exist, but exerts very little influence compared to the versions that continue. With this project, we’ve talked a lot about addiction and negative loops, and how so many self-help systems work because they rely only upon a person’s willingness to embrace the better version of themselves that already exists. Are you doing things to yourself that you know are keeping you from getting to the healthiest, happiest version of you? Then stop! It really is that simple, you just have to say to yourself “now is the time that I make the change” and the rest can follow. Meditation, positive visualization techniques, drinking more water, eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, getting more exercise – changes like these allow you to tap into the better version of you that already exists, and the science of epigenetics confirms that these changes are real right down to the way our DNA is expressed, and what DNA patterns we pass on to our offspring.
I like this a lot, but we have to keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily follow that because the happy scenarios have the most 5th dimensional mass, we are necessarily going to be drawn to them 100% of the time. We often fight such things (or don’t bother to put the necessary work in) because we simply don’t see that they’re possible. As Rob says, it’s simple to avoid this, just stop doing them! But the key is, we have to see that we are doing them, in order to stop. Even on the basic level of eating right and exercising, which seem easy enough, we won’t really be able to avoid them until we see what brought those 5th dimensional branches into our tree, so they can be cut off at the root.
Rob’s article was followed a little later by a comment over on Kennth Folk Dharma, on a long thread regarding something called Actual Freedom. The debate over Actual Freedom is an interesting one, but it has a LOT of back-story so I won’t be going into it here. Feel free to head over and read it, but the comment that particularly caught my eye was this one from betawave (comment 137 on this page):
(I)t’s good to hold off conclusions about causes of depression/angst as much as you can and keep going… Having a “on its own” reason for why something happens can sometimes lock you into a sense of fatalism that might prevent a whole hearted commitment to naturally changing and evolving over time. My own experience is that it happens from having expectations that don’t mesh with the complex nature of the world and then solidifying that into some kind of personal character flaw. Some weird kind of identity gets built around that. And it sets up it’s own negative feedback loop… and then depression is kinda locked in. Conversely, as you get more distance, you can see that they do have a cause and and they aren’t just gratuitous excretions… and then you avoid the causes and sometimes even a new positive feedback loop sets up. This is just my experience, for what it’s worth.
Another little thing: a lot of these practices (“meditating, surrendering,” etc) seem like phenomenal >things< but they are actually much more like openings that are walked through. Like doors that disappear when you step through. The experience is more of a dropping away of something but not another thing that gets added on.
Here we see another mention of “negative feedback loops”, which , as betawave points out, are often caused when we misunderstand reality and then base part of our identity on that misunderstanding. How can our “identity” cause us suffering? It can’t, not really, because suffering is a response of our self to something, that is, there is something at odds with what we are (or, for the non-dual, something at odds with what is). Yet we hold onto that false identity, not knowing the suffering we’re causing ourselves, like a frog in a slowing boiling pot.
Until we see through that misunderstanding, we’re steering head toward those lower-gravity future “branches” of the 5th dimensional “tree” that result from our negative self image, giving rise to the negative feedback loop. Which does a lot to explain why people often seem to face the same problems over and over again (such as “why do I always date losers?” or “how come I can’t hold down a job?”). This might also be compared to the idea of karma, how our past thoughts and deeds give rise to future life situations. It is only in the now, in this present moment, that we can affect our karma, and its only in the present moment that we can make decisions that effect the probability space of our fifth dimensional “tree”.
As betawave goes on to point out, once we come to see the root of the negative identity/understanding/feedback loop (in this case, through a contemplative practice), we cut off those negative “branches” and the higher 5th dimensional gravity of the happy potential futures can draw us onwards with less resistance. These dropping away moments are the openings we walk through, the gateless gates of meditative practice. Consider here the translation of the word “dukkha”, the original word that Buddha used when he said “all life is dukkha”. It has been translated as “suffering”, but it carries with it the association of an unbalanced potter’s wheel that squeaks while it turns. We are drawn on by the rotating potter’s wheel of the universe regardless, but it is up to us whether the wheel turns smoothly and sweetly, or creaks unevenly while it goes.
So that’s my little thought trail. What it all boils down to is just another reason to get your ass on the cushion and investigate the hell out of the present moment. Cause that’s the only place that change happens, here in the presence of the infinite. Practice well everybody.
