A simplified model of how the inward flow that emerges as beings interferes with itself in order to produce the ‘dimension’ or stream we call time. The flow can also be understood as streams comprised of points of sentience each of which is sensitive in a variety of unique ways. The starburst around the recursive penetration represents a kind of living mirror in which the observations and responsive changes of the elements moving toward it from above (these elements are glimpsing what is coming into existence ‘across the mirror’ and changing in response) are reflected. The elements in the stream become active first in (self)reflection, and then in direct participation in us, as us — and thereby, in the universe.
One can imagine a star as a similar kind of phenomenon occurring at another scale. Thought is also somewhat similar since it involves bending awareness back upon itself in various ways while observing or ‘reflecting upon’ the resultant symmetries of elements and meaning.
At our own scale this model is uniquely ramified in a vastly more sophisticated way such that we are involved both in the flow and the mirror which the Sun (and the Earth and Moon) are expressions of. Light is one of the transports of flow, bearing qualities of wave and particle when examined. But there are many others…
)-|~ o ~•'o
It’s a mirror, with a (w)hole in it, and a river runs through it.
This is a (purposefully crude1) model of how flow (consciousness/being) generates experiential metadomains through the capacity to encharacter itself via recursive self-interference. Some of these modes become rapidly entrenched, and can use the energy of the flow to sustain themselves as ongoing events which modulate and evolve. Through the lens comprised by certain purposes, some forms of experiential metadomains may be reasonably understood as dimensions.
The simplest and most mysterious metadomain is Time.
We learn to fold the flow of our consciousness (or being) in various ways during our early experiences of enculturation amongst other humans, and the depth of our emotional relations with our early imprintors appears to be a kind of ‘key’ to unlocking the learning prowess we inherit. For these and related reasons, problems in early development can be extremely difficult to amend later (as in the case of wild children). This may be due to the cognitive and relational plasticity of the early phases of our development. We can see that evolution has had to solve a curious problem in assembling complex brains: it must equip them to reasonably prosper without being able to predict anything at all about the culture they will encounter upon birth. A young child deprived of human contact and raised amongst, for example, dogs, can be seen to adopt mind-like paradigms which are not reasonably comprehensible to ‘ordinary’ humans from human cultures. This early plasticity inclines animals toward the adaptive capacity for being ‘imprinted’ (metaphorically) with multiple mind-like paradigms in early childhood. Unfortunately, in our own culture, the vast majority of mlp on offer are incredibly self-serving, primitive, mimetic, and aggressive.
If we examine the developmental history of these flow-folding activities more carefully, a variety of fascinating early landmark experiences may emerge into our memory or imagination. For example, try to recall the first time you were able to switch back and forth, perceptually, between everything and something. This may sound bizarre in language, but there probably was a moment in your early development when just switching back and forth between everything-at-once and a specific entity was probably so giddy as to be comparable to leaping off a cliff. What do you suppose might obstruct your experiential recovery of this capacity?
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One of the first ways we learn to fold this flow back upon itself is the way that produces the experience we call time. This experience is far more variable than we imagine, and vastly more sophisticated than our timekeeping methods imply. We can use a simplified model to begin to explore how temporal experience arises and acquires characters such as flow depth or speed…
Outside of timespace, a seething symmetry of flows and sentience exists which reaches into timespace in part as a developmental gesture (not entirely dissimilar to thinking or learning). It does this by sending flows into and through embodied things and beings. In the image above, I have rendered a simple model of this process as it relates to time.
Imagine little sparks of potential sentience swimming along this path toward emergence within and as a person. They are suspended in a strong current that draws them into your experience, and through you, into the world.
Some may choose to remain in flow early on by joining the first circle. Others proceed toward experiences of differentiation: first as a witness-element (witnessing feedback at the point of recursion), and then, shortly later, as an active element generating and encharactering the recursion based in part upon what lies on the other side of the point of self-penetration — in our actual experience as human beings.
The character of the experiences and activities surrounding the feedback-portal both encharacters and ‘temporalizes’ time; granting it the relatively linear character our common models ascribe to it (a linear record of feedback character and content), as well as ascribing an experiential speed (‘our sense of how much time has passed/is passing’).
Without referents and relationals, the experience of time will tend to become indistinct. With enjoyable referents, the experiential speed of time is often felt to increase. This can be seen as being due to ‘more elements becoming enthusiastically interested in participating’.
Undesirable referents or relations will tend to cause the experience of time to slow. Worry, fear, frustration, boredom and pain can lend temporality a quality of seeming interminability. The participant elements resist flow into undesirable experience.
On the far right there is a ‘pull out’ or temporary cache used by elements having sensed undesirable situations back at the feedback portal, and now want to resist proceeding into direct experience — thus they balk. When you feel like you are ‘not yourself’ or ‘no one is home’ it is, in part, due to this cache being overfull. Quite literally ‘we become unavailable to experience’.
Other metadomains, including those called ‘dimensions’ are informed in similar fashion. Mathematics and language represent unique results of peculiarly sophisticated methods for turning consciousness back upon itself and its sources; in so doing we modify our basic relationship with the flow of awareness, yet nearly no one is aware they are doing this or of how it is happening.
The experience we call ‘dreaming’ is also a direct experience of flow-folding.
If you (recurse) the entire gesture in the image above, one possible result is prophetic awareness. Upon achieving this, your first discovery will probably be that viewing the future generates feedback, which destroys your capacity to use that awareness to make predictions.
The solution to this problem is preserved in the shape of your hand and the relations of its members to one another; however very few will ever resolve it, and, in general, most people who claim to have done so are largely confused.
Footnotes:
1. For simplicity’s sake I have omitted a visual representation of backflow transports, but there are transports within the main flow that move in the opposite direction — back toward the source. These carry feedback from emission back upstream (across every order of instancing) to the source of flow. This comprises a fundamental sensing and communication paradigm — to emit (charactered) flow and receive feedback.
