Published: 06-03-2021
Updated: 19-09-2021
How did this word come to be? How did something come from nothing? These are questions that have pondered many minds of humanity for a long time, especially those of physicists and philosophers. Was the universe always here or did it have a start? How many universes are there? Reality is a peculiar thing. I cannot give you a definitive answer. All I can tell you is what I came to believe through my experiences. The essence of this chapter may be difficult to understand. Bare with me. I will expand on this topic in later chapters and I think it will eventually land.
I’d like to explore what growing a soul means, and how souls may influence the world around them and our existence as conscious beings. The spirits, or sparks, that are us can be seen as shards of God. The soul forms connections between the spark and all we perceive. These connections are like strings between the spark and existence. The bigger the soul of a spirit of a newly born being is, the older the spark that spawned it is. The bigger a new soul grows, the more new connections it has made between the world and the spark.
I think from our perception the universe has always existed. Something has to exist so that nothing can not exist. Nothing is that which cannot be measured, because it simply isn’t there. The governing force of the past is logic. The governing force in the unravelling of the future is chaotic. Our world seems to be travelling a plain in between, where randomness, chaos, and selection lead to the expression of what we see around us. What’s behind us on the timeline existed, what’s in front of us doesn’t exist yet, and the horizon on which the future reveals itself is the now. The now-moment of time seems to be the suspension of non-existence. The future is not set. In the finest details there is uncertainty. This is what allows for choices to be made. I will explain this a little more further down, but there’s a couple of things I need to explain first in order for you to understand how this process forms our reality.
How big the universe is physically is unimportant. I don’t think there are any boundaries towards the biggest or the smallest scales. It just seems counter-intuitive to me that there would be such things as a finite smallest or largest scale, a floor or ceiling that sits between this world and something that is not. Who knows, perhaps if we go big enough we end up at our smallest scales. But when it comes to time, it’s a little different. I think time is one of the few glimpses of God we can get in this life. Heaven could be a timeless eternal pocket just in front of the ‘now’ moment, and hell could be one lagging just behind the now at the moment where events have settled. The now is the membrane on which we travel the physical plane.
How we interpret our world is a matter of perspective. Even though many of us often disagree on many of life’s questions, we could all be a little right about our position. Imagine for a moment a man walking on a sandy plane who encounters a scribble in the sand resembling the capital letter E. A woman approaches from the left, and he says to her: “Look, it’s a capital letter E.” She says: “That’s not an E, it’s a lowercase w.” They debate their points while another man approaches from the right. He overhears the discussion and chimes in: “Surely this is a lowercase letter m.” A second woman comes from the opposite side of our first man, and says: “I think you’re all wrong. Clearly this is the number 3.” They each make their points in a debate, and can’t decide who is right. A fifth person approaches. It’s a child. The four people ask the child’s opinion to close the matter. Unbeknownst to the adults, the child cannot read. Upon being asked the question what it is they see in the scribble, the child walks a few circles around the scribble and concludes: “It’s an unfinished drawing of a camel, these are its two humps.“
Neither of them is right or wrong. Their perspective and knowledge is what led each of them to conclude what they think is true or false. The question remains what the intention was of the person who initially made the mark in the sand. Is one of these five people right? Are they all wrong, and is there another interpretation? Could it be that the scribble was random and meaningless? Perhaps the intention of the artist was to allow people to have this discussion, so they could try to see another point of view. Whatever the case may be, there is something to learn here. Every point of view comes from a perspective. What’s more important than who’s right is how we engage each other on these matters. We have to accept that for some aspects of our physical world there are no conclusive answers. It’s us that give meaning to certain things in life. The world just is what she is. We decide if our interpretation is important or trivial, and if we want to debate each other we have a choice in how we want to do that. Civility is key in order for us to learn to see the other side of things. If we succeed, we literally gain perspective. If all you want is for the other party to be convinced of your position, you’re denying yourself a wider view.
We humans are conscious observers. Observing something is measuring it. The things we observe are part of our experience. We interpret the observation. This is the experience of life. Because we observe consciously we connect our sparks to the physical world in which we live. We become attached to our existence through this experience. This is something that might sound familiar to you. Yes, observing something is very heavily linked to accepting consequences. Accepting consequence is in fact a way to observe the effects of your choices, and in a way measuring them. This sits at the heart of our existence as conscious beings. Observing consciously will connect you to your life experience like the connections that form through accepting consequences of your choices. Conscious observation is equal to accepting something. Reflecting on yourself is observing yourself. Conscious observation of yourself and the world is what connects you to your existence.
The universe is a calculator. It calculates everything perfectly. Everything that can happen in any version of the universe will happen, and when reconstructed it matches all the predicted calculations. When a meteor hits the moon, everything checks out. The transforming and transference of energy, the chemical reactions, every piece of debris follows the exact right trajectory. It all matches up, no mistakes made. This goes for everything in our plane of existence, even the cell machinery inside each of our cells. It’s complex, but in the end perfectly describable, and thus calculable. It is how we are part of the physical world.
We are however more than the sum of our parts, and it’s when we go against our nature when we become most alive. What makes us different from any other chemical reaction in the universe? When we – if only for a brief moment – go against our design, and we hand a homeless man a 50, or help a random kid who’s bike chain got loose, or we pick up a snail crossing the road and put it where it was headed, we awaken. In those small moments we are more alive than we are when we’re not paying attention. It’s in these moments of empathy we temporarily break free from our calculable existence of just going through the motions. A stream of connections flows from our spark when we show compassion. Without empathy we become pawns on a playing board, at the mercy of who’s turn it is to role the dice.
We can measure our world in quantifiable bits. To make this an easier read, I’ll put the words quality/qualities in Italic in the next three passages. Quantity and quality are strongly related in this world, and are part of the choice mechanism. We often conflate quality with quantity, and that makes total sense. When we speak of the quality of a picture we often mean the quantity of pixels. When we talk about the quality of a music file we often mean the quantity of bits per amount of time. When we talk about the quality of a business we often mean the quantity of its production. When we talk about the quality of food we often mean the quantity of nutritional value. When we talk about the quality of a person’s life we often mean the quantity of their lifespan. I think most if not all perceived qualities can be linked to a quantity of sorts. Even the quality of stories can be measured by the amount of hormones and/or brain activity they cause inside the body of the assessor, and is as such a quantity.
Still I surmise they are not the same thing, and are emergent properties of this world that can behave like the opposite of one another. Whenever people shift their focus from quality to increase quantity, the quality goes down. Quality roots in love, quantity roots in fear. The quality of something may depend on the moment, on the person, and on which scale you use. Quantity is the same for each observer. While the thing on which you base the quality of something may be quantifiable, it is unpredictable which quantifiable property will attest to the quality of something at any given time for any given person. Context matters in quality. And sometimes the quality of something can be found in the lack or absence of a quantity. A quantity is something you can measure on an unchanging scale. Ten ducks now were ten ducks before I counted them and will be ten ducks if someone else counts them.
Quality and quantity can behave like opposites in our world, even though they both can be described as measurements. They sit on each side of a balance. When you have much of one, you have less of the other. This seems counter-intuitive. The key here is that when we speak of quality the emphasis is on the experience, not on the measurement. When quantity is concerned, it’s the other way around. When we think of something from the perspective of its quantity, it roots in the fear of not having enough or running out of something, however slightly. When we think of something from the perspective of its quality, it roots in the love of the experience of something. Some qualities may be impossible to measure. They will differ from person to person, or for the same observer at different times. You may find the quality of a certain food excellent where the same food may barely be passable for another person, or you may change your mind over time. Quality is part of an ever changing perspective while the perspective of quantity is fixed. Qualities arise from the development of our universe, which is constantly in some state of change. Love is a driver for this change. Fear is a driver for stagnancy.
Everything behind us on the timeline happened. We can measure the quantity of the things behind us. If we reverse engineer an event quantitatively the sum of the event checks out. But the unknowns in front of us are full of chances. It is my conviction that everything that can happen, does in fact happen, each in another universe. And I believe this is true to its extremes. For every tiny detail, every photon that took a slightly different path, another universe spawns. We as conscious observers travel the membrane of things undecided. From our perspective, we seem to follow one timeline, but the things that happened in our past are just part of the past that fits our journey. Your individual consciousness resides in the journey towards the universes with which you most strongly connect, but you share that journey with every other being. You cannot just pick the universe you like; the universe towards which you grow into is a group effort. It is this journey that I see as the purpose of life. Our predictions of the future will always hit an unknown at some point. Knowing the future would negate the experience of life. We couldn’t grow wiser if we knew the outcome of what has yet to happen.
Where we are conscious observers, a camera is a non-conscious observer. It observes and stores. There is no conscious interpretation, no spark to connect. It is a measuring device that measures quantities. Only we can experience and assess quality where a camera cannot, ever. They may be equipped with software that can detect the sharpest image but in the end those measurements are on an unchanging scale. A camera can’t know quality from quantity. We have become used to having a camera with us at all times and we’ve allowed ourselves to think we can let it record the views and moments we hold dear, so the memories don’t fade away.
The opposite is true. What really happened is that we’ve stopped cherishing the moments of life right on the moment in which they occurred. We rarely view most of the photos we’ve taken and videos we’ve recorded. We’ve turned ourselves into collectors of photos and videos, and publishers of this media on our online accounts. Because capturing and publishing media have become the goal we’ve grown into non-conscious observers ourselves, just like the cameras we use to create this media. We just collect and store, much like a device. Because we let the camera observe and our digital photo books store we’ve become detached from experiencing our observations consciously. It has disconnected us from experiencing life. Better said, it has hindered our souls from growing because we aren’t making connections between the world and our sparks as much.
Put your camera down. Few photos or video recordings can do the real thing justice. Stop chasing that perfect capture. Learn to observe with your own senses. You need to understand that when you wish to capture all your special moments you are making that choice out of the fear of losing those moments. Special moments aren’t lost. Every experience shapes you, whether you remember them or not. I don’t want to discourage you from owning a camera, and I am not trying to forbid photography from being a valid profession, but just be mindful of your intentions behind every capture and how they will affect you. Take much less photos and videos, and you’ll see that when quantity goes down, the quality of those fewer photos and videos will go up. They’ll be something worth cherishing, and something you’ll actually look at, not stamps in your gigantic stamp collection. Don’t just take the photos and videos, but cherish them often as time goes by. And choose to observe the special moments of your life with your own senses by default without the camera and you’ll reconnect yourself to your life experience. You’ll soon notice how you shed a lot of your fear and start loving your existence on a much deeper level.
Time will continue to flow forward like a conveyor belt, and our experiences are like one dimensional elastics we hook onto anything that resonates with us when it passes us by on that belt. By making these connections we influence the passage of time. Making connections prevents time from speeding away into a meaningless form of existence. Our conduct in this world has a far greater influence on that world than most of us think. This world manifests through our choices and willingness to see ourselves and what drives us. We need to be conscious beings for this universe to work the way it does. If we can learn to love ourselves we also learn to love this world, and all aspects of it. Even the darkness. It’s not an easy path, though if it were it wouldn’t be worth walking.
Connections you’ve made can be broken. This happens under the influence of choice. For us humans, all choices are conscious choices. Those that live in denial may not realise they make conscious choices, and that should come as no surprise. The only way to fool yourself is if you don’t see yourself. You can’t truly fool yourself. It’s like playing hide and seek with yourself; that only works if you don’t see yourself. If you don’t see yourself you aren’t connected to yourself. Only if you don’t see yourself can you hide from yourself. Everyone that is fooling themselves knows deep inside they are doing just that. Confronting such people with this will often result in anger, because acknowledging it would also mean acknowledging they’ve been fools, which is a painful experience. The anger in the response is similar to an angry response had you pinched them hard. It would hurt them and could result in them taking offence. Insecure people don’t like to hear the truth about themselves because it hurts them in a similar way.
Strings that were broken can reform, but since that would happen in a different point in time, it’s always going to be a new unique connection. It will never feel completely the same. Just think of every friendship or love you rekindled after it broke. It’s never the same thing. You cannot undo past events. The balance weighs all choices, even the choices we wish to undo. When you die in friendship with God, your spark will return to the source and is presented a few choices. I image it can either reincarnate or stay in the astral plane, in some form or another. I see that as becoming one with God again, or becoming an Angel at his side. Dying in friendship with God has nothing to do with religion. I believe God looks at what’s in your heart, and if you were a force for good or a force for evil. The souls remain in the connections they’ve made during their lifetimes. If a spark chooses to reincarnate, a new life brings new opportunities and new risks. If the spark inside fades its disconnected soul will become part of the dark wills. But if it doesn’t, the spark will host a soul that’s ever more connected to this world. Some people walking this Earth are hosts to very old sparks, which have lived many lives.
You as a person could’ve been many souls in many different lives. Through our lifetimes our sparks will make connections through their souls with anyone and anything it resonates well with. This can be anything; sounds (music), smells, tastes, objects, crafts, animals, emotions, stories, places, seasons, climates, and even other souls and sparks. The connections from previous lives you’re born with help shape your path in life. They explain part of your innate interests. The strings of connections that have recently been made are short and thick. Those are the strings even a barely self aware will can notice easily. The longer ago a connection was made, the more the string stretches out, making it longer and thinner. Connect with something over a long period of time and you grow the amount of strings, making the connection stronger and stronger over time.
Some of us are especially sensitive to noticing these connections, and some not so much. I think we are all aware of them, if only for a little while, when someone we love has died. A necklace they’ve worn for many years will have many strings, and those connections are easily noticeable by the loved ones, but also a single short and thick string between their spark and the fork they ate their last meal with is noticeable with relative ease. Those things feel different. It’s not something you can quantitatively measure, but something perceived. The person whose passing you mourn can feel closer to you through those objects. Over time those strings will all stretch out and only those things they most strongly connected with may stand out for those on this side of the veil of existence. They form a thick bundle, stretched out over a longer period of time. The stronger you connected with someone or something, the stronger the strings elastic pull will be.
And some are even aware of the strings between our universe and which I call ‘the path not taken’. Our universe is constantly splitting into new versions of itself, and we’re riding the wave of where they split off. I believe it is this splitting off that creates the time phenomenon. And if we stopped connecting to our existence, time would speed away. Conscious choices are like deviations in the universe that force the universe to halt and split off, while we connect to the version of the universe that fits the consequences of our choices. But the universes that are close to us still each have a version of you connecting to things. Those individuals resemble you, still, but are a version of you that took a different path, however slightly. One way to strongly connect to yourself is by being as conscious as possible of the paths you did not take. In those universes are parts of you connecting to the same things separated by space and time. You’ll find parts of yourself there. If you can connect to yourself this way you can understand yourself even better. There are properties of you in those versions of yourself that you otherwise would not have known about. You’ll connect to properties of yourself hidden in this universe, and this will make you more aware of yourself.
You may be aware of other versions of yourself sometimes. Connecting strongly to yourself will give you a stronger sense of prescience, because you will be able to sense which possible futures could’ve been. I think when we do quantum experiments, like the double slit experiment, these other universes close by influence the outcome. The universe doesn’t reveal this most fundamental of its mechanics to us. It’s about consciousness. For most physicists a mechanical observer equals a conscious observer, but this simply isn’t correct. An observer isn’t equal to just any observer. We can never fully understand the physics of this if we don’t understand these quantum experiments are trying to peak under the hood of our very consciousness. God will not reveal this magic to us before we are truly ready. We couldn’t understand it in our current state anyway.
Religious people sometimes wonder why God would allow evil to exist, but to me it makes total sense. Without lies we wouldn’t appreciate truth. Without injustice we would not appreciate justice. Without dishonesty we would not appreciate honesty. Without darkness we would not appreciate light. And so, we would not appreciate good if there was no evil. It is a necessity. In order to make something from nothing, you’ll end up with something on either side of the balance in a choice based universe. Each positive creates an opposite in the negative. You’ll see this symmetry all around us in the physical world. God is the creator of existence. I believe he created it for good to exist. We are all part of him in our connections to our perception, as non-existence is his opposite in having no connections. His love for this world is countered by the fear of evil beings. If we humans were not given the choice between good and evil, we could never truly be either. In the eyes of God it doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not. What matters is what’s in your heart and if you reveal truths to the best of your abilities and don’t partake in lies. And what the truth is depends on your perspective.
~reckneya