My Big TOE
AWAKENING – DISCOVERY — INNER WORKINGS
A TRILOGY UNIFYING PHILOSOPHY, PHYSICS, AND METAPHYSICS
Thomas Campbell
Book 2 Discovery – Abridged Version – Part 1
Our System (OS) is defined to be PMR (Physical Matter Reality — our physical universe) plus the subset of NPMR; [a specific part of Nonphysical Matter Reality (NPMR)] that is interactive with PMR.
Section 3
Man in the Loop How You Fit into the Big Picture — Ego, Body, Mind, and Purpose
Introduction to Section 3
Remember: Open minded skepticism is the order of the day. Use it to fill up the void left by temporarily suspending your beliefs. All right, let’s get back to work.
It is not that we are separate from space-time and live within it, as we live in a house but are not part of the house. We experience space-time as our minds interpret and process the limited perceptions gathered by our senses. Contrary to popular belief, space-time is not a physical construct that we physical beings live within, but rather the result of a rule-set that defines the experiential virtual reality that we perceive. Because of our limited physical perception-based experience, it appears to us that we live or exist within a space-time universe when in fact space-time is nothing more than the constraints that bound the experience of an individuated consciousness enrolled in PMR 101.
I know that this is confusing, but by the end of Section 4, you will have no trouble understanding that the physical reality you physically experience is merely the experience our consciousness interprets as physical reality. If your sensed physical reality and what your consciousness interprets as physical reality seem the same to you it is because your culture has convinced you that consciousness is a derivative of the physical body. The experience that our senses interpret as physical reality leads to the conclusion that physical reality is an external reality that our body interacts with (reality is defined by our physical interaction with it). On the other hand, the experience that our consciousness interprets as physical reality leads to the conclusion that physical reality is an internal reality created by the perceptions of consciousness — a virtual physical existence that is defined by our mind’s interaction with the space-time rule-set. The first assigns perception directly to the body, while the second assigns perception directly to the consciousness and only indirectly to a virtual body constrained to perceive a local reality defined by a given rule set. An individual mind (an individuated unit of consciousness) engaged in an interactive multi-player virtual reality must experience, act, and interact within the bounds prescribed by the causal rule-set that defines that particular reality. Any consistent high fidelity virtual reality must follow a specific rule set and will appear to be physical to the individuals experiencing it.
Clarity should emerge in Section 4 as you begin to understand that the ultimate source of your experience is not what you perceive as your local physical reality. Your physical reality is an interpreted virtual reality that only appears physical. Have patience and you shall see that this concept is scientifically and logically sound.
Individuated consciousness within AUM is roughly analogous to a two-dimensional bed sheet that some children have stuck their hands into, pulling the sheet down around their wrists and forearms to make individuated hand puppets. Each hand puppet is an individual animated thing, and can interact with the other puppets (by grabbing them perhaps). Yet for all their individuality (fat, thin, small, large, aggressive, calm), each hand puppet is part of the same sheet, existing only as protrusions in the sheet relative to flatter, more uniform parts of the sheet. The puppets exist as three-dimensional variations in the two-dimensional sheet. They are all part of the same sheet, but exist as individual extensions of the two dimensional sheet into the third dimension.
It is worth noting that the extensions into the third dimension must be maintained by constraints. Imagine a rubber band that goes over the puppet and around the wrist of the child’s hand. Remove the constraint and the sheets protrusion into the third dimension quickly disappears. The sheet maintains its natural two dimensional existence unless some sort of constraint forces it to bulge in the third dimension.
Similarly we PMR physical beings, each with our personal individuated consciousness, are all part of the same AUM consciousness. We are individual, yet at the same time we are all one with AUM, the fundamental source consciousness. Our individual existence, like the hand puppets, is the result of constraints defining a dimensional variation in consciousness that individuates a unique entity with free will. Space-time is the virtual medium through which the rules of engagement (constraints that define our interactive experience with other “players”) are applied. Players are defined as anything (beings, objects, or energy) that may become interactive with us.
Clearly, growing up within a larger reality has much more to do with raising the quality of your consciousness than accumulating information. What matters most is the development of wisdom, understanding, and the capacity to love — which are not primarily intellectual achievements. As you grow up, you learn to synthesize your experience data into larger and larger perspectives until eventually everything is seen to be interactive, interrelated, and a part of everything else. (The love I am referring to here is an attitude, a value, a way of interacting and being, and needs no specific object on which to focus.)
Facts and intellectual knowledge can help point in the right direction and perhaps pick around the edges of how to grow quality, but to truly “get it” requires that one go beyond rational PMR causal analysis. Analysis fails because you can never collect more than a small percentage of the relevant facts required for a rational, logical conclusion when dealing with Big Picture issues — and because love is not an intellectual result. Love is the result of low-entropy consciousness.
The evolution of bright complex consciousness from dim awareness — does that seem unlikely?
You, as part of AUM, are simply an individuated consciousness. I know that may seem strange, but making this a reasonable proposition and explaining how it works is what Sections 4 and 5 are all about. AUM is consciousness, thought, operational knowledge, idea, and awareness. Consciousness represents the most basic form of energy — a self-relational digital media that can be structured through evolutionary processes to reduce its average entropy. You are a portion, an infinitesimal smidgen, of this AUM- consciousness-thing and as such, you share the attributes and abilities of all consciousness. Because the capacity of your particular consciousness — your personal evolutionary potential — is great, so is your responsibility for its development and use.
AUM, like any complex system, has evolved both structural and dynamic components. Its structural components are objectives, values, dimension (specialized calculation space), memory, and patterns (rules).
Its dynamic components are time intent, motivation, intellect and will. Value based awareness, intelligence, and purpose are created, sustained, driven, animated, and motivated by the evolutionary imperative to improve the functionality of the system through better organization (entropy reduction).
The imperative to implement the Fundamental Process is the prime mover of progress. AUM is consciousness (as opposed to has consciousness) and it eventually acts, changes state, and evolves through the exercise of will or intent — self-aware consciousness in control of itself. If you really want to (for poetic reasons) or really need to (for reasons of emotional comfort), you may say that all things (our universe, all PMRs and NPMRs, and all the beings therein) are manifestations of AUM’s will and made of AUM’s substance (self- configuring digital organization). You could also say that we brainy people, with our minds full of fully operational and original thoughts and ideas, are created in AUM’s image (along with a varied collection of thoughtful dogs, cats, foxes, pigs, monkeys, and computers). Don’t get lost here: I am talking about our minds, our consciousness, not our adorable little bodies.
Now we can take one more fold in our bed-sheet analogy. As before, AUM is the sheet, we and everything in our reality are the sheet hand puppets protruding into the space-time dimension, and the energy that animates the little fingers, hands, and arms is our individuated portion of AUM’s conscious awareness, which is expressed through our individual free will. The sheet and its protruding dimensions are engaged in a program of continuous quality improvement administered by the Fundamental Process of evolution acting upon a multi-leveled consciousness-evolution fractal ecosystem. By the end of Section 4 this will be clear. For now, merely entertain the possibility that our bodies and all the objective matter in our 3D world are the products of constrained consciousness and a rule-based virtual sense perception.
Do not fall into habituated anthropomorphic concepts or you may start thinking of AUM as a person. It will be more productive to think of AUM as a thing, a complex consciousness system, a big cellular quantized thought-energy-thing that constitutes the One Source of All That Is. Do not conceive of AUM as a super-human intellect — yourself extrapolated to god-sized proportions and qualities. Resist the urge to turn AUM into an ancient looking old geezer with a long white beard playing with his pet people, or all manner of silliness will mystically erupt from the great void.
Where we human-types place our attention depends on the challenges of the Fundamental Process. Much of our energy is dedicated to our physical being (issues of survival and procreation). However, AUM does not have that distraction. Evolution for AUM is more of an up- close and personal take-charge sort of thing. Perhaps as we get better at genetic engineering and cloning we will get a dim glimmer of AUM’s position relative to influencing its own evolution. Until then, it is best not to puff up our self-importance so much that it gets in the way of our ability to see the truth — whatever it might be.
In the meantime, if lumpy consciousness sheets seem distressingly cold and impersonal as a source of our being, I have a practical solution. Anyone wanting a warm fuzzy relationship that gushes unconditional love, which is focused individually on, and directly at, a needful, and oh, so, deserving you should… get a dog! Don’t be confused by the forward and backward spelling thing: Simply look for a genuine, guaranteed warm and fuzzy d-o-g.
Besides loving, dogs are straightforward, honest, faithful, loyal, and forgiving. They are seldom demanding, revengeful, jealous, angry, self-important, or into fear and dogma (egotistical). They will never ever tell you to go to hell. They are never rude or sassy and never forget to flush the toilet or to turn off the lights that they have turned on. They will not run up charges on your credit card or dent your car. Better yet, they never drop their clothes on the floor and will never invite their mother to come live with you. No dog has ever smoked a cigar or invited his friends over to drink beer and watch football on TV.
Dogs are happy to exist on your leftovers and eat your garbage. That, ladies and gentlemen, is as warm and fuzzy as it gets if you are looking for a relationship that takes little-to-no effort on your part. That is what we are all looking for, isn’t it? A no-fault (at least not ours) low maintenance relationship in which we are unconditionally loved and forgiven because we exist and meet the basic superficial requirements — what could be better than that? That is what you truly want, right? No problemo! Go get a d-o-g!
If you maintain the letters in the right order, you will happily find that dogs deliver warm fuzzies all the time instead of only in relation to your needs, beliefs, and fears. And here is the best part — dog ownership never generates internal pressures that would lead you to be hypocritical or self-righteous — you can just be yourself. Your dog will love you however you are. Even if you are not nice to your dog and don’t love it — it will still love and adore you above all others! Its love is widely spread, deeply sincere, and truly unconditional — a being worthy of your emulation, if not outright worship.
Look, I agree with you! There are magnificent and endless sources of genuine spiritual warm-fuzzies, but you have to work hard to grow up enough to access them. They are not easy, low maintenance, or superficial. They are not focused, even in a small way, on what you get for meeting requirements. That concept was spawned to support a membership drive. Instead, they are about your capacity to embody and apply (give) absolute unconditional love. Performing rituals and doing dogma doesn’t get it. Belief (pro or con) can, at best, generate a self-focused ego-centric “I feel good about myself, my faith, and my belief” warm pseudo-fuzzy.
If you ever get to know the real thing, you will never again settle for a pseudo-fuzzy.
It is generally accepted (among humans) that we Homo sapiens have the most advanced intelligence and are the most thoughtful of all the earth-creatures. Does that make us more AUM-like — closer to the source? Do you think that we must be AUM’s favorite creation, or most amusing experiment? Humans are no doubt exceptionally clever. What other species could create no fewer than five entirely independent ways to destroy all life as we know it (nuclear bombs, global warming, toxic waste, pollution, and excessive non-ecological global resource consumption)? Such creativity and awesome intelligence makes you feel proud, doesn’t it? What’s wrong with this picture? What term is missing from the human equation?
Our species has always intuitively known that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, we just never appreciated how dangerous or how little. Ah, we beings of limited 3D awareness — what you see is what you get — that is the beauty of us, and the opportunity of us. Our awareness-limited, physical experience-based, interactive human community excels at creating wonderful opportunities to grow the individual and collective quality of our consciousness.
Limited awareness guarantees that our interaction within PMR accurately and immediately reflects the quality of our being. You have only to consider young children or your favorite furry critter to realize how a perspective that is limited to a relatively little picture produces transparent and straightforward interactions and reactions. For an individuated consciousness such as you, limited awareness produces learning opportunities within a relatively simple and straightforward interactive virtual environment with immediate results-related feedback and consequences.
The complex, duplicitous, and anything-but-straightforward minds that we appear to have only look like that from a limited viewpoint where insignificant variations of fear and ego appear to be vastly more important than they actually are. The events that we wring our hands and gnash our teeth over day after day are typically drawn from the mishmash of trivial details that define our personal soap operas. What appears vitally important to us in the little picture of belief blindness and struggling egos is often completely inconsequential from a Big Picture perspective.
You are aware in the little picture so that you may eventually grow your quality until it becomes capable of direct participation in the Big Picture. Aimlessly wandering about in a fear-based ego-driven little picture soap opera where you get to write your own script is not exactly on the fast track to success. That you may be a good enough and lucky enough script writer to become rich and famous in PMR is irrelevant.
In order to have a meaningful opportunity to do it right, you must also have the opportunity to do it wrong. From the perspective of the Big Picture, physical reality provides an optimal nursery for budding consciousness.
The typical self-assessment of human mental complexity and cleverness is based on our self-serving species-definition of “intelligence” and “cleverness” as the ability to influence, manipulate, control, and dominate others (natural and man-made environments, plants, critters, other people, and everything else). That is why we clever humans develop and evolve most of our technologies and social systems around the needs of war, defense, trade, and communications and why we have both accidentally and purposely generated multiple capacities to destroy the diverse life of our planet along with ourselves. Because of our needs, wants, desires, fears, ignorance, beliefs, and ego (lack of consciousness quality), we apply much of the mental energy of our species to issues of control and dominance — internationally, nationally, and personally. Cleverness, it seems, is primarily in the eye of the beholder.
Nevertheless, we physical beings are, from the viewpoint of a less limited consciousness, exceedingly simple and straightforward; our motivations, intentions, and interactions accurately and clearly demonstrate the quality of our consciousness in everything we do, say, think, and feel. A less limited consciousness finds our machinations within the physical to be transparent. Our quality, or lack thereof, is obvious; we cannot hide what we are. I have to ask: What do your motivations and actions say about the quality of your consciousness? That is a good question to ponder (you should paste that on the refrigerator door of your mind to remind you to ask it often) because, one day not that far off, you will need to deal with the answer.
The results of our actions (the environment we create) as well as the reactions of other people to us, provide immediate feedback to assess the quality of our intent. We create our reality through the implementation of our intent-choices and how we interpret our perceptions — the results are most often precisely what we need and deserve (can use) to stimulate productive growth. In general, if we do it wrong (make the wrong choices), we get pain. If we do it right, the resultant spiritual growth spreads sunshine everywhere. Here, “right” and “wrong” are used in the evolutionary sense. Right and wrong in the evolutionary sense are the same as absolute right and wrong in the motivational sense when the Fundamental Process of evolution is focused on improving the quality of our consciousness. The previous sentence actually makes sense, but you may need to think about it a while. Relative right and wrong often has its roots in absolute right and wrong, however, the result may be strangely twisted by belief systems of all sorts (cultural, religious, personal, and scientific).
All pain does not come from making the wrong choices. Only self- inflicted (internally caused) pain, which makes up the bulk of our daily ration of pain and suffering, has wrong choices at its fundamental source. You may occasionally experience either small or great pain from external sources; these usually reflect the existence of randomness within our lives.
It is this simple: Sometimes the ball takes a bounce and hits you squarely between the eyes, and sometimes the cookie crumbles into dust before you get to taste it. Or, in the pithy, if somewhat crude, words of the famous cinematic philosopher-genius Forest Gump: “Shit happens.”
External and internal causes of pain can be mixed and mingled together. However, most of us most of the time wrongly believe that our self-created pain is actually externally derived. That belief makes us feel better in the short run. We do not want to see ourselves as the primary source of our unhappiness and dissatisfaction, though that is almost always the truth. It is easier and more comfortable for us to believe that we are the victims of others, or simply are unlucky. Sometimes that is the case — but that condition is the rare exception rather than the general rule.
The general rule is that most of the pain in your life is self-inflicted while very little is thrust upon you from the outside. We believe the opposite because an external enemy is always easier to accept and defeat than an internal one. It is as easy to see how this rule applies to others, as it is difficult to see how it applies to oneself.
Right and wrong in the social or cultural sense is relative and customary — often a diluted and distorted shadow of absolute right and wrong. Absolute right and wrong are operationally defined to optimize the growth (evolution) of the quality of our consciousness, or equivalently, our spiritual development. “Right” intents and choices help us improve the quality of our being, whereas “wrong” intents and choices stimulate no positive growth and may cause us to lose some previously earned quality. Absolute right and wrong (intents, motivations, choices, and actions) are defined and differentiated by the effect they have on the average entropy of the system.
One can learn from either right or wrong choices. PMR is designed to serve as a learning lab — a place where units of individuated consciousness (sometimes referred to as beings, entities, or souls) can grow up (improve their quality) by exercising their free will intent within a virtual system of direct interactive experience and feedback. Many other subsets of NPMRN are also configured as learning labs — some employ versions of space-time while others do not. Each provides a local reality system for its inhabitants who see themselves as physical and all other realities as nonphysical. All reality systems are virtual; hence there is no actual distinction between real and virtual. Everything is consciousness, a vast system of self-modifying digital organization evolving toward lower entropy.
Most of the time we are provided a near optimal learning opportunity, by circumstances that we have custom-designed to fit our individual needs. Moment by moment, with immediate and obvious results, these growth opportunities stare us in the face or bop us between the eyes. Could any learning laboratory be more efficient than our beloved 3D space-time? I doubt it. AUM knew what it was doing (evolutionarily speaking that is) when it invented (evolved) the concept of limited virtual physical realities.
We are like rats in a maze where wrong turns meet with an immediate electrical shock. We are in a wonderfully complex pudding-maze; to succeed, we must taste our way through it. What could be easier or more efficient? We make the wrong choices and are motivated by the wrong reasons and… Zap! We get the electric shock and make ourselves miserable. We make the right choices for the right reasons and we create happy, productive, rewarding lives (we get the cheese). This is simple evolution where success is simultaneously its own criteria, evaluation, and reward. Consciousness is in the process of evolving its way through an evolutionary maze of intent, choice, interaction, and reaction.
I should point out a few basic facts about evolving the quality of your consciousness in our reality. Although the results of your actions (feedback) are immediate and obvious, you can ignore them or misinterpret them if your ego is making too big a fuss. Then, it may take a while before the situation degenerates to the point where the resulting dysfunction becomes impossible to ignore or excuse. As in all learning situations, being attentive — paying attention in class — is absolutely essential to an efficient learning process. Don’t ask for an easier maze — you won’t get one. For those who typically slip through demanding situations by avoiding the things that are most difficult, let me point out that there are absolutely no shortcuts, no end runs, no acceptable excuses, and no way to quit.
That anthropomorphized little old man with the long white beard that you can hustle favors from by believing the correct things and performing the correct rituals is a product of your little picture culture and a fearful, needy mind looking for the easy way out. No one is handing out judgments and calling the plays from the sidelines. Not even a non-anthropomorphic AUM thought-system-thing is likely to be paying attention to any particular individual human bacterium in the PMR petri dish. Humanity, as you know it and think of it, is not central to the machinations of the Big Picture. You should be proud to be a bit player, not disappointed because you are not the star. As far as I can tell, no reality or dimension is more central than the others; all are bit players (or equivalently, all are stars) playing their specific parts.
Only a fat-ugly ego could care a flip about the relative importance of earth-based humans. The relative value and comparative status of our species holds no meaning for an advanced consciousness such as yourself, but you wouldn’t believe how many other folks think that humanity is the crème de la crème of sentient existence. These egotists can become deflated, resistive, and defensive when you tell them that, in the Big Picture, they are not particularly important. When you are used to being fantastically magnificent and superior — a legend in your own mind — it is difficult to see yourself as a common bit-player in a much larger drama.
The process of improving the quality of your consciousness is a matter of simple evolution — much easier than a fish learning to walk on land and breathe air. Live and learn, do and die, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — you know the drill. Take your place alongside the other sentient chunks of individuated digital consciousness, both physical and nonphysical. Neither you, nor your species, nor your local reality is more important, special, or superior relative to the gazillions of others.
Feelings of superiority developed in relation to other obviously inferior PMR beings and life-forms (mankind is above all other creatures of the earth) is an error of perception that has generated many particularly destructive belief systems and caused much damage to biosphere-earth — as well as greatly retarded individual human progress toward greater consciousness quality. Because consciousness is an attribute of individuals, all conscious entities are vitally important in their own way: each has its own mission and purpose and is an important contributor to the whole. All are different, all have their own challenges, and none is fundamentally superior or inferior.
Think of consciousness within NPMRN as a vast interdependent evolving ecosystem. Any part feeling superior to any other part is the result of ignorance, belief, and ego existing within a little picture perspective. Actions motivated by feelings of superiority are bound to lead to destructive results for all members of the larger system, including those feeling superior. How superior is it to shoot oneself in the foot over and over again?
Now that you are feeling sufficiently humble, let me continue using the ecosystem metaphor to show you the other side of this coin.
Within the larger eco-mind-system designed to evolve consciousness quality, PMR can be thought of as a particular biome. Consciousness ecosystems are not based on the evolutionary pressures of mutual survival and propagation, but evolve to improve themselves, to lower their entropy.
Where survival and propagation represent predominate environmental constraints, individuals are not as important, in terms of evolution, as are the groups they belong to. In biological evolution, superior individuals either impact a larger species-level profitability statistic, or their potential contribution is lost. An individual’s impact on the success of an established species is nearly infinitesimal. Progress accrues through a large number of very small individual contributions that all point in a similar direction. In biological systems it is the continuous immortal group, not the discontinuous mortal individual that is the primary beneficiary of evolution.
Within a consciousness system such as NPMRN, individual immortal conscious entities continuously evolve and contribute gains in their personal consciousness quality (lowered entropy) directly to the whole of which they are a continuing part. A single conscious entity has the potential to make a very significant, direct, and wholly independent contribution to the larger consciousness ecosystem as it seeks profitability on a personal level. As each individuated consciousness evolves, the larger consciousness system (AUM) evolves as well.
Survival based interdependencies between groups and the evolution of species within PMR is replaced by personal growth and the evolution of individual consciousness within NPMR. That is how you can be one of a gazillion entities in some experimental consciousness petri dish and at the same time be individually very important to the whole. Your personal contribution is not limited by a group function or a slow uncertain pass-along process with strong random components; it is simply measured by the quality that your consciousness brings to the table. Quality runs the gamut from the severely limited, high-entropy, fear-based, self-serving ego, to the unlimited, low entropy, unconditional love exhibited by AUM- consciousness. As you move from the former to the latter, your personal significance relative to the whole increases dramatically.
Though even a brilliant bacterium must remain in its petri dish as a part of its group, an evolved consciousness can outgrow the culture within its originally assigned petri dish and one day join the laboratory staff! You are an independent (with free will) individuated consciousness containing the potential of AUM — no individual, species, or group affiliations can help or hinder your effort to become a more significant entity. Thus, feeling superior about your group affiliation (galaxy, planet, species, race, culture, religion, nation, profession, education, or socio-economic status) is simply counterproductive. (In an aside near the end of Chapter 20 of this book, I will explain why it is that a highly evolved, low entropy consciousness has no sense of superiority.)
In the Big Picture, the quality of your consciousness determines whether you are of infinitesimal or great stature, of minor or major consequence to the whole, have a job in the lab or are wallowing around cluelessly in the petri-dish.
Implement the Fundamental Process! Make each choice count. Get with the program. Evolve your being. You are doing it now and you have no choice. You exist, you are an individuated consciousness and you cannot stop existing. Your physical death initiates a process that eventually creates a new maze for you to explore — your learning is cumulative. You are a participant in, as well as a driver of, the consciousness cycle.
You are in the game whether you want to be or not. Every day you are evolving more toward the positive or negative pole of being — you cannot stay neutral or remain stationary. Denial and ignorance are inconsequential and affect nothing — your permission or willingness to be involved is completely irrelevant. You are in the process of actively evolving your consciousness now — you are doing it for better or for worse. The only questions are how well and how efficiently are you doing it? Are you progressing or regressing, and if so, how steadily and at what rate? Is your growth process efficient? Is your learning rate optimal?
Shock or cheese? Jeez Louise, that’s a tough one — let me think about it. You can be confused and non-productive (perhaps fail) if (1) you do not understand the game and therefore do not know that your reality is actually an amazing maze of many choices that is driving the evolution of your consciousness — therefore remaining purposeless, pointless and without focus — not even trying. (2) your taste buds are so twisted and confused because of beliefs, self-absorption, attachments, needs, and fears (ego) that you cannot, or will not, taste the difference between miserable, arrogant, unproductive pudding, and loving, growth inducing, delicious and satisfying pudding. In other words, you cannot differentiate between electric shocks and fine white-cheddar cheese. You therefore lose your sense of direction and have no means to distinguish up from down, dark from light, or progress from regression.
If an individual rat in the maze sees no point in exploring and cannot differentiate between electrical shocks and cheese, it is in for a long and difficult training experience. Poor rat! What a miserably frustrating life! Not much progress is expected. Shocks become an ordinary accepted part of life and are no big deal! “That’s life,” says this rat with resignation. To this particular rat, the world (lifelike within its local reality) may seem random, existential, nihilistic, mystical, or driven by an unfathomable, jealous, vengeful, or demanding god.
To a collection of such rats, cynicism, self-pity, anger, victim-hood, resignation, escapism, recreational drug use, as well as a fascination and obsession with sex and the symbols of power (including vicarious violence and domination through entertainment, competition and sport; conspicuous consumption; macho-vehicles and aggressive driving; and the ownership of weapons) become common personal strategies to deal with the anxiety (inadequacy, insecurity, and powerlessness) generated by fear. Value, purpose, objectives, and goals of being are lost, in a confusing whirl of fine shades of relative, meaningless gray, while the original concepts of black and white are lost.
These hapless rats will be driven and animated by their ego — their immediate needs, wants, desires, fears, and beliefs.
Do you sometimes feel that unreasonable conditions for growth are forced upon you?
The Fundamental Process, as it applies itself to an individuated consciousness, is not personal regardless of how helpless resignation, ego, anger, paranoia, cynicism, or self-pity might construe it.
If you think it is personal, you are probably placing yourself too high up on the consciousness chain.
Nevertheless, evolution is patient. Patient enough to let that rat suffer in confused discomfort until it eventually progresses its awareness and ambition to the point it can evolve a solution. The rat has free will and some basic intelligence, while evolution has all the time in the world. This rat is on its own to sink or swim by its choices. It does have one advantage, however: It gets (as most rats do) all the help it can profitably use from its nonphysical friends who do care and understand the significance of individual progress.
The situation is neither hopeless, nor random, nor beyond your control — it is not even that difficult. Let’s talk a moment about free will and making choices. What we do is not of primary importance; why we do it is what counts. The intent or motivation is the choice. Thus, our free will choices are primarily choices of motivation and intent — why we do what we do. Only secondarily are they choices of doing. What we actually do (the action we take) is the first result of our choice of intent, and drives a feedback mechanism, which is very good but not perfect, particularly in the short-term.
This is not biological evolution we are talking about, where the key process driver is what you do. In the evolution of consciousness, motivation and intent are the key drivers of evolutionary process. What you do is secondary to why you do it. The right choice for the wrong reason is an oxymoron and does not exist (I am being tricky- picky here with the semantics to make the point that the development or selection of the intent is the choice that I am referring to).
Recall that right motivation, intent, and action generally result in a decrease of entropy within your consciousness, whereas wrong motivation, intent, and action generally result in an increase of entropy within your consciousness. This is how absolute right and wrong are defined. Right and wrong are differentiated by how they affect your spiritual quality, or equivalently, the quality of your consciousness. Relative (local) right and wrong are largely derived from our sense of absolute right and wrong, but are also dependent upon fad, fashion, culture, and personal, social, and political circumstances. My Big TOE, being science, is only concerned with absolute right and wrong — where an entropy measurement, rather than a personal PMR viewpoint, determines which is which.
Unvarying absolute right and wrong may appear to be dependent upon the extent of each individual’s quality and thus relative to the individual; however, the process of entropy reduction is the same for all individuated consciousness — you, me, Rover, and AUM. Absolute right and wrong consistently apply to everyone all the time. Your ability to express Big Truth within your life by making right choices based upon right intent depends upon the quality of your consciousness. You gain personal quality the same way you gain strength and endurance or learn to play the piano — by dedication and continual effort applied over a significant period of time.
you may employ a coach to improve technique and clarify issues, but only you can accomplish self-improvement.
If the intent is wrong, then, by definition, the choice (of motivation, not of action) is wrong as seen from the perspective of evolving consciousness. The wrong intent or choice is evolutionarily wrong even if it temporarily results in what appears to be a constructive right action in physical-biological space. You do not evolve higher quality consciousness through right action or right result, but only through right motivation and right intent. The PMR virtual reality consciousness trainer provides the opportunity for simple, straightforward interaction and a results-oriented feedback mechanism that reflects immediate and cumulative quality of intent. Motivation, intent, action, and feedback are all interconnected. Right motivation and right intent are the only sure path to right action, which produces the right feedback to encourage continued right growth and learning.
Right growth and right learning are technically defined as growth or learning that leads to a decrease in the entropy of your consciousness. Personal growth, growing the quality of your being, or growing wisdom — all increase your personal power as they decrease the entropy of your consciousness. I am talking about the growing-up and maturing of your being — a process that increases your capacity to love. I am also talking about spiritual growth, the evolution of your soul. Choose the expression that suits you — they are all essentially equivalent.
There are three distinct parts here: 1) choice of intent, 2) action, which is a result of intent (what we do); and 3) result, which is the effect of what we do. You should be careful not to confuse action (the animation of your intent) with end result (the effect of your intent).
Exercising free will interactions (with self or others) produces an internal result (always) and an external result (usually). The internal result immediately and most potently affects the quality of the consciousness according to the quality of the intent. The external result affects others as well as yourself and generates the appropriate feedback or reaction. Thus, it is not possible to achieve a right result if the intent is wrong. A wrong intent damages its creator despite what else happens.
What would appear to be right action in the service of wrong intent is eventually revealed as self-destructive for the doer and as a challenging opportunity to whomever or whatever the doing is directed toward. Yes, I am exploring exceptions within the margins of typical behavior. The wrong intent cannot consistently and broadly result in right action. The partially random interaction of our free will consciousness with the free will of others forces us to constantly make choices that express our intent or motivation, and then we act accordingly. Good motivation usually produces mostly right action. Perfect motivation always produces right action. Your grounding in, or familiarity with, PMR may lead you to believe that action is the evolutionary driver. It is not — at least not for consciousness. Action is a primary driver for physical-biological systems only.
Right and wrong choices are not made randomly. We are not randomly buffeted souls driven to and fro by external forces like particles exhibiting Brownian motion. Our specific individual opportunities may be derived through a series of Brownian-like social and personal collisions (interactions) that can contain large random components, nevertheless, our overall opportunity to learn what we need to learn and the choices we make in actualizing that learning opportunity generally contain only small amounts of randomness. Indeed, at our elementary level of development, most choices are easily predictable. The interactions we have with others (and with the whole of reality) inundate us with the opportunity to make choices that flow from our intent and thus reflect the quality of our consciousness. If our intent is wrong, we suffer the consequences (in all realities we function in) irrespective of what we actually do. If our intent is right, we always derive some benefit, regardless of what we do as a result of that right intent. Right intent almost always drives a resultant right action. Wrong intent usually drives wrong action.
Action creates results, which often create feedback, which sometimes (if we are paying attention) helps us modify our intents. External results drive our external feedback system of rewards and punishments — an imperfect system that is usually efficient. Fortunately, imperfections and errors in the feedback system show up much more often in the short-term than the long-term. Internal results drive an internal feedback mechanism that either increments or decrements the quality of our consciousness according to the quality (rightness) of the original intent. The collected benefits and liabilities that accrue to us as a result of our actions help us recognize and understand the rightness or wrongness as well as the impact of our intents and actions, thus facilitating our learning and guiding our future choices.
All we need to do is be serious students committed to making good grades and take advantage of the learning opportunities that present themselves. What else is new? The same formula works everywhere
— learning is learning. The only complication is that you also have a cut-up in your classroom (your ego) that makes it difficult for you to hear or understand the lesson.
For the typical being out there in the larger reality (continually choosing and doing, like you and me), intent lies primarily beneath the surface of one’s awareness. What motivates us is barely visible to our intellect. Motivations and intent are a complex mixture of many, sometimes inconsistent and incompatible, components. Your motivations, reflecting your ego, are as Byzantine and inconsistent as you are. Nevertheless, for the typical human quality of consciousness, the benefits (spiritual growth) of right intent are usually much greater than the costs (spiritual stagnation or back-sliding) of wrong intent.
The spiritual impact of actions can simultaneously gain some and lose some in consciousness quality because the impact of feedback on future intent can produce a very complex result. Actions can often lose the same spiritual capital repetitively only to have it reappear as an investment in winning. I know the economists, investment advisors, and stockbrokers are terribly confused by the preceding sentence. For the financial and investment types, here is a longer less poetical version. It is possible in many situations for you to make the same or similar mistakes repetitively without necessarily going broke (seriously impoverishing your consciousness quality) — you simply do not get ahead. Furthermore, major messing-up often precedes major growing-up because we mule-headed humans sometimes need to be hit repeatedly and hard directly between the eyes by the results of our errors before we notice that a problem exists. Unfortunately, our egos are so good at blaming others that even after great suffering we often miss the point that our pain is primarily self-inflicted and trying to tell us something about what we are doing wrong.
Growth and making choices often appear to be extremely complex processes because from our point of view we are complex beings with complex egos existing somewhere between the often confusing opposites of good and evil, love and fear. Right being, profitable intent, and good choices are tremendously easy, simple and straightforward without ego, and with the humility and compassion that comes with love.
Changing the quality of consciousness is not (cannot be modeled by, or accurately approximated by) a simple linear process. Some people (usually precise types) tend to want everything to be reducible to a simple linear process so that they can work with it and more easily pretend that they understand it. These individuals often make assumptions to force fit the problem at hand into a simple linear model; these assumptions inevitably lead those apparently precise and logical minds into erroneous conclusions.
The choices you make (the motivations you have) are mostly not completely right or completely wrong. They are a mixed bag of many colors and components. The results of these mixed choices are also mixed. If right means 100% right, and wrong means not right, the average person makes many more wrong choices than right ones, but gets more gain from an almost right one than loss from a so-so wrong one. Most beings (people included) are steadily making positive progress, but ever so slowly. Consciously knowing what you are doing, and making an “eyes open” honest effort can increase the rate of progress immensely. A little help in finding the bigger picture can make a significant difference.
The optimal growth process is uniquely specific to each individual at a given time.
Once you have gone far beyond your ability to comprehend what you are saying, it is time to either find the humor in it, or be quiet. Focus on what is small enough for you to grasp and work your way up carefully with a firm understanding of your limitations.
Let go of what is too big for you to grasp. Accepting that your reality is dramatically affected by systems and phenomena that lie beyond your capability to understand and control is the first step toward developing wisdom. Differentiating these unknowables from those things that are within your potential to comprehend is the second step. Conceptual structures and a probing intellect are valuable tools, however, cramming unlived and unexperienced ontological conceptual structures into your intellect squanders enthusiasm and interest, makes you believe that you know and understand more than you do, and leaves you with no significant increase in spiritual quality.
Only an ego could care about relative comparisons, hierarchy, and pecking order. Issues of ego are counterproductive to both science and self-improvement.
Our anthropomorphic tendencies and sense of self-importance, supported by an unbounded egocentric pride in our species, makes me suspicious of any logic that puts us too close to the center of Big Picture significance. We Homo sapiens are exceedingly impressed by our apparent significance and grossly inflated with self-importance — an unfortunate fact that clouds the clarity of our vision immensely. How many of our wars, atrocities, and general acts of meanness have sprung from a sense of superiority? A belief in the supreme importance of humankind is the ultimate source of much mischief. The notion that humans are inherently superior leads to the idea that some humans are superior to, or more significant than, others — a concept that represents the first step down a slippery slope that is both steep and long.
The cultural, personal, and religious belief systems in which we are all constantly immersed have a tendency to be “feel-good” belief systems that boost our egos and self-importance (hence, their popularity). The feel bad stick serves as the foil to the feel good carrot. Besides helping us feel important, safe, and valued (if not superior), feel-good beliefs make it almost impossible for us to evaluate a bigger picture that refuses to manipulate the individual to feel good (important, safe, secure or saved) or feel bad (guilty, inadequate, unworthy, helpless, or fearful). To those needy individuals who are addicted to the medications of Dr. Feelgood, beliefs and reality concepts without emotional hooks are like cigarettes without nicotine.
Emotional hooks are used to capture and manipulate needy egos — those who feel fear, those who feel lost and powerless; who feel inadequate, helpless, and insecure or feel as if they are not doing what they should be doing. Feel-good beliefs cover up these fears and help you feel strong, in charge, and powerful; feel as if you belong, are accepted, and understood: feel loved, safe, and cared for.
Emotive manipulations of all sorts work like this: feel bad (ignorance, guilt, or inadequacy) usually precedes, and subsequently is interspersed with, feel good (importance, significance, security, salvation, redemption, acceptance, forgiveness, or superiority) in a succession of one-two punches that appeal to the needy ego — you know, the good cop, bad cop routine. It is an unfortunate fact that feel-good belief systems rule the land, often subtly without being noticed. For this reason, I am constantly making an effort throughout the My Big TOE trilogy to steer you away from falling into this common conceptual error by belittling our culturally ingrained self- satisfying importance at every turn. My weapon in this battle is blunt humor — no cynicism is ever implied or intended.
A few readers, if caught on a bad day, may have difficulty dealing with the relative humble position we most likely occupy in the big scheme of things. Some may feel emotionally upset or angered by what they wrongly interpret as an implied lack of personal importance. Like bacteria, we are important in our own way and should be able to feel good without feeling superior. Being a small part of something very large does not have to be a downer; it depends entirely on your perspective. Only an erroneous belief system and your ego can possibly create a downer.
I am by nature a cheerful, happy, upbeat type. I think people, reality, and life are a blast — an exciting ride, a wonderful opportunity! Find the humor, read and smile, let go, laugh a little — no need to be overly serious. Every now and then open up the top of your head so that fresh ideas can blow away the musty odor of old paradigms and force traditions and the status quo to periodically re-justify their value. Nothing encourages humor more than honest introspection.
This life is your opportunity. The initial conditions of your PMR existence have been custom designed for you to optimize your growth potential — with your input and approval. Your personal growth is for fun and profit. Enjoy! Learning and joy go together. Not learning, not growing, and pain and misery go together. Most lives are a mixture of both. Focused effort and paying attention in the PMR learning lab can dramatically increase the ratio of joy to misery in your life. If you learn and grow significantly, your joy and knowledge will spill over into the lives of others.
Anything sentient that is important to us inevitably gets recast in our image. Our assessment of ourselves defines the scale against which all others are measured and interpreted. We judge and assess others by comparing them to ourselves. We constantly project our being (our quality) onto the sentient existence of others — there is nothing else we can objectively do — and a wrong answer, for some reason, always seems far superior to admitting ignorance. It is how we are; accordingly, be on guard.
Do we in general worry much about how our bodies, minds, or spirits are evolving? Not often (with some notable exceptions). Every being is interested in, aware of, and cares about what it interacts with on its own local level, and in its immediate environment; everything else is invisible or inconsequential because it lies outside the beings awareness, is hopelessly beyond its knowing (mystical), or appears to be irrelevant to its needs.
With our capable minds we can and should do better than that. If our focus expands, it usually expands upward toward higher levels of awareness. Lower levels are taken for granted. They just are — they do what they do. We depend on them but do not get directly involved unless they get our attention by doing something unusual.
Our local reality and everything in it is a product of consciousness evolution. We operate within our niche on the edge of an enormous consciousness ecosystem.
The being we call ourselves (lump in the AUM-sheet) is not dependent on our physical body — it is the other way around. Physical bodies are relatively dense space-time constrained experience-bumps on the lumps in the sheet. These self-perpetuating, low maintenance, biological-matter experience-bumps come with a sensor platform called a “body” to provide experience and immediate feedback, a low-end Free Will Awareness Unit (FWAU), and a lifetime guarantee. All such biological-matter bumps are designed to make choices, assess the feedback, and apply the Fundamental Process toward the evolution of both body and consciousness. Yes, critters have consciousness and free will too
“Are you implying that critters have souls too?” one might ask. Sure, why not — they are constructs of consciousness like the rest of us.
However, do not think that critters are inferior simply because they are different. The proclivity to reinterpret our differences as obvious superiority represents little picture arrogance.
Every critter, including you, has its point and its place; diversity is a natural artifact of evolution when there are few constraints. Each type of entity reflects unique potential, capacity, goals, purpose, and responsibility yet all spring from the same source and follow the same processes. One might say that they occupy different niches and habitats within the same consciousness-evolution fractal ecosystem.
The fewer constraints that limit a particular consciousness, the lower its associated local entropy can go, and the more effective and powerful it can become.
We humans are essentially a different type of critter as are all sentient entities.