It’s all a metaphor symbolizing the systemic nature of reality. Existence is metaphysical poetry. Literal truth symbolic for the way things are.
Not religion not philosophy but art. God the supreme artist creating the void out of nothing. Wordsmith worlds spoken into existence.
Conceptual frameworks to describe in theory symbolically the way it is confuse the map with the territory, a menu for the meal. Bodily senses show more than minds can tell.
Reality presented is literal-figurative truth. Reality experienced philosophical art.
It can’t be mind over matter when mind is a part of matter. This is why matter matters and minds can only partially translate into symbols the full significance of bodily existence.
Something is disclosed yet much remains hidden. Explicit understanding is but the tip of the tacit iceberg floating in the untold ocean of emptiness.
Ocean rolling wave
Planet orbed sun
Butterfly cocoon hatch
Moon lake reflection
Sprouted tree seed
Nightly news obituary
Spinning wheel car
Plug socket fit
Drum head beat
Child slide giggle
Two human types
Earth spinning walk
Empty room seated
Mother in labor
Living eating dead
Being shown it all the time. The figurative talks in literal verses.
Can’t stick a foot into the same river even once. Get wet to find it.
A figurative worldview transformation literally happens. We come to our senses. Awakened from mind slumber to whole bodily awareness.
What is can speak for itself. At that crossroad symbol is symbolized. Intractable problems aren’t solved as dissolved.
The bubble was conceptual in a universe that could pop. Vanish as if a hiccup. Traceless now. Spaceless as if never happened.
Broken is open.
Floated inside-out over the landscape of experience. A hot air balloon fueled by desire to know. Held captivated by a thin membrane of touch waiting to hatch butterfly unsullied senses within the dawn light of real time.
Here the universe is self-aware. Like the eye that sees itself looking back at itself in the mirror of silent sound.
Mind movies stop short of telling the whole truth nothing but the truth. Ears that see. Eyes that hear. Truth be known is truth shown.
Caterpillar in cocoon,
Chicken in egg,
Baby in womb,
Saint in tomb,
In the beginning was the void. The primal void was pure emptiness. An empty emptiness is containerless without contents.
The original void is empty because it is timeless, spaceless, formless and causeless. An is that is all there is. Causeless in the sense that the primal creation is sourceless since it was created out of nothing.
Because the primal void is undisturbed emptiness, it is free of content. Something happened to cause the void to contract. That contraction disrupts the original void’s state.
Some say it was the creator that spoke to void causing it to compress. Others hold the freshly minted void is inherently unstable for unknown and unknowable reasons.
However the shrinkage happened the void was shocked out of its complacent state causing it vibrate. Those vibrations are the void decaying. Change involves loss. Death involves loss.
A new contracted state arises smaller than the former original pure void. In this the death of the original void creates energy.
The loss of undifferentiated one void creates a mitotic like split into container with contents. Both simultaneously arising together from the singular original void’s mitotic division.
Like a single cell division where the two new cells arise together or not at all. The split isn’t into two haves or two separate wholes but two wholes division none.
The original division is like a primal male contained in a female container. Or circular ripples going out from a stone being thrown into an otherwise peaceful and tranquil lake.
Perhaps the original empty void was vibrating infinitely fast. When it contracted into its new state, maybe like a plane flying quietly faster than the speed of sound that when slowed down caused a thunderous shock wave when entering the speed of .
The first downward shift shrunk the void into energy. The void didn’t loose energy. The loss created energy. It as like compressing formless gas into a liquid held in a container.
Emptiness squeezed into compressed energy is finite emptiness. It moves, flows, like the waves on the ocean. It is compressed emptiness.
Unlike the original void created ex-nihilo out of nothing, energy has a source. Since pure emptiness is formless in the sense of being everywhere all at once, time can’t exist without form as form is needed to travel from one point to another.
Pure emptiness is always here right now. Emptiness doesn’t move from here to there. That means time does not exist because time happens when something must move from here to there.
Since something needs to move form must exist. In order for form to exist there must be space for the form to inhabit. That means spatial movement from here to there happens once there is form. Time, space and form have the same source. That source is the original void.
Movement from here to there is the time it takes to go from beginning here to ending there. Without form’s spatial movement between two points there can be no time.
When original emptiness divides into container and contained what it gives birth to is energy. In that sense emptiness contains the energy it holds.
When the original void splits into container and contained both sides arise together or not at all. If the containers contents was made of something other than the void then the two would have separate natures. If the empty void was the ocean its waves are the void’s energy.
Both the ocean and its waves are made of the same water. So too the container and contents are made of the same void they are not really two nor are they one. What is shared is the same fundamental nature.
Another way to say this is that the container is the empty void and the contained energy. While energy fills the emptiness both are the same void.
If the original void is timeless, formless, spaceless and causeless. perhaps energy might be said to be the formless form, spaceless space and timeless time of emptiness. When mother void gives birth to energy child, she has given birth to a new form of herself
A second contraction is needed to compress energy into matter. Matter is the most dense form of the void. Once energy is squeezed down into matter energy bridges the empty void and matter. Energy is now like the middle state liquid between a gas and solid state.
Before there is energy there is emptiness. Before matter energy. If emptiness can be thought of as the ocean and its waves as energy what floats on its surface like driftwood is matter. All three all sharing the same void’s empty nature in different forms.
The ultimate source of matter is found to be the void. The void must contract twice in order for matter to exist. Each successive contraction means that something must be lost.
If pure emptiness vibrates infinitely fast, energy vibrates at a finite frequency. Matter is emptiness vibrating at its lowest common denominator. If emptiness vibrates infinitely fast so too matter finitely slow. Energy being the middle ground vibrates faster than matter but but slower than emptiness.
When compared to pure emptiness both energy and matter are terminal. If matter is materialized energy, matter is terminal when its energy is used up because it has lost its source. Matter to energy is like the sun that is feeding on itself.
Metaphorically when the sun has eater itself completely up the it no longer emits photons. The photons are dependent on the sun’s energy. When the sun dies it has run out of energy and can no longer emit light.
The point to remember is matter is concentrated energy than comes from energy as distilled emptiness. Something gets lost when the void contracts. The original void without form, space and time is complete, perfect and permanent. Completely still.
The ocean of emptiness truncates to waves of energy. Those waves are incomplete and unstable. Energy devolves down into a drop of physical matter. Matter is the most compressed dense form of emptiness that is dependent on energy for its existence.
Matter is like solidified emptiness. Energy liquid emptiness, And fully expanded emptiness is the void without form, time or space. This means nothing exists but the void in three states. Everything is ultimately empty in the sense of being a form of the void.
Without emptiness there can be no energy. Without energy matter can’t be. Emptiness contracted is foundational for understanding why there is something rather than nothing.
There’s a zen saying, “Chop wood carry water.” The expression can be taken literally as well as symbolically for a way to act in the same present moment.
There are two kinds of activities. We either act with the goal of attaining a specific outcome or act for the sake of the action itself.
Unlike acting for the sake of a future reward “enaction” means to act focused on what’s happening in the present moment. In that sense our intent has changed from doing something to attain something to simply doing whatever it is we’re doing.
Because intent is why we’re doing what we’re doing, to change our intent can change the way we live.
If we chopped wood and carried water to heat water to make tea, our focus would be on having a fine cup of tea in the future to drink. We’d expect a paycheck, a reward at the end of the day. The only reason why we’d be chopping wood and carrying water would be to boil water to make a cup of fine tea.
Because an outcome is something we hope will happen in the future, our activity has a “means to end” structure. That may be well and good but we never know what the next moment might bring that could keep us from attaining the hoped for compensation.
Conversely, enaction has a “means is end” structure. What we’re attaining in the moment is an outcome we can count on as a success in itself. We may fail to get to our destination but are succeeding in the step we are taking now. Making what we’re doing a successful action unto itself.
If we chopped the wood to chop the wood and carried the water to carry the water, built a fire to build the fire and boiled some water to boil the water, we’d be much more likely to be successful all the way to drinking some tea if for no other reason than we were less distracted.
When we are distracted by focusing on attaining a future outcome, we are not only less likely to pay attention to what we’re doing in the moment but it dulls the senses. This double whammy can make it less likely we’d attain our goal.
In that sense enaction helps us come to our senses. Once the tea is made if we savor the tea in the moment without mentally and emotionally dashing off to what we’ll be doing next, we might hear our taste buds sing.
“Enaction” is a way to reawaken our bodily senses free of distraction. Apply enaction to the very next breath taken. Do we breathe to breathe or breathe to live? “Yes!” They aren’t mutually exclusive. Both intents can happily coexist.
Since we never know from breath to breath if we’ll get to our next breath why not enjoy the breath we’re breathing right now. Take a slow deep breath.
How did it feel? My guess pretty damn good, right?
Living for a future outcome creates a schism between mind’s symbolic word and body’s literal deed. It’s understandable that if what’s happening in the present moment is painful being distracted can offer some needed relief. There is a cost involved that often gets overlooked. It is the price of loosing touch with our senses.
We’ve been taught to focus on the future because no matter how much what we’re doing sucks, there will be a paycheck at the end of the day to help soothe our bruises. Enaction can be like awakening from mind to body that resolves the antimony between what we say and what we do.
By working for a future outcome, using distraction to blunt the painful side of whatever we’re doing can make life more tolerable. It’s a potential trade-off for an otherwise intense richness and fullness of perception.
The underlying cause of saying one thing while doing another is rooted in the antimony between the present moment now and a hoped for future outcome. Enaction is a way to have your cake and eat it too.
If we keep in mind that enaction does not prevent a future goal from happening but rather can enhance the chance that it might happen, doesn’t it makes sense to give enaction a chance?
