At the edge of life
“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Pascal
Self-reference is the beginning of experience.
Experience requires a separate point of perception.
Patterns inform matter.
Signals received by a self-referential system cause the system to experience.
Experience in-forms the system. It gives it form by inspiring a reaction.
Habitual reaction causes patterns to inform, to shape matter.
Matter becomes crystalized information. Materialized Memory. A gateway for consciousness. Institutionalized.
First, particles, then cells formed.
Then specialization set in, and cells diversified.
Function formed.
Touching.
Plants grow.
Insects form.
First wormlike.
Tasting, eating, swallowing, puking, shitting.
Then with more and more form followed by function, captured in matter, in DNA.
Hearing, seeing.
Then breathing, coughing, sputtering, smelling.
Adding functions and sensors along the central spine of experience. Protruding from the central nerve.
33 rungs of the ladder of enlightenment.
Procreating, and procreating some more.
Experience passed through generations. Epigenetics at work.
Ever more complex perception mechanisms enabling ever more sophisticated response to signals.
Evolution of consciousness through expansion of perception and the ability to respond.
We can do it faster and faster.
Every single life recapitulates the evolution of the whole.
Life evolves as a fractal dance.
Pater informs mater. Sperm meets egg.
Two DNA strands merging experience.
Coherence and complementarity create new self-referential potential.
Experience of all life informs the new being.
Life’s gift, our potentiality.
Entelechy, our invitation.
Actuality, our challenge.
Patterns perceived inform and crystalize in matter.
First we notice our body. We marvel at our fingers, giggle as we wiggle our toes, embody, then learn to move our body through space.
Movement, motion, capturing territory of experiential space, and the pain and pleasure associated with locality and physiological signals trigger the evolution of emotion. We move toward that which gives us pleasure, move away from that which gives us pain.
Localized physiological experiences are associated with distinctions. First “ma”, the initial willful making of sound to call for the warmth of mother, then more and more distinctions of reality, associated with physiological data points and corresponding emotions. Captured in language, and giving rise to time, to associations with the past and expectations of the future. Our mind evolves to think therefore we are. Then “me” — our designator for self creates identity. Nomen es omen.
Identity determines how we relate. How we integrate or disintegrate in the world around us, other identities that we collide with in time and space: From our family, to our partners and friends. From society to our relationship to the divine. We enact genetically and epigenetically learned patterns, develop relational intelligence and build entire social systems of ever grander scale — from partnerships to tribes to multinational corporations.
In that, we begin to realize our own role. Our own unique voice among the many. Our individuality. We realize our identity is not static. That we can choose to inform ourselves. We can connect to that spark just beyond our own point of perception that informs us, informs all of life. Our genius, our letting go of crystallization, so we can be informed by what is in the field in this new moment — the echoes of all life. Play, explore, innovate ourselves.
In continuously innovating ourselves we realize, once we get through hedonistic self-actualization, that what informs us is the whole. That we — although a separate point of perception, so that experience can be had — are also part and parcel of something bigger than ourselves. That we are here to serve the whole, not just experience and inform ourselves, but form the whole. That we do that anyway all the time, and that we are called to put ourselves in service to it consciously.
As we consciously begin to shape the whole, we become aware of our ability to create reality, to shape it to our will. To actively step up and join our own creator in taking charge of creating the future. We become the ones informing generations to come, changing not just our own DNA or that of our offspring, but the DNA of our species, the memories of life.
We become who we have always been. We are that, which experiences. We are consciousness. We are life.
At the edge of life, we wonder, what shall we create next?
But wait, buddy, it’s not linear
We dance with the cycles.
Life evolves in waves.
Traumas inhibit evolution. Traumas hold back life.
We keep having to learn some of the same lessons all life has already learned.
We continue to discover our bodies anew and how to actually fully embody ourselves.
We continue to get lost in emotional attachments (and addiction to the chemicals that cause them or that they cause in our bodies). We keep learning to move from co-dependence to inter-dependence.
We continue to get lost in time, in regrets of the past or dread of the future, and have to remind ourselves again and again that we are the masters, not the slaves of our thoughts, that we can anchor ourselves in stillness.
In stillness from the center we can then negotiate reality. We can clean up the relational messes we all cause. We can step into integrity again and again, learning to clear our broken agreements. Learning to be fully accountable to life.
Informed by our feedback, we get to keep adjusting our identity. Play and explore, but also incorporate how others respond to us. The shadows they mirror back to us. The painful discrepancy between who we think and maybe even know we can be, and how we actually show up.
We know how we all waste life at times. Life learned to be resilient because of it. Anti-fragile even. It has learned that we all fail. That evolution is not linear. That shit happens. That sometimes we don’t make it all the way. That for some it is actually better not to go all the way to the edge, if they truly want to serve life. Not everyone is a leaf, some are the trunk, and some are roots.
We get to find our form and function again and again, choose how we want to add to life.
So we can heal, be whole, be life.
So we can consciously create it.
Again and again.
Consciously create ourselves,
consciously create together with life,
consciously create the future.
To life.
It’s in your hands.
The future belongs to those who create it. What kind of future can you envision? For yourself, for your organization, for the planet?
Connect with me through LUMAN or http://philiphorvath.com and let’s create the future together.
