Dream Entry 3

This is the third time now, that I've had a dream that it was the end of the world. Though I reflect on the dream, it's never really certain if it is. This one terrified me more than anything else, because it was so vivid. My last one was as well, but not nearly as long as this one.

I can't remember how it starts out, but I remember being outside my grandmother's house. I can't recall why I'm there or if anyone is with me, but I have the assumption that I had just gotten there. As I am approaching the patio I get this intense feeling of dread. I turn around to see the early phases of the sunset turn quickly from yellow to a red. There's a flash of bright light and the clouds quickly begin to approach my location. I can see  the wall of force from whatever collided.

I know what I am seeing in the dream and know running is pointless, even though my instinct is to run into the house for cover. The wall of force hits me milliseconds later and I black out. The moment of darkness is over and I'm awake, standing in my house. I am immediately filled with the anxiety that I may be dead. I see my brother walking towards the living room and I ask him a question. At first he doesn't acknowledge my existence, frightening me further, so I yell his name with a bit of anger. He stops and looks at me and I get the impression that he says, "What?" His look doesn't look frightened or bewildered, rather annoyed that I am yelling at him. I'm instantly calmed, even if he is a bit mad at me then.

Feeling assured that I am still alive I quickly check the window to see what happened in my black out. There's nothing familiar outside the window. It doesn't make sense of what the destruction should clearly have created. Some of it does...the roads are gone and there's mud and water everywhere. It looks like it's raining slightly. But where there should be acres of houses lies a massive hill with very old and tall coniferous trees. Like we've been transplanted to some forested area in western Washington. A lot of them are collapsed, leaving trunks and logs everywhere. It vaguely looked like a lumber site. Then I see some of them start to collapse towards our house. I step to the side several times as they crash through the house.

Though now that I am writing this I remember, between feeling assured I wasn't dead and checking the window, that me and my mom started fighting. I remember feeling extremely frustrated and extremely mad. I don't even think there was a reason for the fight, but that's when I just let loose. I start firing insults at her, one after the other. She doesn't even look bothered...in fact I think she's throwing some back at me, which just makes me even more mad. I'm crying and swearing and basically being belligerent towards her. But that fades away to me looking out the windows.

After the trees collapsed into our house I get the feeling I decided to go look around outside and see what I can find for help. The dream moves me to some abandoned hotel where a bunch of people are staying. I'm going from room to room looking at what's happening to see if there's any news of what happened. But then weird stuff started happening again and it became a monster chase. I never see what's chasing me but I eventually get away. I always tend to for some reason. The dream ends on me discussing something with a famous actor about our previous relationship (though I think I know whom my brain was trying to portray). I think the famous actor was a metaphor for how I see this person. And I wake up to now and feeling a little stunned.

The truth is simple when one understands,
but the path to understanding is not always simple.

Fog of Light

Before, I wrote about things faster than light...how that might look. I came across a seemingly random juxtaposition of two images that nearly illustrate this perplexing representation of FTL objects. I talked about how things which move faster than light would essentially be intangible things, yet they would simultaneously have a prominent presence in the spectrum of all things.

First there is the metaphor of the fog.

"This state of etherealness [of FTL objects] is much like the fogs that wash over towns. In its entirety it is a tangible thing, yet its presence and physical being are nothing to the objects which it envelops. It flows seemingly through whatever it wishes; or rather the winds."

In this example photo, light itself is the fog. Like the fog, light, when present from any source (e.g. The sun, or a light in small room, or even a directed source like a flashlight) , will continuously expand throughout in all dimensions. In the case of a focused source, it will stretch on infinitely until reflecting off a surface...continuing its expansion in a diluted fashion into an even great angular area; until it reflects off other sources, dwindling in intensity (and perception to the naked eye) as its density is negligible to greater paths of light.

For non-focused sources such as the sun, their very nature seemingly contributes to our definition of time. Everything we perceive in the now is already in the past. It takes time for light to reach our eye, for that information to be processed by the brain as happening, then, a measurement of time elapses to react. The notion of now is forever fleeting, in a constant step before our own, and constantly fluctuating based on our perceptions of our environment. It is essential, then, to see time being linear to past events, yet, in its present moment, a non-linear thing. It is amorphous

If, then, time is no longer an influential thing in the present...then neither is light. Yet this is a fundamental flaw in the understanding of reality. Light is the only tangible force in our existence for comparison of time...right?

"Imagine a person wading through [a] pool. They are in essence moving faster than the water, yet at the same time interacting with it. Their passage causes molecules to move around the person's being, causing tangible distortions in its composition, but not in its nature."

Without light we essentially have no frame of reference for time. Yet time is a measurement of tangible things. What of intangible, or rather, non-existent things? That is to say, things which are not perceivable? Perhaps of things that move faster than light?

In the photo above we see the effects of various densities of light pollution. These stem from closer sources of light. In essence, they are meeting our eyes "faster" (due to distance traveled times its speed) than any other source, and are stronger in intensity (due to density) than any others. Yet the moment we snuff them out, distant light sources are instantly magnified. Did the distant light get brighter? Or did the environment get darker?

Light succumbs to the prevailing condition: darkness. Darkness is present before light reaches its "occupied" space and before light leaves it. It is the only constant in the universe that is ubiquitously present. In a sense, it  is faster than light. Yet in comparison to the metaphor...does it move at all? How can you see it move when your only frame of reference is with light? Does time pass in total darkness? Is darkness a perceivable thing?

In short order, not with current tools of measurement. That must mean, then, it exists outside the influence of time. Yet within that same line of thinking neither light or shadow is under the influence of time. Then where does time originate if neither light or darkness is a true indicator of time? Time itself would then be a non-existent thing in a present moment.

I assert that motion is the defining indicator of time. In regards to FTL, objects at that velocity exist "outside" time. Only until decelerating below FTL do they ease into the flow of time as well as becoming a perceivable thing. Relative time slower than the "normal flow" are essentially dense matter. Dense matter of unimaginable proportion tend to slow time around it.

Imagine a time stop. What would that look like if you existed outside its influence? Everything would be motionless, unaware of its own state, and essentially a void within reality. A stopped state is a paradoxical existence without an observer within a flow of time.

But then again, this is still only half-baked.

My Other Blog

So I have this other blog. It's my baby. It's kind of a visual representation of things I find aesthetically pleasing. It's also a keen way of understanding my humor, my favorite movies, and sometimes some of my musical tastes. Sometimes I just look through my own blog to kind of cheer me up.

The other day I got a message after re-blogging a certain image. I should have just ignored it, but it was rather offensive. I guess the day got to me or something, and I told him why I changed his/her comments on it. I told them I just wanted the image...though not without critiquing its...presentation.

I'm not really known on there, but I kind of aspire to getting lots of Notes and Follows. Though an amazing blogger who follows me too saw a post of mine on there. She really supported what I had to say on what happened and it felt empowering. I thought I'd preserve that memory here and remind myself that people do understand what I go through and try not to be so afraid of what others think.

Though now I'm regretting how I handled it and should maybe have ameliorated things a bit better.

Dream Recall 1

I was doing my normal rounds on the internet like usual, until I came to a architectural photo. I didn't think much of it, other than that it had a link to the Top 10 Modern Architects. I decided I wanted to see more and among those photos was this one, of Tom Wright's iconic building in Dubai.

I am very familiar with this image, having seen it numerous times before. However, I've never been here, nor do I recall ever being in or around such a beautiful building. Then why did this photo suddenly 'cause a flashback of a memory?

Upon seeing this image I remembered a dream. It was an old dream, though it wasn't particularly significant to me in terms of symbolism or subconscious worries. So I didn't write anything about it or store it in long-term memory. In fact, this was the first time I had ever seen this particular image and the same thought ran through my mind when seeing this as when I had the dream. Why is there a tennis court on the roof? What happens if you over shoot?

But the bizarre-ness of the tennis court not-withstanding, why is it that these images seem so familiar in a personal recalling sense rather than in an impersonal cultural awareness one? That is to say, why does it feel like I've been here rather than it being an instance of just understanding what I am seeing as something new? I've never been to Dubai, and not considering the dream, never have I been to vertigo inducing tennis court.

I find it so fascinating that my mind seems to travel the world when it is 'at rest'. Though I wish I were able to make actual conscious choices about my dream travel. I guess I shall be repeating 'Rome' before I go to sleep now. :P

Dream Entry 2

I don't know if it's the heat but my sleep has been really off. Seemingly, at the same time, it's also been making me have more vivid dreams. I suppose I'm normally a deep sleeper and that's why I don't have as many as other people. This dream doesn't seem all that significant but it's one that I remember having had before.

I keep dreaming that I am back in Vancouver in our old apartment. I'm there with my family and I seem to know that we're just visiting for a while. In the dream I know that the apartment isn't really our home, but rather it's something of a "vacation" home that we go to. It doesn't really make sense though, as to why we kept that apartment considering it wasn't exactly nice.

The dreams are all different in some way but I can't recall how. In some I remember old friends in flashes of images or us preparing to go to some vacation spot. I remember this time however there were clothes all over the living room. I vaguely remember a time when I've seen it that way in the past but this was more clothes than that apartment would have had room for. The living room was also disorganized with furniture in random places. I also remember the front door being open and walking out onto the balcony/porch.

Then the dream shifts into a conversation on the balcony. I don't know who I am talking to but we're discussing about what to do. I remember being a little annoyed and saying that we had to catch some hockey game. Maybe it was watching too much How I Met Your Mother, but honestly, I couldn't care less about the game.So it's really interesting as to why I felt so adamant about needing to go watch the game.

Then the dream changes again and I'm in my old room. The furniture is all gone, but in the dream I remember feeling that was alright, yet at the same time eerie. I don't know if this was entirely all dream or partly a recollection of memories. I wonder this because when I woke I was left with the impression that we were moving away. But at the same time the apartment that I was in wasn't the one we had lived in before moving to our current home. The apartment in my dream was the one directly above the one where we moved from. The same building and layout, but distinctly the one above the old. But "my" room that I was in wasn't my room in the old apartment.

Maybe I'm remembering the chaos of that move and the empty bedroom was my new room downstairs?

The Egg

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. You wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.

There's a few things to be said about this story. It's interesting to me in a meta-philosophical way as well as the implications on the true scope of the universe. I see things differently as an artist of sorts and this existence seems deeper than this story gives.

The one thing that struck me as odd in this story is the concept of time. There is some adaptation of God's that allows him existence outside it. However, we are at the same time subjected to a maturing process unto which our maturation gives us divinity. This is expressed through multiple manifestations of our existence through an indeterminate timeline of existence. Yet time must elapse?

This story reminds me of The Doctor.

Short order, he is a master of time using an advanced technology to travel through time and space. As far as the fandom is concerned he is potentially immortal. He goes through time experiencing events as a bystander. That is his only pursuit across time (or rather outside of it within the Tardis). He is compelled to observe first-hand the innovations and mysteries of the past.

There are themes throughout this saga that give us poignant moments of time travel and its implications. At the same time The Doctor, being the last of his kind known as Time Lords, he is something more than human. He is sometimes referred to, throughout his galactic and seemingly infinite time traveling, as the Lonely God.

There was one thing about this story that made me wonder...that was time. The Doctor is a master of time. He can travel to any point he so desires. He was asked by a nemesis, a likely betrayer of a time-old pact called the Shadow Proclamation, why he didn't undo it?

Undo what? The destruction of his kind. The idea itself is questionable only under the assumption it would change the world for the worse. The Doctor seemed quite fond of humans and their history, implying a kindred bond. It was the undoing of his people that allowed for our existence.

In this story we are within some dream world. This dream world is simply a reflection of ourselves throughout an infinitely long timeline. God says this thing which we experience allows us to mature over a period of time, time which we experience only outside the dream world or possibly concurrently within the dream world.

At what point does our maturation allow us divinity? Is it within some truth of our existence?
How many times must we live through agony?
How long?

Why not dream into existence the point which we become divine?

Parallel worlds offer interesting compromises between these two ideas. The Doctors choice was his own, but in some parallel world he made the choice to go back. Yet if he did then decide to go back, he would alter his own existence. The Doctor is supposedly one of the oldest things in existence. If he time travels to undo the destruction of his kind the fabric of his own world would be brought back into existence. Doing this would create another parallel world where he didn't do this and its existence would still bring about humans.

As for this story, this implies we are God as well. We may even be the subconscious of his own mind, while he is the subconscious within ours. This gives the question of what is truly evil? Every choice creates an outcome, but your perspective on it is always different. You play both victim and criminal, defendant and jury, and every single point in existence.

If this existence is some machine that can calculate infinite probable existences, why not dream the point you become a God, so therefore you are an original new god as God seemingly wants? In an alternate world within this infinite probability machine this would have occurred at some point, thus freeing us from the timeline as we are all this single consciousness spread throughout time.

What if, then, we are within a probability of existence that failed? A singular point in which we somehow become absolutely the wrong thing. We truly sin against some higher divine law. Would not the whole system collapse? This promotes a contest of whether existence is guided toward sovereignty or certain destruction.

This is why I think time is more than time. It may only be a phenomenon which humans can perceive. But again this idea is still only half-baked.