Awakening

I have pointed out before that my struggle with gender dysphoria prompted me to search in all directions for a solution to being born in the wrong body, and the determination with which I pursued that goal in spite of all doubts and discouragements — even attempts to accept things the way they were, adapting to and adopting the identity imposed on me by circumstances — says a lot about me, and even about what I ultimately concluded. My existence may be supported by reality, the physical, chemical, biological and sociological fabric out of which we all seem to be spun, but none of these things are me. I exist in my mind and that is why the way I perceive myself in my own mind can not only contradict my physical form, but trump it in importance to my survival. I have heard the theories and arguments on nature versus nurture and taking my own experience into consideration I can say that there are elements in both that can help shape who you are, but only by presenting the options or stimulus necessary for you to determine who you are. I cannot tell you if this is a process of creation or revelation; it feels like both. I am the driving and defining force within my own mind; my mind is the structure and articulation of my soul.

I was born in a context in which everything and everyone seemed to deny my existence, in accordance with the belief that who I was was based upon what I was and where I came from. I was not encouraged to express myself in ways that were inconsistent with my appearance. I’ve described some of the ways I was discouraged in other writing, and how it affected me. The most important result of this situation was that it did make me conscious of the fact that there was more to me than just my body. I have long since realized that most people are not very clear on what a spirit or a soul really is, but I never really had a problem with that. It was difficult for me to understand the modern view of consciousness and things like mind, spirit and soul as mere epiphenomena. I eventually understood the limitations of scientific thinking responsible for promoting this view, as I understand the way it drives scientists to look for a physical mechanism for the origin of consciousness. On the other hand, I had no difficulty understanding that the mind was central to everything that really mattered about existence. Perhaps that is a result of being hyper-conscious of every thought and action I took as a consequence of being forced to override all of my natural instincts and impulses to conform to people’s expectations of me.

I spent my childhood engaged in a constant, intensive observation of myself and everyone around me. I analyzed the world and all my experiences in it as if my life depended on it, often discovering new ways in which it clearly did. In my day to day life I was as deliberate in the control of my thoughts and emotions as I was in the control of my body. I had to understand as much as possible about how my mind and body worked to achieve that degree of control, which included managing or bypassing a number of “hard wired” behaviors and responses. I was thinking hyper-dimensionally long before I learned that was the way to describe what I was doing, or how to explain the process to someone else. I think the first step in thinking hyper-dimensionally involved the unstated realization that everything in my existence occurred in my mind; the “outside” world distinguished from my “inner” world by my physical perspective in it and limited influence over it. In my “inner” world, I was everyone and everything, everywhere at once — all on the verge of being nowhere, nothing and nobody. My consciousness was an all encompassing point with unconscious depths in the shadow of oblivion.

I began to understand that there are many things you have to figure out for yourself, in order to know and understand them, and consciousness is one of those things. I suspect that the scientific study of consciousness will inevitably conclude that it is a complex form of a basic property of “awareness” inherent in energy as the combined medium of information structured in space, time and mind. It might arrive at that conclusion with more esoteric and granular terms, but that is pretty much what it will amount to. Any other proposition runs into the problem of spontaneous generation of the subjective state phenomenon that is the prerequisite for any observer of the objective state. The consequence of any reductive analysis is an increase in relative potential; which is to say that everything is implicit in nothing. The information potential of a singularity is infinite. The interesting thing is that I am not saying anything new here. The same observations have been made again and again in many different ways. None of them make any sense to people until they observe it for themselves. I have no idea what conclusions a scientifically valid description of it will lead to. The first steps in this direction were taken when science confronted the quantum paradox and the possibility of observer based reality.

For my purposes, this observation is not the end; it is just the beginning. To be perfectly frank, I find myself in an untenable position and this can only be corrected in a world where things we would think of as magical or miraculous can occur. In part, this is because any question of physical transformation runs into problems related to the preservation of the mind. I ran into this while contemplating the use of future nanotechnology to remodel a living body, picking this as the most scientifically plausible method of turning a man into a woman. Biological processes can and should be viewed as proof of the concept of nanotechnology, in which complex organisms are constructed on a molecular level. We know that some aspects of personality can be passed on biologically, but there is no indication that the subjective consciousness is transferable. If you were cloned, the clone would be his or her own person, with a unique subjective consciousness. He might be like you, and assuming your exact brain structure and chemical memory was copied precisely, think he was you, but you would not be him. Nothing we know of suggests that there is any continuity of consciousness in that kind of situation. In a transformational process, there is every chance that the thread of subjective consciousness would be broken as one form was broken down and another built up.

The possibility of transitional death forced me to focus on understanding the nature and survival requirements of the mind, and this is ultimately a question of significance for all of us in the face of the inevitability of death. Death is the inescapable paradox. It is reasonable to assume that it inspired the concepts of spirits and souls. The prospect of oblivion is something that drives us to truly assert ourselves, to dream of and strive for immortality. In our lives we experience oblivion in different ways. In a way, the singularity of our consciousness exists in a bubble of oblivion. It is not hard to argue that individual consciousness can only exist if it is shielded from universal consciousness. Until we actually die, we cannot know if death is the end of consciousness, the end of individuality, or the beginning of something else. All we can do is ask what the existence of the mind really depends on. One possibility is that the body and brain is the foundation on which the mind is built, while the other is that the body and brain are merely the scaffolding used in building a mind that can stand alone. We might as well be asking if the world is really what it appears to be. As it happens, it is not. The world as we know it exists only in our minds.

To be more specific, we exist in our minds and the world we perceive is constructed in our minds based on information provided through our senses. What we can know about the universe is based on the information that can be derived through its structure. Perception is the conversion of structure into information, through the structure itself, into our minds. Our bodies, our physical senses and our brains are part of and can be found in that structure, but our minds cannot. Our minds possess structure, based on they way they use information, however; this gives us information and structure in both abstract and manifest states. The process of transition from a manifest state to an abstract state presents us with one dynamic. The constant transformation of structure in the universe and in the mind gives us another dynamic, in general terms “change” or in more specific resolution “time” which we derive from the continuity of perception. It is possible that consciousness emerges from the organization of awareness in the structures of perception through the interpretation of information derived from static interactions with dynamic structure in the universe. The interesting question, of course, is what does the existence of the universe depend on?

I am not sure anyone claims to know an answer to this question, but science has given us a lot of ideas derived from tested information about the universe. It does not give us an origin for the medium of space-time or energy, but it can tell us that all matter is derived from energy and structure. I am strongly inclined to look at space and time as part of the way energy is structured, viewing dimensionality as a component of structure along with size, scale, position, etc. If, as I suspect, awareness is a property of energy, then even the mind can be fully encompassed in the universe. Mostly, energy seems to be the most persistent and pervasive thing encountered along the spectrum of extrapolation or reduction. I would hope that anyone critical of my inclination to view awareness as an inherent potential of energy will understand that I simply find awareness too fundamental to our experience of existence not to be implicit in energy. I think that the obvious complexity of structure found in the human brain and perceptual processes is evidence enough of the difficulty of focusing potential awareness into coherent consciousness. I do not pretend to have a hypothesis for how the structure and organization works, or where in the process proto-awareness becomes awareness or proto-consciousness becomes consciousness. I just see it intuitively in life in the world around us.

I did not get to this point in my speculation following a straight and direct route, and some of the most interesting and useful things I spent time on were essential to getting me this far, such as a study of dimensionality, part of which I have elaborated on in explaining the different dimensions and part of which I only hinted at in this post — dimensions of mind. It is a lot to go over and again, too much to really explain inside another topic. We do not truly know what energy is, but it does seem to be pervasive and universal enough to be a base medium that, through structure in manifest, static, dynamic and abstract ways would give us space, time and mind, the three media that encompass existence as we know it. Information and structure both have intimate relationships with energy. Our bodies and our minds can easily be seen as structured energy. We are energy and information forged into a truly dynamic state. With all the universe to show us that energy sustains information, it seems absurd to think it would simply delete information like us. Most of all, I would think that energy organized to the point of self-awareness would somehow be self sustaining. If we could become more complex by one dimension of space-time-mind, I suspect that maybe we would. Of course, that’s just me commenting on a mountain of unshared speculation.

The Damage is Done

I wonder what is going to happen next. I wonder if I can hold it together to get a job and move out on my own. I wonder if I can manage to hold on to that job and support myself. I wonder, because I am not really wanted where I am. The only support I can count on, the support of my family and friends, is conditional. It always has been. It has always been conditional on me finding a way to get steady on my own two feet. The irony of that always brings a smile of agony. I know what they want, and that they want it for me, for me to become independent. It is something I do want. The problem is that it leaves me alone inside a life that holds absolutely no meaning for me. This person that I pretend to be, because he means something to his friends and family, means nothing to me. He does not mean enough, to the people who employ him, to have any purpose. He can be replaced by anyone and cannot compete with the living.

He is useful to me; like a suit of armor, he has protected me from so much that is so much worse than I have suffered. He is a little dented and out of shape, the former because he has taken many blows for me, the latter because he cannot maintain himself and I do not know how to keep him from falling apart. I can barely carry his weight, and when I stumble, he falls and shatters. I keep picking up the pieces and putting them back together, but after so many falls, it has become a cascade, a walking disaster. The only way to keep him together is to pour more and more of myself into him. This is how I am dying. I cannot live this lie, but it’s the only life I have got. It is not a life. This tragic joke goes on only because my will to live is strong; stronger and more defiant with every rip and tear in my heart, for every blind piercing agony in my soul. I get knocked down and get up so fast, so often it is like the flicker between two frames in a film.

You cannot see it happen. You do not even know that the look in your eye hit me like a freight train. You do not realize that the small gestures you make without thinking, your unconscious responses to the man standing between me and you, strike me like fists. You cannot know, so I stand there and smile, screaming in agony inside my armor. When you ask me my name, the lie floats lightly off my tongue, the cost of uttering it slicing through me with the crack of a whip. I barely flinch. I dare not. My disguise will not hold up for an instant if I falter. If I raise the slightest suspicion, this interview is done; this door closes and the time and effort and expense of getting here is wasted, my resources diminished with less hope of replenishing them. But the first lie is followed by another, another fact that hides and obscures the truth. I am older now, and my long search for a way to fit in — misfit that I am — betrays me, raising doubts about my stability and reliability.

I already know you do not want him. He is stained with my blood, the undeniable evidence of my constant failure to be what people expect. You cannot see the brilliant light of my mind, the glorious beauty of my soul. You cannot see this angel walking proudly through hell, head high, perfect in her understanding of herself. I pity you as you gently turn me away. I came here to die for you, to add your labors to the burden I carry for a pittance of money I need only to pay the toll of my existence so that I am not a burden upon the people I love; people whose love for him blinds them to my very existence. They see my suffering through him, but they do not understand this tiny glimpse of me. They cannot fathom the true depths of my suffering. When I tried to show myself, they saw me as his defect. They do not realize that if I were not forced to be something I am not, I would be perfect. I realize that if I even speak of my desire to be myself, I will hurt them.

I struggle to survive because they love him. I struggle because no one else wants him. No one else needs him. He is not normal and they can sense it. My own weakness, my desperate attempts to express myself, have undermined his position. I have left proof of his flawed nature where it can be traced back to him. I compromised my own cover. I have rendered my armor useless. It is such a shame I cannot take it off. It is so sad that it is crushing me. The weight of this sorrow staggering. It makes me wonder. It keeps me up at night, my fingers dancing in the ache of words, the gentle sound of keystrokes the only tears I can shed. The tide of desperation gently eroding the sand on which I stand. I have to do this. I have no more choice in this than I have about searching for a job. I am alone and I am not wanted, but I must find someone who has some small thing for which they need someone — and someone like me will do.

If only I had time. If only you would stop taking more than I have to give. I am willing to do anything. I am utterly without shame. Just give back enough to me for me to be able to pay a world that has denied me everything and charges to let me stay. I can do so many things, but all of them take time. I know you expect me to prove myself, you keep telling me I have to earn my keep. Telling me that while you keep taking, taking everything you can take from me. That’s fine, if you want it so much take everything; I have nothing left but me. I don’t have anywhere to go. I cannot escape from what is happening to me. It kills me to go on living, but I do not know how to let go. I no longer want to keep moving. I need to stop and say no more. Oh, but who do I ask for mercy? I don’t know who you are. Even if you can hear me, why should you listen or care? It’s been ten years since I really stopped hiding and finally cried out for help. With only my soul left to bargain with, I need help with no strings attached.

So, what kind of hope am I made of? I know better than to hope for such help. I know that I’ll just be called lazy and probably even crazy. Even the people that love him have thrown that one at me. The truth is that I have tried everything, done everything asked of me. I am lost and alone and exhausted. There is nothing left of me but my dreams, broken and bleeding as me. I’ve tried to make something of them, but it was never the right time. More and more my thoughts return to them, because it feels like I am running out of time. I just want to sit down and write them, but the opportunity dried away. What once was my one hope of salvation is now just another broken dream. It does not matter if I have something worth giving. Not if it is not in my hand. If I do not have time to produce it, well, isn’t that just too bad? I do not belong here. I wonder why I try?

Time in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe

In order to understand time it becomes necessary to ask if time is an objective or subjective medium. To be clear, by considering time subjectively I do not mean simply in terms of our subjective perception of time. The question asks if time is absolute, and thus events at different points in time persist in their own frame of reference with a constant relative position in time. Basically, it asks if there are actual positions in and structure to time. The alternative, subjective time, deals with the concept of time as being functional, an operation upon the objective structure of matter and energy in space like the constant balancing of an equation in which there is no actual time, just a present state of the equation.

The purpose for asking this question is because the subjective version of time is one that can be reproduced. We have been doing this since the first human being recounted a story of events, and have refined the process of simulating and manipulating time in computer modeling. The example that prompted this line of inquiry for me is a program called Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) that models the universe in three-dimensions. The program allows the user to explore the three-dimensional universe, across vast distances down to the scale of a few meters. It also allows the user to observe celestial motion at varying speed, moving forward or backward in time, in real time or at extreme acceleration. Observing this in action, one can get a real sense of time as a functional operation.

Within the scope of a program like Celestia, time is simply a variable in the program equation; it is the rate of change in the system. Inside of a system, an observer would be subject to the rate of change in the system, and would deduce that no process could occur at a rate exceeding the speed at which changes in the system are resolved. It is actually important to note that an observer, subject to an environment in which actual time is dependent upon the process of change in the system, will only be confronted with the fully rendered product. If the process of change is distributed, occurring at the most basic level of the system, then there will be instances where time will exhibit other subjective properties.

In the event that time is a distributed process, in a varied environment there will be regions where the level of detail is low and thus changes resolve in the optimum process time, but in regions of extremely high detail, where resolution is high density, the process will lag. In a fluid system, the consequence would naturally be that a higher resolution transformation would require more time to process, thus time would appear to slow down in a dense environment. Thus, in such a universe, there would be a direct correspondence between information and mass. The incidence of more information at a point in the system results in persistent lag, which is a subjective distortion of time. A mass of information would always exhibit characteristics of attenuated time.

In a process driven information based universe, the consequences of particles with attenuated time characteristics would include attenuated spacial characteristics in reference to all dynamic interactions. The increase of information in any region would reduce the amount of change possible in that frame of reference. Any information coming into the region of density would become subject to the attenuation. Each mass of information, having the tendency to attenuate time, would also attenuate space — specifically, to compensate for the processing debt created by an information mass, the scope of transformation around that mass would be reduced, conserving energy. A natural consequence of this space-time dilation is of course the expansion of the universal frame of reference.

Is there really such a thing as the present?

Is there really such a thing as time? That is a question it is helpful to ask in order to address what we call the present. That is because our experience of time is completely subjective and because everything we are is dependent on that peculiar subjectivity. Time is what we derive from the ceaseless transformation that is part of awareness, consciousness, thought, perception, action and reaction. Time is our measure of the dynamic quality of existence that compliments the static quality of existence the latter of which allows the world and ourselves to be manifest.

The question is, does time actually exist or is it really a matter of perspective? We know that the present is a matter of perspective. It is a singular point in time in which our consciousness resides. It is the moment of realization that stands still while everything else changes, in a chain reaction that rigidly adheres to a causal order. This continuum is linear, and when we try to imagine the motion of an apparently three-dimensional universe through time we trick ourselves into constructing a four-dimensional space-time continuum.

The problem with that is that by doing so, we have asserted that space and time are interchangeable, positing a relationship similar to that of matter and energy. What is the problem exactly? Well, examine first the continuum of matter and energy. Matter can be reduced entirely to energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed. The thing that distinguishes matter from energy is structure. What distinguishes space from time without disassociating them completely? If it is dimension, then once again, structure steps in out of nowhere.

This is not necessarily a problem, if we consider that it is space and energy that constitute the true universal continuum. It provides for mutual resolution in that it answers the question of providing the universe with a capacity for structure and change. Space is static and energy is dynamic, giving us the framework for a universe with matter and time. Under this arrangement, time would be subjective and continuity would be a product of perspective. That is, time would be entirely relative. It would emerge in direct association with process.

To be specific, the universe would not unfold a certain way because of the influence of time, but rather that time would unfold in a certain way because of the process of the universe. This would be consistent with the way that time is created for us, through the processes of perception and interpretation. For us, the experience of time is created through the mechanisms of our sensory and nervous organs transmitting nerve signals to our brains, which process them. Somewhere in there, our minds get engaged and interpretation and experience occurs.

So, what does that make the present? In some ways, that just makes it the focal point of this perceptual-interpretive process. Where we are in time becomes dependent upon where we are in the stream of information flowing through this structured, energized space we call the universe. Does that sound crazy? Does it sound rational? Does it sound mysterious? It might as well; life as we know it is all of these things. The only part of it we get a back-stage pass to is the part that goes on in our minds. That’s something to think about when we get around to wondering what, exactly, space is.

Originally posted on Helium.