When the bus arrived, I was the second to board and the first person stopped and pushed past me to get off again. That was when I noticed one of the passengers was beating the crap out of another. The bus driver had gotten up to try and do something about it, but that just drew the psycho’s attention to himself. I had stepped off the bus and was looking for somewhere to set down my bag of food and my drink, because I’m not the kind of person who can stand around and watch something like this. None of the people standing around at the stop would do me the favor of holding onto my meal, so I shifted everything into one hand so I could reach in and pull the mad man off the bus driver.

I had no desire to get involved in this; I don’t get into fights. Still, I tried to get the guy’s attention, pulling him back and saying, “That’s enough. You need to step back and think about what you’re doing,” while he stared at me in disbelief and asked me if I wanted to die. “You’re attacking the bus driver,” I pointed out, adding, “Think about it!” At that point, I let him go and stepped back to give him a chance to come to his senses. I can see in his eyes how pissed he is at me for “disrespecting” him, and yet there I was treating him like a sane, mature, intelligent human being, giving him the chance to resume acting like one. Instead, he turns back to the bus driver and is joined by a young woman who has come forward to attack the bus driver too.

When the guy tries the grab the girl and pull her off the bus, I step back and hope this means that he, at least, has sobered up a bit. She keeps screaming, cursing and kicking the bus driver, while people around me cry out for someone to call 911. When the couple finally does step off the bus, the driver shuts the door on them at the suggestion of the other passengers. I was trying to back away from them, but I was caught between them and the crowd at the bus stop. When the girl, who had tried to stick her foot in the door and got it stuck, pulled free, the couple bumped into me as I tried to get out of the way. The man turned around and grabbed me, shouting over and over in my face, “WTF! Do you want to die?”

I show him the drink and bag of food still in my hand, telling him calmly, “No. The only thing I want to do here is get home so I can eat my dinner.” He gives me this look of contempt and grabs the drink, crushing the plastic cup and trying to spill the contents on me with little success. Once the cup is empty, I let it go and try to step back with a disappointed shake of my head. After screaming something about disrespect, he hawks up a mouthful of spit. I looked him straight in the eye and, still in a level voice, say, “Don’t. That’s assault, and I will defend myself.” I know the adrenaline had hit my system minutes ago, but all I felt was disappointment and resignation.

He spit on me, and I took one moment to let my disappointment show on my face, and since he still held me close, with one hand gripping my coat, I pounded him in the face. I think it was the first punch I have ever thrown, and I was amazed that I felt no pain even though I could feel and hear flesh and bone compact and crunch under the blow. He did not let go, so I hit him again, still looking at him with cold disappointment and resignation. By the third punch, he was trying to jerk me off balance and his return blows began to land on the left side of my face. I had seen him go from person to person lashing out like a wild animal, and I wondered right then, Do I want to kill this guy? Will anything less stop him?

I was still amazed that I felt no anger, I was not seeing red after taking a few good punches. Not interested, I realized. I started to put him into an arm bind and headlock, and the girl suddenly jumped in, throwing punches, pulling on my hair and clothes, kicking and screaming, and I looked right at her and said, “No. I don’t want to hurt you,” as I pulled back the punch I threw instinctively in response to her attack. She kept attacking, though, so I caught her up in my other arm, for a moment keeping both of them bent over and bound up in my arms. Their struggles threw us into the side of the bus, and one of them went for my leg, throwing me over and then things really got out of hand. The next few moments were a flurry of her tearing at my hair and jerking my head around and him raining my face with punches.

This is what it is to get beaten. I thought it would be more painful, but it was mostly a series of shocks and a lot of disorientation. I could not make sense out of things, which meant I was no longer able to fight. You need trained reflexes to fight when you can’t rely on your senses. So, I curled up, protecting my head and face and gave them my back. In a way, it was an enlightening moment. I was beaten senseless, and yet I had the clarity of thought to note that while I lost the fight, I had won in the sense that I accomplished my objective of helping to protect the passenger and driver they had been attacking. I was a bit disappointed that I had not been able to defend myself, but the only thing I was really upset over was the destruction of my dinner. I was still hungry, and I really regretted that.

I finally have proof that physical pain just does not compare to the psychic pain I live with daily. The only thing that really bothered me was the twinge in my knee, which was twisted when they attacked that leg to bring me down. The broken nose bled like a faucet, and has been tender since; I suspect that it straightened my nose from when I broke it as a kid. The real problems have been the fact that I don’t have medical insurance; I could not let them take me to the emergency room and run up a massive ambulance and medical bill. I had to take a couple days off work, which I really can’t afford. I might just have enough to pay rent and bills, but that will leave me with nothing to live off of for the next month–even assuming I don’t lose my job for being out injured without a doctor’s note.

I have been taking care of myself, giving my knee time to recover. I could not walk on it Thursday or Friday, but Saturday Evening I was able to walk to the nearest mini-mart for some Advil and ice cream. I was not able to focus on school work for a couple of days; I spent a while laid up in bed and even when I was able to get around my apartment, my knee made it impossible to sit at my desk for long. In a way, I feel like my worst fear has come true, that I would get hurt and not be able to support myself while I am alone up here in Alaska. I was able to get some help from my apartment manager and one of the girls in my support group to get some food stocked up so I don’t starve, and if I am able to walk by Monday, I might still have a job. The problem is, I don’t know that I will have an income beyond this weekend, and that’s stressing me out more than the attack itself.

I have never been able to be myself, so I tried to just be the best person I could be, and yet when I truly do my best, I always seem to end up the worse for it. It really makes me wonder if there’s any point…

While I gazed in wonder, I realized that even before a soul embraces the awareness of other souls, the darkness of a soul embraces the light of other souls, filling the emptiness of its existence with the certainty of others, both as a foundation for its own reality, and a medium for the realization of its self. A soul dreams its dreams, innocent of consequence, immune to concern, often unaware of those who chance to share its dream. But already it is evolving. Its attention expands to encompass a growing understanding of its condition, and its will develops as it struggles to grasp the essence of its awareness.

Then I looked upon myself and had to see that in adopting a design, a soul is often faced with a limitation that arguably compromises or violates its integrity. If, within a given archetype, a design employs mutually exclusive characteristics, a soul, which by its intrinsic nature encompasses the gamut of mutually exclusive characteristics, can be stifled by the emphasis of its adopted design. Confounded by an exclusive emphasis, a soul is often compelled to find expression elsewhere. The diafracture of a soul can result in the functional and dysfunctional aspecting of a soul. The fact that such a situation can occur is not in itself damning or flawed, but a certain sophistication is needed to distinguish between a functional and a dysfunctional emphasis.

I looked upon my life and considered what was there to see. As the soul evolves, it creates. Constantly grasping existence anew and refining its understanding, recreating its universe. The power of its dreaming creating dreams. And in its dreams, it begins to experience moments of clarity. The questions and answers that it eternally weaves suddenly resolve and it awakens to a world. There was so much wonder in that. One soul can give birth to all souls, for that which can conceive of itself, can conceive of others, and in conceiving of others, can conceive of others that can conceive of themselves, and those that can conceive of themselves and each other can conceive of that which can conceive of itself.

So I understood, that one soul, dreaming of many, makes an invitation. The souls, dreaming of themselves, realizing the same truth, making the same invitation, are revealed to each other. Thus souls born dreaming alone, become souls dreaming alone together.

It took so little effort to put this epiphany to words, but the longer I looked at it, I realized that so much of it was beyond words. So much will ever be beyond words, and perhaps that is why the relationship between the body and the spirit is easier to describe than the relationship of mind and soul. Like the soul, a mind is a possession of itself, but unlike the soul, the mind is vulnerable. In a way, mind is a soul’s way of transcending itself. A soul can touch, and can be touched, only through its mind. The mind exists at a crucial threshold, as a premier interface between the individual and the infinite. Where every soul is a thing of innate perfection, each mind is a unique work of art. A mind is a soul’s way of representing itself.

At the same time, I could not help but notice that a mind is also a soul’s way of influencing itself. The power of a mind is derived of itself, in the expression of its soul. Mind is key to existence. The function of mind, to make dreams into reality, is demonstrated in our own realization of each other. The ambition or promise of mind, to realize the ideal, is demonstrated in our insistence on finding meaning in what we experience. In the world, the mind — not the body — is the seat of the soul. The mind is so central to existence that people are often blind to it, though nothing within it is ever hidden from the soul. If the soul could be said to be the light of our awareness, then the mind is the lens through which that light is focused.

It is a lens shaped by the soul, as much as by experience. It is intimately personal, yet exposed to everything. A possession of itself, a mind is also an object, a thing that can be grasped, manipulated, probed, and even possessed by, or shared, with another. I know that seems to imply telepathy, but even if there is something to that implication, there is reason enough for us to find it unsupportable. No intimacy can compare to what the mind can invite, and that is what makes telepathy, or any true example of what we would think of as psychic potential particularly difficult and dangerous for us to accept. Even without telepathy, we have enough ways to know each others’ minds. Even without other psychic abilities, we are capable of realizing that in order for the mind to influence reality, it must open itself, and become vulnerable. Only a strong, stable, healthy mind could bear to be so naked to reality. Only an open mind can touch naked reality.

Or maybe I should say, only a closed mind can avoid it. That is sort of the paradox of the position we find ourselves in. It is not our minds that define the limits of our grasp of reality, but the manner in which we perceive it. We give precedence to the senses of our body, as if the fact that our minds truly make sense of what we perceive means that the mind itself has no means of perception. And yet, all that we can ever truly know, we know only in the mind. Our connection to the physical universe we perceive as containing us lies solely in the information our minds derive from our perception of the world. The world we exist in is contained in that information, as much as that information is contained in the structure of the world, so the world we experience is really just an idea of the world. What that information really is or what it represents we are unable to know, because it can only be observed indirectly—if at all.

Our senses provide a very limited perspective. Our physical senses only provide the mechanism for transforming electrical and chemical impulses into information, perception itself is rooted in them and thus in the body, but only in the full focus of consciousness is perception truly realized, and only the mind perceives meaning and purpose. If you take the mind out of the process, information ceases to be a meaningful concept. Even limiting the mind to the function of processing information, storing and correlating data, the mind becomes distinct from the brain and nervous system by virtue of perceiving information. That transition to an information state crosses the same boundary between that which is purely physical in nature to that which is mental, or psychic or spiritual in nature. If one must look for a reason to accept these diverse terms, a justification for a soul as well as a mind, all I can offer is the common observation that what ultimately distinguishes one of us from another is the possession of our own awareness. That awareness is not always conscious and focused and it is not always neatly confined to the bounds of our own minds or even the bounds of our bodies or the world those bodies exist in. Also, while the minds provide that awareness with structure, the awareness is not passive. Awareness penetrates and pervades us, active and impulsive, persistent and pensive, focused in both understanding and intent.

It has taken me a long time to find the words to capture what I glimpsed, and that was neither the first nor the last glimpse I’ve had. I am sorry to say that these words only offer a glimpse of what I saw. If I thought I would live a long and productive life, I still do not think I could do more than scratch the surface of all that I have seen. In the life I have, I have barely made a scratch.

“That’s because it takes more effort than thinking, even if it is no more contrived than any other thing written; it isn’t really a story,” I respond. I do not have to add that this manner of confronting myself is one of the reasons my stories never get finished; she knows that as well as I do.

“It helps when you need someone to talk to, though,” she argues, crossing the room to sprawl on the couch next to my desk. There are times when I wish that I could have visual hallucinations; it would be nice to really see her when she goes to the trouble to try and fit herself into the world. Instead, I can only see her in the way I see what I am reading about in books, from everywhere and nowhere. Of course, with her, there is no book, no words; she is self-rendered thought. “It gives me chance to be myself, too.”

“You mean, get some distance from being like this,” I amend somewhat bitterly, in reference to all the unpleasant facts of my reality. Normally, I do not have the patience to write like this. Once I discovered I could split my attention two or three ways, it did not take long to become good enough at it that I would just talk to myself when I needed someone to talk to. I can confront any part of myself that way, even the parts that are smarter and wiser than I can normally be. I have come to believe that this is what angels and demons are, projections of ourselves, impressions of others and the personification of our hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts. It’s what I think of as five-dimensional thinking. “So, what do I need to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you posted yesterday. Okay, that’s still weird; it’s as much my post as it was yours,” she sighs and scoots closer to the opposite arm of the couch, tucking her feet under herself. “I know what it has to sound like to anyone who reads it, and if people have trouble understanding and accepting a transgendered person, well…” She cannot finish the thought, because I already know what she is going to say.

“People have a hard time understanding and accepting anyone different from themselves. It took me too long to realize that there is nothing I can do to make anyone understand or accept me. People have to take it upon themselves to understand anything, and it is impossible to truly accept what is not understood. I am inclined to think that an inability to accept something is in fact proof that you do not truly understand it,” I find myself declaring. I had been unable to understand what was expected of me as a child, and so the role imposed on me was unacceptable. When I learned enough to understand what made me a boy, I also understood that I never had a choice, and that was unacceptable. When I worked it out enough to realize I also had no power to change what I was, that too was unacceptable. This lead me to ask some devastating questions. What is the point of being able to choose if you are not given a choice — especially about something that virtually defines you? What is the point of living if you are given a life you did not want? “I am not the only one to suspect that there has to be more to life than this, or that there is more to us, for that matter,” I tell her, in response to her unstated concern for what was at the heart of that post.

She tilts her head and shrugs in agreement, picking at imaginary lint on her skirt. “I know, but I did not stop at that, did I?” I can feel her studying me. I can’t really meet her eyes, but I can imagine myself looking over at her, seeing thoughts written on her face.

“I know, some of this is impossible to put into words, but yeah, the post was really about believing in myself and the impulse to act on that belief,” I admit, picking up on the thoughts this little game was bringing to the surface with a small sigh. “Although, there really is nothing hard about changing the world. The world changes with or without our help. What is hard is getting the results you intended. I might have gone out on a ledge by saying what I wanted to do, or why I wanted to do it. If there was a problem with what I posted, it was not being able to say how it could be done.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. I know what she’s thinking, because I am thinking the same thing. I have not been able to invest the time and effort needed to figure that out. “The hard part is not figuring out how it can be done. There’s plenty of scope for the imagination there,” she insists, prompting me to think of thousands of stories I’ve read, and hundreds I’ve tried to write, where suitable means were presented.

“No, the trick is establishing that there are means and methods available, and pushing ourselves beyond our current understanding. It is kind of hard to work on that if it is not your job, though,” I laugh, bitterly. Of course, there is no job like this. That has been the other reason I have been totally lost in this world. That sobers me up. “Honestly, even the little I’ve managed to find time to think about would take a lot of writing, and I don’t need another ‘job’ I don’t get paid to do!”

“And yet you sit up all night writing a blog like this?” she teases.

“Until I figure out what to do, what will make a difference, I don’t really have anything better to do,” I point out tiredly. As usual, I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the things that are on my mind. Writing is too slow and time consuming a way to deal with such thoughts. She looks at me, knowingly, and I shrug. “Things have to be done in their own way. If this were a story, I could skip over all the deep thinking. Even in a simple blog post, I could just focus on making a point. You intended to ask me how this is going to work. You really want to know how much more of this you have to endure.” I close my eyes and lean back in my chair. I know what it would take to set her free, and that I have to find it in myself. The problem is, as long as I am not her, I can’t really be me. I roll my head to the right and look at her. She cannot be seen, but she does not let that stop her. An obvious truth, always staring me in the face.

I am a person who would have to change the world in order to show myself in it. It is who I am, it is why I am here, and the end — the point — is to have a beginning. It took a long time to understand that I was not limited by what anyone else knew or understood about reality; I can only be limited by my own understanding. At the same time, I realized that people understand a great deal more than they know, and that the truth is pretty much always hidden in plain sight. As I began to see and understand more, I felt the temptation to try to share what I discovered and help enlighten others. I got side tracked trying to figure out how to describe and explain what I perceived, losing sight of my original purpose. I do not need anyone to tell me that what I intended to do was “impossible” and I got tied up in wanting to be able to explain how to do the impossible before I went off and actually did what I intended. I just ended up spending a lot of time thinking about how impossible it was to do what I needed to do. I should have obeyed my original instinct, which was to try to do the impossible without attracting any attention to what I had done, but I did not know how to do that without hurting people I loved. I was also bothered by the implications of what I intended, and the peculiar insight that motivated me to act. I intended to transform my body, but that was simply how I intended to use the power I perceived in myself, how I would truly show myself. I am not actually interested in trying to change the world, but I find myself in a position where it is necessary in order to be true to myself. But, as Morpheus reminded Neo, “there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

I know it sounds insane, and I’m not inclined to convince anyone that it is not. This is mostly a case of me thinking aloud and not much caring who hears. I have spent decades trying to figure out what it would take to accomplish this task, and discovering where I am obstructed by a lack of knowledge, or experience, or resources. I’ve shared bits of speculation in past journals and blogs, but I can never really capture my thoughts in words. Writing allows me to slow my thoughts down and get some of them out where I can focus on specific ideas. I needed to get to the root of what was really bothering me, and even if it sounds crazy, I am more comfortable with what I have said in this post than I have been with any of the posts about being transgendered or needing to transition. Those other posts have forced me to revisit the things that have torn me apart, but in the hope of being understood and accepted I tried to stay within the bounds of what seemed socially acceptable. The problem is that transition falls bitterly short of accomplishing what I really need to do. I have paid a huge price to give myself time to think this through, and for the second time in my life been tempted by the practical alternative and found the cost in terms of personal compromise to be too high. It was never an option, because I always believed in myself, even when that belief was undermined by all the doubt in the world. If I cannot act on that belief, is there really any point to living?

Because I was being held to a standard of behavior I truly did not understand and which did not come naturally to me, I had no choice but to conceal my pain and confusion in order to conform to that standard. As I’ve said before, it had been made clear to me that my “disobedience” was justification for punishment, rejection and abandonment, so it did not take long before I was conditioned to assume that anyone who enforced the male standard of behavior could not be trusted. I could not ask anyone why it hurt so much to not be a girl or why nothing about being a boy made me happy. I could never understand why compliments and praises highlighting my qualities or accomplishments as a boy left me feeling hurt, hollow and unhappy. I did at least feel relief and gratitude for the fact that it made people happy with me, and at the time I thought that was what happiness was. I was not always caught on the double-edged sword of gender conflict. No one can be, because one thing that Sophia Marsden pointed out is true; life is full of things that can be appreciated no matter who or what you are. In fact, I pretty much lived for those things, using them to distract myself, and in my preoccupation I pretty much forgot myself and acted like a girl — perhaps a tomboy, I should say, since I managed to get away with it more often than not. If there is a bright side to my childhood, it was that I found ways to be as much like a boy or a girl as I wanted to, as long as no adults were observing me. Unfortunately, I was never comfortable with my genitalia, or the fact that the sensitive organ served as a constant reminder of why I was not a girl. It pissed me off that I was never allowed to let my hair grow, and I hated the clothes I was forced to wear.

The simple fact is, there was always something bringing the gender conflict to the fore. No matter how hard I tried to be obedient, practical and realistic, the notion of myself as a boy never took hold. I was always caught off guard by the realization that I was male, and even when I was trying my hardest to keep that fact in mind, I would look at the girls around me with admiration and envy, forever underscored with an ache of loss. I did not really wonder why, because I knew why I felt this way, and knew it was forbidden, so I simply did not allow myself to think of it most of the time. I just locked myself away and died a little more each day. In a sense, when I got my hands on an anatomy book and finally found out why I was not a girl, I understood what was expected of me. I still did not know why I felt like a girl, and I still do not know. I do not know why I feel like I am lying whenever I act like a man. It is a feeling that makes me feel so sick, I cannot even get past the stupid “male or female” check-box on a job application. I mean, if you look at me and assume I’m just another guy, then, well, whatever, I cannot blame you for what you see, but if you ask me, I no longer know what to say. I am no longer a child to be threatened with abandonment, I am no longer willing to give anyone the power to reject me. I am more than willing to do any job asked of me, but I am no longer able to ask for a job, and if I care even an ounce for my own well-being, I cannot say anyone can pay me enough to endure what I have to do to myself in order to work. I got into temping and contracting because, for the most part, I am never in a position to ask for work, I am asked for; unfortunately, even that is drying up, and once my savings run out, I’ll be stuck homeless in Alaska with winter around the corner. The scary thing is, that doesn’t frighten me. I’m long past the point where I can be motivated by fear. Or, I am more afraid of compromising myself ever again.

I do not want to die, and I do not want to quit, but I do not trust anyone, I know I do not fit in, and even though there are people who understand and care, I know they have to take care of themselves first. I have made little appeals for anonymous help because I know I need it, and since I do not really expect anything to come of it, I really feel no guilt for asking. When you hurt enough, you scream. It’s human nature. Walking by and pretending not to hear the screaming is too. I really have no idea what I would have done if anyone had stopped and asked what was wrong. I would really be at a loss if someone thought they could help and offered. If someone wanted to throw money at me, no strings attached, I’d take advantage of it; it would be stupid not to and even if I’ve lost the will to go on living like this, I’m still too stubborn to die. I go through these spells of crying for help unable to decide for myself if they’re the remnants of my morbid sense of humor, a way to make it clear that I can manage a cry for help without killing myself, or simply an example of believing in people even if I am no longer able to trust anyone. In the end, the reason I write is not in the hope of salvation, but in the hope of understanding the answers to questions I do not even know how to ask. The people who shaped my childhood did not understand me, and their actions hurt me because they were carried out by kind and caring people I depended on. I could not tell you who is responsible for breaking my spirit, or failing to simply ask “why does this boy think he’s a girl?” My father stepped out of the picture when I was three, my mother’s parents convinced her to put me up for adoption when I was four, I was passed around between extended family members and foster care like a hot potato. Someone, perhaps more than one, saw my natural personality as a problem and whatever they did, the damage was done by the time I found myself in a safe and stable environment. I guess that just means that sometimes it takes a village to break a child.

I can look back now and say it would have been better if I had been more assertive, but like most people I did not come into the world with all the answers and because I understood the reality of my situation, I tried to adjust to it. It took a long time to prove to myself that I was right from the beginning to think of myself as a girl. I had to destroy myself trying to be a boy and a man to understand that the only way I could survive as a person was by being true to myself. That was hard, and it is still hard, because there is nothing I hate more than the idea of being a woman trapped in a man’s body. How can I possibly be true to myself when I am betrayed by my own flesh? What future is there for a living contradiction like this? So, even when I am tempted to regret allowing myself to be forced into a role I cannot endure, I can understand how I could try to hard to be what everyone else expected me to be. I tried to be the person everyone thought me to be in the hope that, if I could not hope to live for myself, I could at least live for the people I cared about — the people who cared for me. I had no idea it would cost me so much, or that in the end I would be driven into isolation and have to face the simple, horrible truth of my existence. I lived a lie, and that is why I do not feel deserving of the love my family and friends have had for me. I hate the person I tried to be, and in that irrational way of such emotions, I hate everyone who ever loved that person. I’ve never been the type to hold on to negative emotions; I know that they arise in response to things I perceive to be wrong, cruel and unfair. I could never point a finger of blame, because I keep analyzing the problem until I understand it and what I did, or did not do, to bring it about.

I am a girl in a male body because I found myself and believed in myself, and it ended up hurting me because I allowed the circumstances I was in to overwhelm me. I knew the truth and allowed myself to doubt it. That doubt was all the leverage needed to turn my life into hell. I tried to deny the truth and struggled to believe the lie I created to survive in the world of doubt I had embraced. Why? Do the facts really matter if they contradict the truth? Is reality worth holding onto if you have to dispose of yourself in the process? I could never silence these questions, and part of me struggled to hold onto the one truth I had. I know there have been times when I wondered why this was happening to me, and there are answers I could give myself, but in a lot of ways it was not the question that mattered. If I tried to look at my life as a story, then everything that happens is just part of the plot, and if I think of myself as the protagonist of the story, then it’s all a puzzle I have to figure out. Even if I just call it a life, then the challenge of every experience is to find meaning in what is happening to me. When I open my eyes and consider what is happening with everyone all over the world, then it begins to look like a proving ground, and the purpose of everything that happens in life is to find out what it takes to destroy us. When I think about it, though, I feel like I’ve survived too many things that should have destroyed me, often in ways I would have preferred not to have survived. Even worse, it often seems that it has been because of my weaknesses, not my strengths, that I have been able to survive. I mean, if a person can really die of a broken heart, I could have died a thousand times a day.

The hardest thing to endure is the idea that this is a world without magic and miracles, a world where it is not possible to transform this body of mine in a way that would make it mine. I cling to my sanity in the face of a reality in which the very thing that supports my existence is the thing that denies me the ability to truly live. I’ve always known that there are others who have experienced a conflict between who they are and what they appear to be. I also know that appearances matter no matter what anyone says to the contrary. It is not necessary to be gender dysphoric to feel betrayed by one’s body. It is enough to simply look different. In many ways, it is easier to accept what other people look like than to accept our own appearance. I always had a hard time with the fact that I appeared perfectly normal to other people but felt horribly deformed, with parts of me literally turned inside out. I feel the distortion of my body image by my physical senses as a constant dislocation and disorientation, like I have two bodies, a male body overlapping a female body — which is a lot like wearing over-sized boots all over. That should go a long way towards explaining my instinctive understanding of four-dimensional space, as well as my intuitions about the nature of the mind, soul and spirit. Even as a child, I found it easy to comprehend magic and miracles in terms of multi-dimensional functions, though even now it’s difficult to describe what is clear in my mind using words. Of course, what I think of and associate with the terms “magic” and “miracle” are a bit different from what I find in most literature. For a while, I thought it might be more appropriate to use the term “psychic” or “psionic” instead, but even those terms are met with suspicion and skepticism these days, and I can understand why.

I recall pointing out somewhere that magic is the ability to change reality in spite of what you believe, while a miracle is a change in reality based on belief, and that both are expressions of psychic potential. These were clarifications I made to distinguish the concepts for my own use, both in fiction and in philosophy. As far as I am concerned, there should be no stigma attached to these words, or any mystery or occult terms passed down into the English language, even if scientists and skeptics do like to view them with contempt. Concepts are necessary to communicate ideas, and even if there is no scientific basis for their use, they provide a rich vocabulary for expressing ideas that are otherwise hard to articulate. It’s an approach I’ve been using all along, in previous posts. It was inevitable what I would reach a point where I would feel the need to comment on my use of such terms, just as it is inevitable for a child born in the wrong body to wish for metamorphosis. If all I had done was wish for change, I would have lost it a long time ago. The part of growing up and outgrowing fairy tales and children’s fantasy would have left me hopeless. So, I had to put more effort into searching for a way to change, which meant doing my own research into miracles, magic and medicine. Since I did not have money to throw into it, I was pretty much limited to what could be found in libraries and book stores or what could be learned from other people. It is not hard to find people with strong beliefs about magic or religion, and medical practices are pretty well documented; it did not take long to conclude that what I was looking for was beyond the reach of medicine, and what most people who believed in magic or divine intervention would consider possible.

I should say, anyone who believes in God would say He has the power to transform a body, but since He is our Creator we are meant to be the way He made us. To believe otherwise is perceived as a sign of demonic or satanic influence. I have had this kind of theology used against me, and it falls apart with just a little analysis. We could not be vulnerable to demonic or satanic influence upon our identities unless we had the capacity to redefine ourselves, and we would only have the capacity to redefine ourselves if we were meant to assert our own identities. God might determine where we start out in life, but I don’t think we would be able to live without free will; if it’s all God’s will, then there’s really no one here but God playing with meat puppets. If we are free to make our own choices, who we are is a reflection of those choices, even if we cannot act on them. The problem most of us face in life is not having the opportunities to make the choices we really want to. One of the ways you find out who you are is by understanding the path you choose to take, and why. In any case, the world we live in only makes sense if we have true free will; there is clearly nothing limiting the choices people have except the consequences of those we act on. By chance or design, we are free to do anything we take it upon ourselves to do, and it’s up to us to figure out what the right thing to do is and to do the right thing because it is what we choose to do. In the end, we become better people by choosing to be our best, without the need for threats or coercion.

For all I know, the point of my life was to come to this understanding, to live a lie long enough to want nothing more than to be true to myself and find a way to be true to others, to understand how vital it is to be true even if the truth is out of reach. Perhaps that is something that can only be understood when you need something you cannot have, when you aspire for something that cannot be obtained with words, or actions. The thing I have sought my entire life is the power to change myself, not because I want power for its own sake, but because I need that power to become the person I want to be, the best person I can be. I can be honest and say I am not happy to be the best I can be; it’s not enough to make the most out of what I’ve been given. I want to be the best I can dream of being, and I wish I could achieve that on my own, without compromise. I’m not sure if that is possible in this world. I believe in the possibility, but what I believe only affects what I can accept as possible. In all probability, I will die for that belief because I don’t want to live in a world where it will not come true. Until then, however, I will keep thinking about what it would take to change the world just enough to make myself truly part of it.

There was no sense of beginning as the illusion engulfed me, unfolding in a flicker of light, a shiver of cold, a flinch of pain—indistinguishable from a caress of pleasure—in an endless stream of disconnected sensations that slipped through me as fast as I fell away from them. Each impulse left a faint impression, a tiny ache of recognition out of which a sense of meaning was born. A hint of truth in the mystery, I discovered that they were all pieces of me, the ashes of my memories. Unfortunately, I had no idea how the glittering atoms of my mind fit together. All I knew was that I experienced a flicker of life each time a random connection was made.

I took a shuddering breath, and moaned, fighting against the impulse to wake.

The sensations coalesced into a dim world of unsettling objects that proved willfully unidentifiable. At a glance, the strange twilight would solidify into a place, but if I gazed too long at anything, it would begin to warp and waver, either changing into something else or dissolving before my eyes. Fragments of a dream that evaporated without a trace as I clung to unconsciousness, in denial of what I was already conscious of.

Once noted, I rejected that denial and forced myself to face the horror of what I had already sensed. I was hurt. I opened my eyes and confirmed the extent of the damage, a body burnt and maimed beyond recognition. I flinched away from traumatic memories of the cause. I saw nothing in what remained of me to indicate who or what I was. When I reached for it, the knowledge of who or what I had been was beyond recovery. I could not account for my survival, but finding my immediate surroundings equally devastated, I doubted I would encounter many other survivors. It looked like the end of the world. It was almost beyond description.

I had woken up in the remains of a concrete walled room, or what survived as the building it was part of had been blasted or torn from its foundations. The dark, bloody cavity of the sky loomed over a slaughtered world. The fields, foothills and distant mountains had been skinned, and shattered buildings had been chewed through to their splintered bones. It was painful to look at, and grim enough to compel me to see to my own wounds.

It took a while, but I found the supplies I needed. I cleaned and dressed my damaged flesh, promoting myself from zombie to mummy, and tried not to think about what it meant that I only felt the faintest echoes of pain. To say I was deep in shock could only be an understatement. I focused on practical thoughts and actions, because anything else would lead to screaming madness. Screw hope. Blind determination was the only thing that was keeping me going. Salvaging what little I could, I packed up and moved on.

I did not even contemplate staying where I woke up. The first thing I wanted to do was leave this devastation behind. I guessed that my best chance of survival would lie beyond the badlands. Given the state I woke up in, I was not surprised to find that my grip on reality was unreliable. As I pushed through the wreckage, I slipped in and out of consciousness, escorted by hallucinations. The most unsettling were the ones in which my body warped and wavered in its existence. At times, I would reach out, and even though I could feel my hands, I could not see them. Even when I could see them, they did not always remain mine. Without warning, it was as if parts of me became fused into the scenery and I would be forced to rip myself free of an arm or a leg to keep moving forward.

It gradually dawned on me that I could not distinguish between waking and dreaming. It was like a nightmare—the kind where I kept waking up inside a dream. I seemed to be doing the opposite, though, falling asleep and dreaming I was still stumbling forward in search of supplies, shelter and salvation. Day was an overcast twilight and night was unyieldingly dark. Because of my lack of coherence, time was impossible to mark. I always thought I was awake, and the only time I could tell I was dreaming was when things got impossibly surreal.

After a while, I began to wonder if this was what death was. It seemed much more like hell. Having no memory of life, or what I must have done to deserve this, only punctuated the feeling of damnation. I did not expect it would take long to descend into madness once I started to have thoughts like that. All I could do, however, was push forward, alive or dead, awake or dreaming.

I only knew peace when oblivion engulfed me. In its familiar silence, I understood, for lack of a better word, what it meant to be me. Rather, that understanding was me. In spite of whatever had happened to me, I still existed. It was enough to bring me back from the edge. In lieu of anything else, that glimmering truth sustained me, gave me focus. Even in the face of my nightmares.

In the grip of one, I found hope.

At the time I was stumbling through darkness, dreaming or awake, I could not know. I pushed on in mindless determination. I fought with despair and frustration, and above all I felt desperately alone. I tried not to think about it, but my sense of isolation had caused me to start seeing or sensing ghosts. Most were mere figments of imagination, just shadows or silhouettes of stone. Some of them were more of a presence, usually distant and remote. Others evaporated into nothing when I would approach. I had trained myself to ignore them by the time the first one spoke. I had sensed this one approaching, and dismissed it long before it came close. It stopped and seemed to regard me, when our paths finally crossed.

“Where are you going?” The words were soundless, intruding upon my thoughts.

Exhaustion muffled my shock. I slowly turned to confront the presence and had a hard time trying to define what I was sensing. It did not have a body, but it felt like a person was there. I cocked my head to ponder that and muttered the first thing that came into my head.

“You’re not like the other ghosts,” I rasped, barely making a sound.

“Nor are you, if you’ve seen them,” the ghost responded.

I stood for a moment without breathing. I swallowed, and asked fearfully, “Me? Are you trying to tell me I am dead?”

“I would not say that. Oh, the lives we once lived are over, but you and I, we’re not quite dead,” it clarified, its presence closing in around me. The contact was oddly comforting and unnerving. The way it projected words into my mind made me feel as if it could peer into my head. “It’s a good thing I found you. If you wander among the dead long enough, it will drive you mad.”

“What kind of ghost isn’t dead?” I demanded, thinking that this ghost was doing a good enough job of tipping me over the edge.

“Well, any soul that has not actually died,” the phantom declared.

I did not find that entirely reassuring. “I don’t understand. How does that apply to me?” I demanded.

“It means, you have been stripped from your body and your mind is trapped in a dream.”

“You have got to be kidding!” I cried out, half laughing. In spite of that, I was frightened. It was as good an explanation for what was happening as anything I’d want to believe.

“It’s better for you if you face it,” I was warned. “Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”

I hugged myself and turned away. “You mean, before I found myself here?”

“Yes. Or the last normal thing.”

“There’s nothing, unless any of this,” I indicated the world and the state I was in, “is ‘normal’.” My tone made it clear that it was not, as far as I was concerned. “I’m sorry, I just don’t remember,” I confessed, but somehow, it did not taste like the truth. There was a great deal I could remember, as long as it did not concern me. Given that kind of amnesia, and the fact that I was trapped in a dream, I was probably stuck in a coma. “I don’t really know what’s happened to me.”

“It looks like you got torn to pieces fighting to get free.” The observation was deeply upsetting. The words set my horror free. I tightened with apprehension, as I turned inward, unwilling, and was forced to see. The presence behind the words was the only thing supporting me, as I confronted the memory I had not been able to face. It was a memory of the very first time I was touched by another mind. I relived the moment it had seized hold of me and then thrust itself inside. It burned its way into every thought and feeling I possessed and then turned me inside out. Whatever else had happened, I now knew that my mind had been raped.

I hovered on the brink of remembering more, until I understood that I could not bear to. Not if I wanted to stay sane. I struggled to make sense of it, and on some deep level I suppose I did. It was not so much that I could not remember anything, but that my most important memories no longer belonged to me. They had been tainted by violation. The simple act of touching them filled me with a violent urge to tear myself free.

“What was I fighting?” I wondered, careful not to speak the thought aloud.

“You were fighting a demon,” the stranger informed me soberly and with sympathy, confirming that it was aware of my thoughts.

I did not want to believe any of it, but denial would lead me nowhere. My actions, and especially my reaction—tearing myself free of what my mind refused to remember—argued that I had endured something real, as well as unspeakable. It fit with my experience, and once I had accepted it, the implications were clear. I realized the horror in silence, “I will never wake up, again. Or, even if I could, I would not be me anymore. It’s either dream or be undone.”

“No. And, yes. I’m sorry,” the stranger confirmed, and comforted, stepping unexpectedly into focus, her body condensing from the mists of predawn twilight, and adding with an encouraging smile, “but you don’t have to dream alone.” As she moved, the air moved ahead of her carrying the strong scent of rain, wet rock and pine needles. These scents filled me and the landscape changed dramatically. The twilight turned into a stormy sky over a grassy meadow in the middle of a damp forest. The trees danced and twisted in the grip of a vengeful, howling wind. I stumbled back away from the woman and noticed that she stood poised on the edge of a cliff facing me. I hovered formless and insubstantial in the air above her, on the wrong side of the precipice.

“What is this?” I babbled in shock, gripped by vertigo, but discovering I had no body, I was unable to fall.

“This is the alternative to oblivion and death,” she explained, spreading her arms in a sweeping gesture that included a vast panorama of world and sky. When she turned back, she was smiling, and said, “This is what I am dreaming, and I am not the only one.”

I had a hard time tearing my attention away from the vibrant scene and focusing on what she was saying. “Not the only one?” I repeated, encouraging her to explain.

Instead of the response I expected, she asked me, “Do you know why demons try to steal souls?” When it took me too long to process the question, she expanded on it, “More importantly, did you ever wonder what happens to those poor souls? Well, I found out when a demon devoured mine. It took everything from me; my thoughts, my memories, my entire mind was devoured and digested as it swallowed my soul and took over my body. Only an echo of me survived, trapped in the darkest depths of the demon’s mind.”

I let her words play through my mind for a while, and she held silent while I thought. Clearly, I was supposed to understand that she was a victim, like me, but I was still struggling to fit demonic possession in as part of reality. It was not just that I wanted to deny it, but based on what I could remember, it did not seem to be something I had ever deemed possible. “I honestly can’t say I ever thought about it,” I confessed, focusing on the initial question. “Why do demons try to steal souls?”

“If you’ve had any religious studies, you may have learned that demons do not have souls of their own. The same is true of angels. The thing you might not know, however, is that they depend on souls to exist. They are dependent on the soul of their creator, or the soul of a host. A demon is really just an angel that has taken possession of the soul of its host,” she explained.

“You mean fallen angels,” I prompted, discovering that much in my memory of theological trivia. What she was telling me was not that far from what I had picked up in the course of my life. From what I could remember, even religious people tended not to take the idea of demons too literally. “That does not seem to fully answer your questions,” I noticed aloud. “If one soul will sustain it, why would a demon need more?”

She smiled. “That is an excellent question! It turns out that demons are after more than simple independence. Most of them crave autonomy. They want to have souls of their own.”

“I’m not sure I see the distinction,” I protested.

“They don’t always see it themselves. You see, it’s sort of an instinct. I suppose you could say, the demon wants a soul that fits. The problem is, the soul is the source of emotion, and souls that are dominated are full of anger and hatred and resentment at their enslavement and those emotions plague the demon and drive it,” she revealed.

I paused to weigh what she had told me, surprised by how much sense it made. It offered an explanation for the characteristics demons were supposed to have. It explained how, by simply falling, angels became so twisted inside. As it occurred to me, suddenly, the demon that had possessed me would act on my violent rejection in the world I was from. “Is there any way to stop it, or undo it? Or at least keep what I feel about it from driving it to cause harm?”

She gave me an odd look. “It’s been a long time since anyone even bothered to ask,” she said after a moment, with something like respect. “And it usually takes people much longer to figure that side of it out.”

I did not know what to say, so I said nothing.

“As it happens, that’s what I am doing. By giving souls an escape, I help distract them,” she confided. “It’s not really a way to stop or undo what has happened. You lost a lot to the demon, but the violence seems pretty much done with. It should be pretty calm, assuming you heal from the damage it’s done to you. Assume that it wanted to be you, and that it will be content with your life.”

That was disturbing and reassuring at the same time. Besides, it was not like I was in a position to do anything else about it. I tried to focus on the positive. I would not miss a life I had forgotten. Also, having my soul stripped out of my body by a demon and trapped with other souls in its mind, went a long way toward proving things my old reality could not sustain. Spirits and souls really existed, so dying g was much less frightening. Finally, I had been offered salvation, a refuge from certain insanity. I sighed and asked her, “So, how does one ‘share’ a dream?”

The painting features a girl in a white summer dress in a windy field, holding the strings to two balloons behind her back. One balloon can be seen floating away in the background, where fluffy, white clouds are seen in a bright, blue sky. The point of view is from the ground, looking up through brilliant red flowers, and some of the petals are caught on the wind. It is not hard to imagine that the observer lies in the grass, fallen from his last, desperate attempt to catch the balloon that got away from the girl. The focus of his eyes is not on the distant, rising rogue; he gazes up into the girl’s face, observing the way the light caresses the side of her face and turns her hair to gold. As the subject of an exercise in imagination, this painting has great potential for testing the notion that a picture paints a thousand words.

Summer Comes…

I can still remember the day I met Elizabeth. We must have crossed each other’s path a hundred times the morning of the May Festival, oblivious to each other in the crowds. In among the tent stalls where a turbulent river of humanity divided carnival style games from street-fair merchandise, it was too easy to become overwhelmed. Desperate to escape from the deafening sea of laughter and incoherent chatter, I set off across the field to where my family had settled for our picnic. The sun was being generous with its touch, but stiff, steady breezes relieved the heat of the late spring day. The bright green grass and brilliant red blooms danced, full of the promise of summer. As I walked through the tall grass, the ribbon of the balloon tied to my wrist suddenly came unraveled. The wind seized the flighty thing and I turned and ran back the way I had come in pursuit.

It was a short chase, more of a running leap to grasp the end of the string before it slipped out of my reach. I missed and came crashing to the ground. In defeat, I sprawled face down in the grass and sighed over my loss. I’d had plans for that helium; I never tired of the effect it had on my voice! My disappointment was forgotten an instant later as clear, crystal notes of laughter washed over me. I began to push myself up to glare at the person who dared to laugh at my folly, and confronted a vision in a white summer dress.

The wind tugged on the light fabric as she approached me, holding the strings to two captive balloons behind her back. She had a serious look on her face, showing concern in the wake of laughter. “Are you alright?” she inquired, as I looked up at her from behind the crimson blooms.

The loose ends of the ribbon swaying in the breeze drew my eyes to the string of pink flowers in her hair. I took a deep breath and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine,” I told her, tearing my gaze from her face watching the balloon I had been chasing make good on its escape. I could still feel its ribbon slipping though my fingers during the last leap of my pursuit. “I almost had it on that last jump,” I declared, rising to my feet and dusting myself off.

“It’s just a balloon. No need for any heroics,” she chided me, turning, hands still clasped behind her back holding the strings of her tame balloons as she watched my rogue dance and leap in the wind. Shifting her grip on the leashes of her helium pets, she brought her right hand up to shade her eyes. “It doesn’t take them very long to get up there, does it?” she asked rhetorically as the balloon turned into a faint speck in the sky.

“It was a pretty quick getaway,” I agreed, stepping up beside her and giving the speck a jaunty, farewell salute.

She laughed and reassured me, “Don’t worry, there are more where that one came from.”

I nodded and then smiled, “I was planning to go back after lunch.”

She tilted her head and then looked down the path toward the impromptu picnic grounds. “Are you here with your family then?” she asked.

I nodded again. “Are you?” I probed, unable to read her expression.

She shrugged and then shook her head. “They’re not really the picnicking type. I just had to get away from the crowd.”

I laughed. “I know what you mean,” I told her, glancing back toward all the noise and excitement. I had the unsettling feeling that this conversation was reaching its end. There was only so much you could say to a person in passing, and no guarantee you would ever bump into the same stranger twice. I took a deep breath and before I lost my nerve, I blurted, “Well, if you’re hungry, you’re welcome to join us. I’m sure my Mom brought too much of everything.”

She gave me a wary look. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t even know your name.”

I nodded and let out the breath I had been holding. It was not quite a sigh, and running a hand through my hair, I apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. My name is Morgan.”

“Nice to meet you, Morgan,” she responded, giving me a quick grin before offering her own name. “I’m Elizabeth.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Elizabeth,” I replied with exaggerated gravity and a faintly British accent. I could tell from the way she was chewing on her bottom lip and edging away that she was about to excuse herself. I did not get the feeling that I had done anything too forward. I had the feeling that she was tempted by my invitation, but cautious. I pointed across the grass to where my family was settled down on a blanket, “We are having lunch right over there if you happen to change your mind.”

She followed my finger and gave my family a good look before she turned to respond, “Thank you. Maybe I’ll stop by to say hi before I go back to the festival.”

“That would be great. Thank you, Elizabeth!” I grinned and with a slight nod I backed off a few steps, watching her eyes, before I turned and walked on. I could feel her gaze on me as I walked away. I did not see her again that day; in fact, I did not see her again for months, but we were barely thirteen that first meeting. It is an awkward age for starting new relationships, but the years ahead of us were filled with opportunities that we might not have recognized if not for that first, awkward encounter.

Source
Kyena. (March 24, 2006). “Summer Comes…” Digital Art. Paintings & Airbrushing. Fantasy. DeviantArt.com. Retrieved online March 27, 2009.

In the mind, it is possible to construct things in four or more dimensions, but that does not tell us if there are any objects in the universe that are constructed in four or more dimensions. Taking the example I gave of eight-dimensional time-space, we could surmise that the universe has height, width and depth in a kind of cellular structure in which every moment in time exists in strands of continuity along branches of probability in a network of possibility where multiple event paths lead to and away from any give moment. The instant is where-ever you happen to be focused on eternity. Time-travel would be non-paradoxical because time itself would be process based, a product of attention. The event you experience would largely be determined by the state of mind you are in as you approach the moment, so causal time would probably be the norm; that is the path of least resistance. The real challenge to time travel would be presented by the body and its influence on attention. As a three-dimensional spatial construct, the body predisposes us to move through time as a byproduct of moving through space. To arrive at a specific point in space and time, without transiting the intermediary space and time, would break the perceived continuity of events unless one could perceive space four dimensionally–in which case the intervening space was bypassed in an instant of time. The mind can conceive of four-dimensions internally, but the real question is, how would you move the body through a fourth-dimension externally?

A question like this is a question about matter as it relates to space. Among the things physicists know, matter occupies very little space and is distinguishable from energy only by structure. Attempts to understand the structure of matter has led to the identification of elemental atoms, primary particles and fundamental quarks; the last taking us down into the realm of quantum mechanics. In the process of getting down to the quantum level, physics has also run into fundamental forces, the electric and magnetic forces, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. These are all things that can be observed or inferred to exist based upon experimental observation, and for all that is known about them, there is much that is still not understood. The one aspect of matter that has captured my interest most often is the characteristic of mass and its association with gravity. A particle with mass is infinitesimally small and produces (or focuses) a force that has infinite range (though the strength of the effect diminishes over distance in a known, inverse-square ratio). Unlike electric and magnetic forces which are polarized, or both attract and repel, gravity seems only to attract and does so in a “like to like” fashion.

The “dent in space” model of gravity gets me thinking, as anyone who read my post on Gravity in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe could tell. Einstein gave us the equation summarizing the relationship between matter and energy, but by itself, the equation does not explain what is really happening when energy is concentrated into mass. We have to ask, what is happening to the energy, and part of the answer lies in understanding how a point of mass is focused into a stable object and why that deforms the space around it. The answer is further complicated by the specific structure and electromagnetic properties of a given particle. Particle physics is a whole field of study unto itself, and if the great minds devoted to it will pardon me, outside the complexities that might be explored, the simple observation is that structure holds the answer. Energy is concentrated and structured into a more complex and dynamic state in which we find a focal point in three-dimensional reference and forces that produce one-dimensional (polarity), two-dimensional (surface tension, surface area), three-dimensional (height, width, depth) and four-dimensional (mass, gravity, inertia, vector) effects. There is so much going on, all of it debatable, but I always come back to the four-dimensional view of matter.

I would have to have a great deal of time and a decent amount of resources to formulate something more substantial from this speculation. I am sure there is a great deal more information available that could affect the assumptions I have about pervasive energy, pervasive space, particular matter in infinitesimal space, concentrated energy, mass, structure, gravity, spatial displacement, fields, force, electron shells, magnetic shells, and light. I have the interest and the fascination to keep probing and a desire for more reliable speculation, but until I find an opportunity to devote myself to it, I can only work with the insights I have now. The implication of four-dimensional structure in matter, or the idea of atoms as four-dimensional objects, does not make our world any less a three-dimensional environment. That is, matter may only be possible at the three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional substrate of energy and space. There are particles that seem to spontaneously pop in and out of existence, if some of the reading I’ve done on particle and quantum physics is correct, and that might be an indication of structure transecting our three-dimensional “plane” but most atoms seem to be pretty well stitched into place.

I am not as confident in speculating on how energy and structure “bind” but that is what I see as a likely basis for fundamental forces. The forces seem difficult to understand or explain, but part of that is because the concept presents us with an inherent mental block. A concept allows us to hold onto an idea about an observed phenomenon, but in the act of grasping an aspect of reality in that way, we focus on the effect and become unable to see the cause. Stepping back and looking again, we might be able to see that what we call a force is simply a particular way the balance of energy in a structured system must behave to achieve stability. Seeing that way, we can begin to ask what imposes structure and how does it persist either as part of or apart from energy. The question brings me back to a notion I had about the nature of limits and how that impacted the perception of substance and solidity. If matter is mostly empty space, what keeps things from constantly falling through each other? The substance of matter is not in the mass, but in the repulsive forces of the electron shells of atoms. The thing that makes the world seem solid to our touch is the existence of forces associated with particles that prevent them from actually touching.

There is a great deal more needed in a comprehensive analysis of matter, but this is enough to return to the question of moving a body through four-dimensional space. A common observation is that an infinite number of objects of a given dimension can exist in an object of the dimension above it, being in effect an image of itself, but it would take the action of an entity acting in the higher dimension to manipulate or move the object through that hyper-space. In my example of a person attempting to jump from one position in space-time to another position in space-time without transiting the intervening space, either an outside agent would have to be involved, native to the higher dimensions, or the person would have to be constructed in four- to eight-dimensions to begin with. Not really a problem for the mind, assuming the mind is not exclusively internal to the body. The hard part, for a mind rooted in a physical body in a world such as ours would be figuring out that it did exist in more dimensions and that this enabled it to move through space and time in ways that transcend the physical limits of the body. No tool or technology grounded in the physical world would be of much use in discovering or exploiting this fact. Not that you could not discover it by accident if the mind should happen to wander; though you would have a hard time distinguishing random moments scattered over infinite probability from dreaming.