The Hyper-Dimensional Kaleidoscopic Rorschach Blot
On reality's numberless shades of ambiguous texture
âBut my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.â
â Alan Watts
I still like my recent essay, âThe War for the Soul of Mankind.â
It resonates on many levels.
Yet it has its limitations.
Any time youâre looking at things more or less as a âwar between dark and light,â you naturally lock yourself into a pretty polarized frame.
Sometimes that sort of frame can be useful and illuminating. I believe any sophisticated thinker must be able to swap out different frames/lenses/maps/models depending on context. This is a key feature of meta-cognition; itâs like playing around with looking at the world through different sets of âeye glassesâ depending on what will be useful or enlightening in a given situation.Â
In Spiral Dynamics, this meta-cognitive ability is signified by the leap from âTier 1â to âTier 2â thinking; and similarly in Ego Development Theory, this capacity is unlocked in the watershed move from âconventionalâ to âpost-conventional.â In these models, most modern humans are said not to possess the meta-cognitive ability to shift between different frames. Most are locked within their one perspective, taking it to be truth.
Yet the world looks radically different, depending on which frame you peer through, and all frames are in some sense valid. Everyoneâs perspective is valid insofar as it is real for them, it is their living experience, it is the universe they live within.
So anyway, the limitation of a âwar between light and darkâ frame is that it dramatically oversimplifies reality.Â
Vast quantities of reality do not fit neatly into categories such as âlightâ and âdark.â Perhaps none of reality does. I tried to address this somewhat in my original piece, though Iâm not sure I really got the point across, because I was immersed in and somewhat attached to the âwarâ frame at that time.
Some frames get closer to truth than others.
(Or more accurately, we could ask, âDo some frames get closer to truth than others, or not?,â and answer, âBoth, neither, far beyond either.â)
Truth is sorta like a never-quite-attainable frame-less frame that you can glimpse and approach at ever deeper levels, without ever totally âgetting there.â (While paradoxically increasingly realizing youâve âbeen thereâ the entire time.)
A frame that for me gets closer to truth than the âwarâ frameâespecially when this frame is seen as transcending and including the âwarâ frameâis this:
There are numberless shades of ambiguous energy and texture dynamically dancing with one another, within what we call âreality.âÂ
Itâs like a mega-rainbow of infinite subtle colorations and hues out here.Â
And this mega-rainbow can look like *anything*.
It can look like a war between âdarkâ and âlight.â It can look like a cosmic playground. It can look like a slice of delicious pizza.
Yet you canât *actually* say what any aspect of the mega-rainbow truly *is*, or whether any aspect of the mega-rainbow is ultimately âdarkâ or âlightâ or âgoodâ or âevilâ or âcheeseâ or âpepperoniâ or what-have-you.
(That doesnât mean pragmatic/functional âevilâ doesnât exist at the level of the human experience. It does, and we are wise to be well-aware of this.)
Why?
Because no âthingâ can actually be isolated or disentangled from everything else.
To truly say what anything is, youâd have to be able to say what everything isâi.e. what the totality of the mega-rainbow *is*âand no one can do that.
âIf you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.â
â Carl Sagan
Ambiguity is inescapable. The world is profoundly nebulous, un-pin-down-able, empty of fixed meanings.
(That doesnât mean that itâs meaningless, mind you. Itâs EXPLODING with ambiguous meanings; you just canât say what they actually mean, hahah.)
Notice the Ambiguity
So, if I were to offer a recommendationâŚ
Notice the ambiguity. Never stop noticing it. Be highly suspicious of your own mind if it starts to believe any one fixed or polarized or reductive map is âthe truth.â
All maps are preposterously reductive. Including the one youâre reading right now. No map ever gets close to reality. Direct experience gets vastly closer than any map. Yet maps still have their usefulness as signposts, frames, pointers, orienting mechanisms.
And again, I believe the âwar between dark and lightâ frame is profoundly relevant and useful, as humans living on the earth-plane at this time, so long as we donât over-attach to it. That last part is key. It can easily cease to be useful and become a (massively anxiety-and-paranoia-producing) limitation if you over-attach to it.Â
Yet, for practical purposes, yes, there are highly sophisticated âdark forcesâ basically trying to hypnotize you into a life that doesnât really nourish your heart and soul. Be aware of this, take it seriously, without holding it too tightly.Â
Reality as Hyper-Dimensional Kaleidoscopic Rorschach Ink Blot
Now, letâs go a little further to look at the profound implications of realityâs inescapable ambiguityâŚ
Realityâat least âmanifestâ realityâis basically like a hyper-dimensional, kaleidoscopic, Rorschach blot.
Notice how it conforms to whichever lens or frame you apply to it.
If you apply the âwar of dark and lightâ frame, you find ample evidence to support that frame, and reality can really start to conform to that frame.
If you apply a âdance of order and chaosâ frame, again you find ample evidence, and reality conforms.
You can do this with any pair of potential polarities: Masculine & Feminine, Love & Power, Consciousness & Energy, ad infinitum. If you truly immerse in that frame, you will find evidence, and reality will conform. There are infinite possibilities.
And this doesnât stop at frames focused on interactions between apparent âpairs of opposites.â It goes way further than that. There are infinities upon infinities of possible frames through which reality could be viewed. Imagine the infinities of potential frames that mankind has never even considered, or which lie beyond mankindâs cognitive-perceptual-imaginal capacity.
Yet with any lens you apply, reality conforms. It is truly astonishing that this is the case.
How is it possible that reality is this slippery and fluid and shape-shifty and imaginative and ethereal and dynamic?
Imagine being such a Masterful Chameleon. Imagine if any person could look at you through the lens of any story or model or philosophy or ideology or trans-rational meta-frame, and you would be able to convincingly appear as if you âfitâ perfectly within their frame.
Well⌠You *can* do that! : )
Because you are also reality, of course. Youâre constantly doing this too, without even trying to do it. Itâs your nature.
âI am whatever you say I am.â
â Eminem, The Way I Am
People are constantly experiencing you, seeing you in terms of their go-to lens(es), and finding evidence to support their frame. You are then conforming to âfitâ their reality-tunnel without even trying. Automatic assimilation.
This is super wild and trippy if you contemplate it. Itâs a cool portal for discovering the paradoxical, un-pin-down-able, both-neither-far-beyond-either-ish, many-dimensional nature of reality.
You can start to see that reality is truly a miraculous, enchanted, fluid-like âsubstance.â
A sparkling, unfathomable light-nectar being seen from infinite angles simultaneously, yet somehow managing to coherently and seamlessly conform to the demands of each unique angle of perception.
Beyond All Frames
Beyond all frames, there is the frame-less frame.
The frame-less frame is not a perspective.
Itâs what all perspectives are made of.
Itâs the underlying being-ness of every perspective.
Itâs the trans-spatiotemporal Now-Here in which every perspective occurs.
Itâs stainless Innocence.
Itâs Love.
Uncaused, inexplicable Love.
An absolutely mysterious Love that can never be fully grokked, even by itself.
Yet it can be experienced, felt, and integrated at ever deeper levelsâŚ
And this will feel like coming Home.
I call this Love, âGod.â
What it actually is, goes infinitely beyond âLoveâ or âGod,â yet those words are two of the most resonant descriptors, for me.
Itâs what the world is made of.
Itâs what the hyper-dimensional kaleidoscopic Rorschach blot is made of.
Itâs where everything comes from and what everything leads back to.
Itâs a living intelligence beyond all reckoning.
Itâs our destiny.
This Love is engaged in an eternal exploration of its own numberless shades of ambiguous texture.
We are sensory appendages of this Love, exploring one earthly segment of bandwidth among its countless frequencies and expressions.Â
Hallelujah!
What a gift this Life is.
Amen.
Blessings,
Jordan
Afterword
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