Closed System?
[wikipedia]“ A system in the state of being isolated from its surrounding environment. It is often used to refer to a theoretical scenario where perfect closure is an assumption, however in practice no system can be completely closed; there are only varying degrees of closure.“
aforest
So closed systems are illusory realms/dimensions of separateness. Such realms may seem cut off, but they are not completely sealed off, as nothing that goes on existing can be cut off from the flow of the Even Bigger for very long and go on existing in the usual sense. Are there benefits to closed-system-illusions? This has been the droning-like mission question for some time, so I feel well versed in the various benefits of experiencing walls and separateness.
The experience of walking the path being, indeed, quite different from knowing the path; injecting a blob of potentia into this boxier realm has its own share of challenges met head-on, and challenges that seem greater than my ability to meet them. As such, a trip through this closed-system-illusion, to me, tends to mean constrictive time (chronos possession!) and an almost machine-like productivity (one foot in front of the other, BREATHE, keep up the pace!), but it also means fertile ground for growth. Outside of linear time real formative development is quite a bit more difficult or less ‘believable’ -at least it seems to me at this developmental stage. It seems that part of the limiting nature of a closed system is to isolate the aspects of Self which we seek to develop.
To me the concept of closed system is very interesting because my life-experience has been framed by something like memory of other existences, as well as some very impressive experiences that show to me a larger ecology of consciousness and existence. I’ve been interested in how it is that life can sometimes seem like a closed system because of the near perfect illusion of separateness (..of realm and consciousness); how entering/ being in/exiting/tuning-[away/toward] such a zone feels.
Some of my closed-system-illusion experiences
One of my first experiences with sensing this life as a unique experience of existing:
I have memories as a young child (2-3) where I’m walking through my house and I ‘remember’ enough ‘other’ existence to see the limits and rules of this world as rather funny. I remember also being aware that I probably had a limited amount of time to see these distinctions so clearly (I remember an awareness/understanding of immersion as being part of this life experience), so I wanted to test them while it was still fresh in my mind. I thought that if I could remember and somehow know that the physical rules here did not apply everywhere perhaps I could triumph over physical ‘rules’ in some small but meaningful way. I remember looking around to see that my parents were not nearby, then thinking, “so according to these rules I shouldn’t be able to lift… the couch”. I went over to it and lifted the front end with two fingers. A strange memory. Of course one never really knows with memories that old how much has been elaborated on in hindsight. Yet, for me, the memory thoughts were very simple and straightforward, much like how a child would see pieces to a puzzle and set out to explore them.
A Conversation with Source
When I was a teenager I would sit and tune into these messages about this life system, sort of little bundles of information about my environment and my place within it. When I was 16 I had a very intense experience where I met with Source. I had been looking into the spark in my eyes, in a mirror, and kept looking into it until I entered an altered state. “What is that? It’s me, but it’s something else too..what is that?”… I had a conversation with Source and understood that it was glad I’d come, that moments of connection like these were one of the many goals it had had in creating me (humans). I saw how small I was, but how integral each individual is. I call it Source because, whether an aspect of myself or god hirself, this Source was my personal connection to the divine, to an overarching Self / Consciousness.
In short, I realized that we are each truly ‘made in the image of the creator’ and as such have all the necessary tools for developing to what appears to be godhood from where we’re sitting. Not to get into that whole debate, but this is not saying that I’m equal to Source, nor that I can ever become equal. It’s like how I will never be greater than my parents. I will always be their child, yet I too go through my own developmental stages including my own phases of adulthood. Though I may become an adult, my parents’ ‘adulthood’ will probably always be more developed than my own.
After the Meeting Source experience a familiar thought reoccurred to me: awareness of all the walls in this world, and my desire to see through and beyond such boxiness. What was different after this experience though, was that now I felt like I had a mentor whom I could ask for assistance in possibly expanding and developing my consciousness to ( rather metaphorically) ’see through walls’.
I reasoned that fear of the unknown/new is probably one of the strongest factors in limiting one’s perspective (creating walls), and if so, I needed to be open to a possible influx of uncomfortably new perspectives. Lumping this into a nutshell I asked Source to show me how I came to be here, and what I got was a set of spontaneous out of body experiences.
Doorway OBEs
Over a period of several months I had many out of body experiences that were very similar. Each time I would be lying in bed very awake and as soon as I felt that hypnagogic slump, I would jolt awake again to find my body paralyzed. I could sense my room, the bed, all my physical senses, but I could not wiggle or move in any way. Needless to say this was pretty disturbing the first several times this happened (it helps to educate oneself with a book on ’separation symptoms’ like Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce). What happened next would vary a bit from one experience to the next. Usually I would start hearing strange sounds, very much like overhearing distant space signals and tuning into some while tuning away from others. Sometimes there was music.
Within a minute or so I would suddenly PoP back into full functionality, but in a completely different realm where I was bodiless and could sense in all directions at once -a kind of spatial feeling/sight. I could reach out with my consciousness and sense different things in the space around me, like concentrations of energy. Soon I picked up on a conscious entity of some sort, so I flew over to it. It was positioned near a doorway of some kind. It said (telepathically) “this is where you want(ed) to go”, implied that I’d asked for this experience, “but you might not be able to get back” (seemed like a practical disclosure more than a threat or anything like that).
As I pondered the option of entering the doorway, suddenly I feel this immense pulling sensation, as though the entity is pulling me toward the doorway against my will. I resisted. The pressure continued to increase until I felt something like panic and fear of death like I never have in life -it felt like I was ‘fighting for my soul’. This lasted for a while; every time I felt certain that I could not continue holding out against the pressure, I would manage to keep hanging on. Just as the pressure got unbearable… POP and I’m back in my bedroom breathing heavy and jumping up to walk around my room.
This went on for several months and for a while it got to the point that if I felt the paralysis starting to happen I would will myself to move until I could, and then stay up to avoid the experiences. Eventually I tried a different approach, which was to go into the doorway. This time when I transitioned to the bodiless realm I flew straight over to the meeting spot but the entity was no longer there. I moved toward where the portal had been and tried to fly through where it had been before. I kept going and going and finally bumped up against a humming energy barrier of some kind. Try as I might I could not penetrate the barrier. Every attempt to force my way through just bounced me back harder, the stronger I tried.
Over the years I had many different takes on what this all meant. At first it had really seemed like the entity had been trying to pull me through, yet I also learned that the tugging sensation is very common when an OBE is about to end– it’s the physical body/mind calling one back to physical awareness. I believe the energy barrier is a border between this world (physical reality) and elsewhere. It took me quite a while to realize the possibility that I’d gotten quite a solid response to my request: to find out how I’d gotten here. For what it’s worth, the experience of coming upon a door to another realm of experience was what coming to this life must have seemed like. I think, though, that the ambiguity of whether I had chosen or had been forced into this existence, is most meaningful and indicates that the truth lies somewhere in between. That just like with many large undertakings, even if we know it will be a challenge, sometimes we feel overwhelmed and want to reconsider the commitment.
Since then I’ve come across many names for this type of entity, most having a clear Trickster element. It seems that such trickster characters stand at thresholds and oversee change -that which is being encountered and folded into the known. When it comes to personal development it seems such a character have to do with opening oneself to a new, larger perspective and its trickster nature is a sort of lock system where one is offered the challenge of recognizing the trickster as oneself –at one time this recognition might be intellectual, and another intuitive in nature, such that the ‘answer to the riddle’ (the key to gaining this new ground of awareness and understanding) is always different.
I Don’t Want to See the Magician’s Hand Anymore
“Please leave us here, close our eyes, to the octopus ride” -Syd Barrett
So I had this friend once who shared similar introspective and philosophical tendencies and interests. We had a few opportunities to connect and share some laughs before our respective lives parted ways. During one possible reconnection there was some underlying turbulence in the ‘respective lives’ category and he expressed “I don’t want to see the magician’s hand anymore”. It seems he had come to a crossroads loosely surrounding pushes from some friends to toe the line and find a niche in society, and the more mystic types of experiences he’d explored for some time. Either way, it seems, he associated my interest in such mystical explorations with his own fears and battling desires.
On a different note, I’ve learned that this cry of surrender sometimes happen after getting a particularly big dose of perspective expansion. I know what this can be like and so I’m empathetic when I hear this coming from another person. At the same time I’ve also learned that everyone is responsible for their own limits. If someone claims that my expressing experiences and ideas about such things feels threatened, it is up to them to distance themselves or confront their own issues with boundaries. With this friend, for example, he was developed and aware enough at the time to at least express this feeling to me. (I’ve known others who question and appear open to my relating some experiences and perspectives, then get covertly aggressive, as if they are not able to make their own decisions)
Don’t Ruin My Game
In having shared a bit of my experiences with recognizing life as a closed-system-illusion I’ve met some people who find the idea that human life is not a dead end to be threatening, seemingly because it challenges their own ideas about growth. Then there’s this concept that we each ‘forgot’ something of our larger nature in coming to this life, and there are checks in place to keep us from ‘ruining’ each other’s life experience by bringing attention to this ‘agreed forgetfulness’.
I think that people experience what they want/need to experience along their respective paths of self realization. So if someone else feels threatened by my ideas and experiences regarding limitations and growth, that is their opportunity to explore their own development and belief structures along the way. Where this theory of ‘paradox guardians’ has ever seemed real to me, I think that such resistance is a response of the larger system to an individual developed enough in consciousness that he/she is drawn to processing larger remnants and unresolved personal as well as more-collective types of data, such that personal development morphs into more of a transpersonal arena. So, for example, when I see similar groups (members with similar roles between one group and another) and life’s challenges to become more aware seem to fixate on these patterns, I believe these perceptions have to do with growing into a more transpersonal stage of development.
For what it’s worth, I have also noticed what seems to be an immersion curve, as in early in life I was more aware of other-than-this-life-experience, and around the time of the doorway OBEs it seemed to me that I was ready to let go of connections to other-than-this-life // that this life experience included fuller immersion that I had yet to undertake.
It seems that the growth of Self reaches toward further diversification by developing specialized tangents of self. So there appears to be something to learn about roles, how they work in the world between individuals and how they work within oneself. It seems that while I’ve been attracted to the idea of anti-archetypes perhaps it’s time to take stock and search for the usual suspects, as it were, and see what’s what with my connections to the popular flavors of selfdom.