They keep talking about these new star clusters they find. They also seem to be finding a lot of planets these days too. As they show us the current concept of what the galaxy looks like and what the Ober-galaxy looks like we see these little gnat-swarms of stars and star clusters and galaxies all spinning and swirling. Now some of these galaxies are billions of light years away and are moving fairly fast and evolving as they are revolving. So the picture you see on the screen of your TV is a snapshot of that galaxy. The galaxy next to it and just above is slightly younger, but nevertheless billions of light years away and billions of years old. So if you thought about NOW you would expect them to look differently. The whole thing has by now spun into various paths and configurations, sudden accidents we didn't expect, some black holes we didn't know were there, tearing apart and swallowing the galaxy unlucky enough to wander near. Everything they tell you is wrong.

Now look out your window at the house next door. It, too, has changed since you looked. It's much closer, but still those light wavicles bouncing into your retinas are old, has-been bits of phtonic energy. The house has moved, the paint has faded. Down further we wander with our outdated vision onto the pavement and down Route 9 towards Saratoga. Cars coming at us, all older than we see, the drivers aged. One driver may start frowning at a radio show and the frown is started while we see the smile and expect a happy motorist. But by the time the body catches up with the vision, they are unhappy.

If we had shorter vision or longer sight we could look down Route 9 and see into the 50's at the hot rods and Buicks. Further down we see the carriages and horses and people hiking. Eventually the road turns into a path and then into a trail and firther back, dim against the sun we see large creatures covered in fur ambling past the ice cap. All older, all moved on.

Our reality is outdated by the time we analyze it. By the time we think about it the universe has changed. Our planet absorbed by an expanding sun, rudy and sullen and hungry. Our tiny souls drifting into the akasha planes before we can plan the trip. All time is relative, all existence is smeared and blurred by distance. This acheing body, this sad smile, all gone and drifted away by the time another observer can turn their head and see us. This rain has already begun to turn into a plant. This plant has already gone to seed. The snow has melted away to spring somewhere and am just now firing up the furnace. We're always behind and before.

How do we know if we are going backwards in time? If we are playing catch-up with the vision of the universe, flying backards into those strange days gone by when that star and that person and that plant all lived and moved and thought about things, when will we know the present? Behind us is our fate and yet we fuss about the rain that falls and smells so good but leaks into the bedroom and keeps me up at night. Al those glaciers gone flying backwards onto the summits and leaping up into the air as snow and ice and then falling back as mist into the mother womb of the sea.

Sometimes the lines converge. Sometimes one man's past is another man's future. Sometimes a child can save a mother.

The big bang may have been a crash. All things might have rushed into a common hole and this universe we see, this ALL that we look to, may just be a backwards searching memory, a life-passing-before-you kind of thing and everything we thought we did, we undid. Everything we got, every person we met we lost. But relative to everything we can see, there is a past and a future, we just sometimes get confused between the two.

If the universe is infinite and our souls are released upon physical death to live forever in the Glory and all that, then this bit of life is a hiccup and the long drawn out sigh of life is yet to come. We have plenty of time to look at all those stars, forwards and backwards. Time is relative and so are we.

We move on, we move on. We create images of ourselves along the Way, and we, for the most part, believe that we leave these images behind. Getting in touch with these images of ourselves can help resolve conflicts within ourselves left over from those previous lives. We remember high school in lots of ways but it's curious how often we hear about people dreaming about being in high school naked. Naked means exposed, open to discovery by others. Open to critiqueing. But the observer by observing, even in retrospect, causes the quantum collapse around a set of potentialities. If we observe our previous selves we change that previous self, and so that our present is changed. I suppose if you could control how you truly saw your previous self you could control aspects of your present self. Like self referencing is self creation.

Getting in touch with our previous selves. We remember having been touched by what it seemed might have been a future self and how that worked out. We changed in some way and that set our future. Say you recall a tme when you were brave. Amazingly so, you recall. Now you need to be brave. Something is facing you which presents such a challenge. You observe your previous self and you make this link so now you are brave or at least able to present this fairly enough so it works. Each success is a building block of a self and each brick can be changed. Imagine building a wall, a big wall made of bricks, all shiney red. So you paint one white. Matt white. What does your brick wall look like now? Do this a few times and then imagine that the wall is anything involving people, like countries, political parties...big groups. Look at the wall, think of the 'other'. America as one solid, same-texured, with one oddball. Suddenly you pay a lot of attention to that one brick, and maybe to a few red bricks around it.

Now imagine that the wall is yourself. That wall is everything you ever did to become what you are now. Now what do you do with that white brick, that one thing that catches your eye after all those years? Getting in touch with a previous self offers the chance to change and often the analogy is a ripple effect, touching all these others around the pool. If you think in 11 dimensions, the size of the quantum universe, it's a lot more dense and complicated. each riplle causes an infinite number of universes. Lot of responsibility.

Unless you just don't care and charge right in. Maybe you get so focussed on one thing you want that all others become less than real. When you were five looking for a gumball you dropped on the couch. Of course if you were the President of the United States with that kind of a mind, well you could screw things up badly. Like in those hot air balloon events where they drag in these so strange looking things, like a clipper ship hot air balloon, or a mantis ray fish hot air balloon... they come gliding in, on to the field and everybody looks, and really, they never do very well because their best feature is the way they look and sound, not what they are, really. A strange thing full of hot air lurching about trying to rise above the others.

For some reason I started following a trail of thought I had awhile back. I'm kinda surprised I found the thread, but as I followed it through the maze I decided that if I could recall where it went I would share it. Here's how it goes, more or less.

I think it started with explaining how chakras and yoga work to my daughter. Why a full lotus is really about joining malkuth to that other chakra at the groin. Names are hard for me to hang on to, but that's why I'd make a lousy hermeticist. Anyway, as you follow the Central Pillar to the final glorious point you pass the two chakras, male and female principals and then on to the ONE. So suddenly I thought that Time requires two, which is why the ONE is beyond Time. But here's the deal. Without two things there is no time, but without two things there can't be a question and an answer or time to pose them. So the ONE can not be said to have self referenced as that would imply a point at which ONE was not self referenced, ie, a TIME when One was not self aware. And there is no time without TWO THINGS. So, logically, there is no ONE. Only two, the male and female principals. ONE is a myth presented by implication, by inference. You see two lines not parallel and you presume eventually they meet. You see TWO and you think there must be a ONE behind them. Each part of the TWO is a ONE in itself, right? WRONG! Can't be. With ONE there is no time. Sort of like an infinitely small measure of time. Try to remember your calculus. or the final measurement of Pi. No such thing. This really explains a great deal if you can wrap your mind around it.

When my sweety pie and I talk, we frequently manage to say the same things at the same time. I often know what she is going to say before she says it. So we talk as if we two are one. And in a sense, we are. We are, for instance, a couple. A team, a family, if you include the kids. But all those ONES are not real except by virtue of the illusion of duality. The trick is, the Great Illusion, that of Duality, is itself an Illusion of Itself. That is to say the principal of the Great Illusion is that there is a ONE behind all Things, a ONE which joins all things together. But at the end, which is still within the domain of time, there is still TWO. You don't self reference, I suppose. You still have the observer and the observed. You reference back to a previous self and or a future self, but never the present self because that is busy referencing the other two. That central principal is the Point of Illusion where things get murky. A threshold between two states of existence. And as I have pointed out, Thresholds are the domain of the Trickster, Master of Illusion.

Otherwise there would not be Existence at all. There would be only ONE. So I guess in the final analysis, Trickster IS the Creator God. Give the God it's due, Trickster did it All. Well, That's where I ended up. Now I need a beer and have no car as my sweety pie and my daughter are out getting school things for next week. So if she can understand where I am coming from, even from a distance, what do you think is the chance that they will recognize that I haven't been able to get a beer and my back is really amazingly painful tonight. Like between a 7 and an 8. A beer would wash those pain meds down nicely and give me some relief. Morpheine would be good too but I doubt the drug store would release any just on her say-so.

Indeed, Trickster is in charge.