Spaces: Inner, Outer & Other

I exist even still in a “liminal space” (which could be a whole other post—with a partial definition below from WikiWand).

I live having survived the challenges of the past several years but havin not quite found the path to what comes next.

I hold the hope and have the need; and I expect to find an inspiration, a project, a purpose complete with zeal and energy. I see only dimly a light ahead that will energize my writing and my days. I long for a missing push-pull propulsive/attractive force to start me moving again in the wee hours before first light.

This disjointed post comes whilst waiting; marching in place—not completely still but still not moving as if I know where to step quite yet. But I am paying attention. And the next steps tend to come just in time, I have learned.

Below the fold are a few space-related observations from my vantage point before the sun comes up again in my 4046th week on Earth. 📌

Liminal Spaces

… the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.^[2] During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold”^[3] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).

During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.^[7] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.^[8]

🌀 In and Out of Our Minds: Paradoxical Lucidity

As regular readers will know, I have become familiar over the past several years with the progression of dementia and its ultimate consequences.

There is not much in that body of understanding to give hope to those who suffer or those who watch the suffering of this thief of life.

But one stunning fact I learned: Rarely, but not never the long-lost soul whose memory has seemingly been fully erased gets briefly re-enlivened. Their memories come back for an hour or a day just before death. Where have they been?

The phenomenon of terminal lucidity is paradoxical, and it tells us something we do not understand. But if we did…

I asked Ann’s gerontologist if he had observed this. “Many times” he said.

I asked how he explained this puzzling re-appearance. His answer:

“It is because we have souls.”

Think about it.

“The clouds cleared”: what terminal lucidity teaches us about life, death and dementia

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🌀 Thinking: More Amazing Than We Think?

The topic of consciousness is one of the most “entangled” and complex topics from the realm of our vast ignorance of cosmic reality.

What if human consciousness (as recent experimental evidence suggests) is a matter of quantum phenomenon that does not involve synapses but neuron microtubules? What if it happens in state not based in the brain?

And speculating even farther out: what if consciousness with a capital C is not a derivative, emergent material phenomenon but is foundational. From the beginning? The primary First Cause before and independent of Space and Time?

Experimental Evidence No One Expected! Is Human Consciousness Quantum After All? - YouTube

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🌀 Thinking Without Words? Echos Inside: the Silent Mind

I was fascinated a few years ago to learn of aphantasia—a human condition not all that rare in which the individual does not see images in their image-ination when they were told to think of an object like a red and yellow apple.

A new story reports that some people lack an inner voice. The condition is called anendophasia. An = without endo = inner phasia = speech

As many as 1 in 10 of us have this way of understanding the world and expressing our thoughts.

Could this explain the difficulty of your odd son-in-law’s difficulties playing rhyming games with the grandchildren?

Do You Have No Inner Voice? 1 in 10 Don’t and It’s a Problem - Newsweek

The Silent Mind: Exploring the Consequences of Living Without an Inner Voice - ScienceBlog.com

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🌀 We Are Not Ready for Visitors

I guess I’ve been living under a rock to only find out about 3 I / ATLAS a day or two ago. There is a LOT of hype. But there are more than a few legitimate very puzzling oddities about this third object to enter our vicinity from interstellar space. (Hence the 3 I designation.)

I will only say that I am following with a great deal of interest.

I am sorry that credible sources (like astronomer Brian Cox and physicist Michio Kaku) have to resort to theatrics to get the initial attention of the masses, but that’s what it takes these days.

This could turn out to be yet another distraction from those pedo-files we haven’t yet seen or it could be the biggest news event in recorded history.

YMMV.

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📌 Author of 4000 Weeks: Oliver Burkeman: Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts (Hardcover)