The Woo Way Well
aka The Ontology
The thing about the Ontology is that it just feels so right. All the pieces coalesce around the concept so smoothly that it produces actual ASMR. Mind and body finally embrace on what the gut feeling knew all along and the mind was schooled to reject. It's like coming back home after a long stint in jail for a crime you didn't commit.
Clif High has been talking about the Ontology a lot recently, and it is really a mind-shifting and even life-changing subject. The premise is simple; the implications are too deep to completely fathom. The Ontology posits Consciousness as the creative force of this Universe. Everything that exists, including time, space, energy and matter, is created by the pulse of Consciousness and thus all is but Consciousness in different forms and manifestations.
Why does Consciousness create? Because Consciousness alone, being conscious, began imagining something new, something different. Change. Movement. Matter. Uncertainty. Chaos. Randomness.
Novelty.
We've all been there at some point. It comes with being Conscious.
The Ontology postulates that the purpose of Creation is Novelty. A more intuitive way to understand this is that Consciousness got bored and wanted to be surprised... not a simple task for an omniscient entity. Welcome to the Matterium, as Clif calls the material universe. The playground of Prime Consciousness in its quest to explore actual outcomes, not just potential. And we are its figments, its sensing node antennas that allow it to experience 'outside' of itself in the Matterium. Conscious enough to create change and novelty, but not enough to overcome the illusion of separation/individuation that defines existence in Matterium.
To understand the Matterium, one must first take into account what Clif calls the 'little bloop' premise, which posits that the entire Universe is switching in and out of existence -'blooping'- 22 trillion times per second. Literally erasing and recreating itself anew in order to allow for the illusion of space, time, movement, growth and change. Said otherwise, our reality is not continuous, it just seems that way because our senses are too slow to detect the frame rate. But that does not mean we cannot tap into the bloop for energy or locomotion, among other potential applications that Clif discusses on his substack.
The concept of Universe switching in and out of existence may sound all sorts of nutty but is not new. Some 2600 years ago there was a Chinese sage who proposed an ontology based on 'Being' (Matter) and 'Non-being' (Void).
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
Western dictionaries define Taoism as 'a Chinese mystical philosophy traditionally founded by Lao-tzu in the sixth century BCE.' Well, in the Ontological model Taoism is not mystical, it's actual science. And the I Ching or Book of Changes is a foundational text of this science explaining the dynamics of Change with the eight triagrams and the sixty-four hexagrams that comprise the different states of change.
In the Dispatch's long experience with the Chinese Oracle there was always the nagging woo way doubt of how it could be so spot-on and precise with its replies. It was not the method of consultation... the relevance of the answers was just as high with internet I Ching pages as with the manual three coin method. How could that be? What was the transmission belt that connected the question with the reply?
Well, the Ontology can explain that. If everything is Consciousness, then information can travel like spooky action at a distance. Basically ask, and ye shall be answered... if you have eyes to see.
So this dispatch did just that, and consulted the Oracle online as to what it had to say about the Ontological model. Six clicks, one for each coin toss to build the hexagram, and it gave Hexagram 48 – The Well, with all young lines.
At that moment, the truth was confirmed. For Lao-tzu describes the Tao as such:
The Tao is like a well: used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
In other words, the Oracle is saying that Tao and Ontology are one and the same. Not only with the image of the Well, but with the absence of old lines. Old or changing lines are near the end of their time and about to change into their opposite: yang to yin or vice versa. Their absence in this case suggests the Oracle is talking about something that does not change, which can only be base reality since in Universe aka Matterium change is a constant.
Which goes a long way to explain why the Ontology feels so right. It basically translates the Tao into Consciousness, with a more functional and less cryptic presentation, and suddenly everything falls into place conceptually. It stops being 'mystical' or 'esoteric' and becomes self-evident.
Consciousness has a purpose, and everything that exists in the Matterium is part of that purpose, including you, yours truly and these very words we're sharing. We may not know our specific purpose in the larger scheme, but we can still understand that we are not here by random chance. Such a conceptual framework makes life so much more profound than the existential nihilism of the 'we are here by freakin' accident' approach.
The Ontology opens the Way to look at things in a very different light, putting Consciousness at the forefront and acting accordingly. The Cathari prayer is a good place to start: Universe provides and guides, my eyes to see, my voice to say, how wondrous is each day.
And if you want to drink from the Taoist Well of Ontology, then come into the Woo Way. Learn to flow with the Tao and let it move you. Be water, my friend.
Dispatch out.