A single idea

It's all you need to start with. Then you add the aforementioned healthy obsession, and watch the idea grow and flourish.

I was around 20. I was writing frantically in my journal, when something happened to my pen and hand. They seemed to work on their own, without "me". The ink seemed to flow out of the tip of the pen, drag across the paper fibers and create words, seemingly without my input.

It was getting more and more feverish, and "I" realized that something pretty big was building up. I engaged as the pen continued to write, battling with it a bit, questioning the thing that was happening, wondering out loud about who was in charge, how silly it was that I was acting like someone or something was in charge of my pen other than my very self.

My heart got to pounding as I wrote, more and more I realized that Peace was coming up through my subconscious into my pen and out of the inky socket, rolling out onto the fibers of the journal.

The spirit of Peace, the idea itself, was acting. Obviously, it wasn't a mythical beast or a white-haired man in the clouds, but it was a spirit nevertheless. The spirit inside me of the dream of peace. Not theoretical, not illusionary. It was inside me and I had been cooking it for years. In a moment of openness, in a moment of mental and spiritual glasnost, I was about to let it out of its earthly human cage and into another, my journal.

As I wrote, the phrase that was yearning to burst forth was "Peace is the Kingdom".

I had never thought that thought before, never written it out, never contemplated beforehand what the "Kingdom" was. The moment I wrote it, however, I realized immediately what it meant. It meant the Kingdom of what people refer to as God.

Now, I am an avowed non-anthropomorphic unifying presence believer, but I shy away from using the phrase "God". It's way too sticky, and it violates my neo-athiesm ethic among other things.

As you might know already, I believe in God- but not the only one you are currently thinking of, chances are good. I believe in the pervasive scientific idea that all things are fundamentally built of identical packet-pulses of energy. All space and everything inside and outside space is made up of these tiny mass/energy packets. The packets are obviously the smallest possible things in the Universe, and I believe that they make up everything in it.

Fortunately, there is no way to see that smallest thing to prove my theory, but its evidence of existence is all around. Quantum Physics practitioners (if you will) have been looking for the final piece of the quantum puzzle, and this is my personal theory that fits that empty puzzle-gap. The Higgs-Boson might be that very piece, or it might be still smaller than that.

In any case, that smallest particle/energy packet moves in a particular way. I believe it moves in a modified figure eight ∞ path around its own center of mass. It cannot be said to "be" in the center nor the outer curves of the figure, it's in that general vicinity all-at-once. We can point toward it, but not directly at it. Heisenberg.

That's it. There's a smallest thing, it makes up everything, and it's impossible to see.
From there I came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, Faith that I was using and no longer the raw repeatable science that led me to that final point. Science opens the door, and you yourself must go through it. At that threshold, at that gate, at that either-or space, you are standing on science, and the final reach above your outstretched arms is Faith.

Faith is that same thing that gives me Hope. Faith, the internal system that allows what isn't yet to become in the future without fail. I have Faith that this is the solution, this is the way to Peace, and that gives me Hope. I can continue to hack seemingly fruitlessly on a theory that is too simplistic and un-provable, because I have hope that the idea is itself not needing me to push it forward. It has its own power.

I am simply telling you about my experience of things, not telling you that you have to have the same faith I have. The smallest thing already exists, it's already doing what it needs to do. I am not required to "promote" it or myself per se, but I am required to tell the truth about what has been going on in my head all these years.

Back to the moment....I wrote "Peace is the Kingdom" with my heart racing and my hand now trembling uncontrollably. I had to fling the journal across the room in order to breathe properly again. This was my enlightenment. It happened in the past, and I have been struggling for years to find my way back to it. This is yet another post that tries to get that idea out, putting it in a tangible format that hopefully everyone can understand. This is it.

Here I am, July 4, 2007 in a house I own with my wife in north Seattle, Washington, USA. I am typing on my G5 PowerMac into a window of Blogger in the Firefox browser. I'm listening to Alexi Murdoch's Orange Sky on repeat. I'm sober and happy, reveling in my manifold blessings. I have to share this with you, I have no choice, and I require nothing from you but contemplation of the single idea of Peace.

I ask that you consider this one idea: that "all religions have the same god that is created by and creates everything in the universe, and that all science points to the same one invisible particle/wave that makes up everything in that universe in the same way god does, and that idea makes us all fundamentally equal."

It requires the exact same faith that religious people have in their god to come to the idea that there is a "smallest thing" and that the entire universe is made of those smallest things. The order of the universe is clear, so is the chaos. It's all due to the mysterious interaction between these smallest things, working in perfect chaos and harmony. That order/disorder is how the universe continues to "be". Flux between order and disorder is itself order. And, obviously, disorder. But within those is the space, the sacred space between.

This space between particle/waves of the smallest things is not void, it is absolutely filled, but then instantly and simultaneously emptied. This space is the attraction between any two of these smallest particle waves, this is the space that both propels the particle waves toward each other, and also repels them.

This space, this theoretical full-emptiness attraction can easily be called something else:

LOVE.

Literally, love is the space between two things that both attracts and repels it. Magnetically, lovingly playing the two things with each other. Mass is also energy, and all things with mass have this spiritual force that both brings them together and at the smallest level also pushes them away.

In the end, there is no such thing as apart-ness as these smallest things are exactly the same, they are built of the exact same material/energy, have the same potential, are built in the own god's image, if you will. Exactly in god's image. In its own image as well, therefore. Therefore, being of the same original thing, having come from the one singularity at the beginning of time, they are One but they are dispersed.

At the same time they are the same thing just busted into infinite pieces (think Kaballah), they are also individual pieces of that original piece. Like humans, we are all the exact same spieces, all humans, but we are all individuals with our own particular sovereignty. People like to call that original sovereignty the "soul". It's an unkillable piece of you that bonds you in a collective to the original soul that bore you during the Big Bang.

It's hard sometimes to keep the thoughts straight, I know. It has made lesser men crazy, for sure. I am not sure I am not crazy in that cosmic sense either, but I keep seeing this stuff happening and thinking that it all must make sense somehow. This theory, that Peace is the Kingdom and it's born out of the realization that we're all made of the same stuff at a sub-quantum level, is not at all new. It's just the way it's coming out for me in particular.

Notice that it plays on all other forms of this same idea: That there's a Big Force out there that created us, and that we all deserve the life we are given by that Force. We need to realize the inherent equality in all people, that we're one animal of many on this planet, and we have to take care of each other rather than kill each other to get what we want or to "protect" ourselves.

I thought previously that my biggest trouble was finding a way to make money from the idea, honestly. I'm ashamed of that, but there it is. I thought, maybe I needed to use this big idea to make a religion of my own! Talk about super-hubris. I knew I was eventually going to share the idea, but I thought since it's my one big idea that I should somehow make my right livlihood from the idea. I was blind, but now I see...

So, to sum again: The symbol I have tatooed on my hand is an infinity "∞" surrounded by a set of brackets. In math, it's the set of infinity. It's the shape of the path that I believe the smallest particle/wave traces in space. It represents the faith of the religious that there is one unknowable mysterious force that rules the entire universe, and the faith that sciencists have that things can be understood in terms of micro-macro rules that can be proven over and over again. Those groups, the religious and the non-religious can be brought together under the idea that at the final moment things are not perfectly provable, even this theory itself. It's the mystery that brings us together, the faith and the love of each other that can bring Heaven to Earth.
This is the Kingdom.

Peace is the Kingdom of god, on the real earth in real time, while you are still alive, even as you read this or hear this read.

Pray on this, meditate on it, skeptically discard it, do what you think you have to do with the idea. It's not mine anymore, and it frankly wasn't mine in the first place. It was Yours.