A Dream-Time Model of Reality

This model arrived fully formed in the liminal territory between sleeping and waking.  It continued to unfold through the writing of it.

I offer it as an imaginative framework for contemplation, as it carries implications for how we engage with the reality we experience. It does not imply that we are the sole source of what happens—there was nothing solipsistic in the way it arrived. But it does suggest that we carry a responsibility for how we participate in what is unfolding.

The Matrix of Possibility

Imagine reality as an infinite matrix of all possibilities.

Not a universe of fixed objects moving through empty space, but a vast field containing every possible configuration, relationship, event, history and future.

Within this matrix, potential worlds beyond counting exist in latent form.

Most remain unmanifest.

The Lighting of a Node

At birth, a single node within this matrix lights up.

One possibility becomes conscious of itself.

The lighting of that node does not simply create an embodied perception. It creates an entire universe associated with that point of awareness.

A world appears.

A body appears.

A history appears.

A future appears.

The universe comes into being as a lived field of experience centred upon that illuminated point.

The Cone of Possible Pasts

Behind the illuminated node stretches a horizon of possible histories.

The present moment appears within a context that extends beyond immediate awareness. The pathways that have led to this moment may be understood in many different ways.

As contextualised awareness expands, those pathways become increasingly detailed and coherent.

The past gradually takes shape as an increasingly coherent account of how the present came to be.

The Cone of Possible Futures

Ahead of the illuminated node stretches a horizon of possible futures.

At every moment countless possibilities remain open.

Choices are made.
Events occur.
Circumstances unfold.
Some possibilities become actualities while others fade from view.

The future is continuously taking shape through the participation of the illuminated node within the wider matrix of possibility.

The Expanding Horizon of Awareness

The cones of possibility do not represent the totality of the matrix itself.

They represent the portion of it available to the contextualised awareness of the illuminated node.

At birth, the node inhabits a very small universe.

There is little sense of a personal past and almost no conception of the future. Awareness exists largely within the immediacy of the present moment.

As life unfolds, contextualised awareness expands.

Memories accumulate.
Language develops.
Knowledge grows.

History extends further into the past.
Imagination reaches further into the future.
The cones lengthen and become more richly articulated.

A newborn may inhabit a universe extending only moments beyond the present.
An adult may carry decades of remembered experience and decades of imagined futures.
A historian may inhabit centuries.
A cosmologist billions of years.

The matrix itself remains infinite.

What changes is the extent of reality available to awareness.

In this sense, each illuminated node is not merely moving through a universe.

It is continuously discovering the universe available to it.

The Moving Point of Manifestation

The present moment is the meeting place of these expanding horizons.

Behind it, contextualised awareness assembles an increasingly coherent understanding of the pathways that have led to this moment.

Ahead of it, future possibilities await discovery, participation and expression.

The illuminated node is not simply moving through time.

It is continuously participating in the unfolding of a universe becoming known to itself.

The universe is continuously being specified.

The present is the place where possibility becomes actuality, and where awareness encounters the ever-expanding mystery of its own existence.

The Ecology of Overlapping Worlds

Each illuminated node inhabits a unique universe.

Yet these universes are not sealed containers.

They continually overlap, interact and influence one another.

Some overlaps are fleeting.
A passing conversation.
The worlds touch and then diverge.

Others enter into resonance.
Shared values, interests or experiences generate a deeper coherence.
The cones begin to shape one another.
New possibilities emerge that neither world could have generated alone.

Some worlds repel.
Differences in values, needs or trajectories create tensions that push the universes apart.

Others remain intertwined for years or decades.
Families.
Friendships.
Lovers.
Communities.
The future possibilities of each become increasingly entangled with those of the others.

From this perspective, reality is not simply a collection of illuminated nodes.
It is an evolving ecology of relationships, resonances, tensions and temporary coherences through which new possibilities continually emerge.

The Lifespan Universe

From this perspective, each life constitutes a unique universe.

Not because the individual is separate from reality, but because reality appears through a particular illumination of awareness.

The universe associated with that node begins when the light appears.

As contextualised awareness expands, so too does the universe available to it—forward into possibilities not yet realised, and backward into histories that increasingly account for the present moment.

Past and future both grow around the illuminated node, extending the horizons through which reality becomes meaningful.

It ends when the light disappears.

At death, the illuminated node goes dark.

The particular universe associated with that perspective ceases.

The world that existed through that viewpoint vanishes.

The Greater Mystery

This model leaves one question unanswered.

What is the matrix itself?

What is the field from which all illuminated nodes arise?

The dream offered no answer except that each illuminated node is an intimate expression of the underlying field – the field experiencing itself as an actuality.

And that individual lives might be understood as temporary illuminations within an immeasurably larger field of possibility.

The nodes appear.
Worlds unfold.
Histories crystallise.
Futures become real.
The lights go out.

Yet the mystery remains, shining through other nodes, opening other worlds, and discovering new pathways through the infinite matrix of possibility.