The Third Era

(make sure to read part one.)

There is deep truth in both ideas of the Service to Self and Service to Others, because it is the same old ancient knowledge in a new package. Yet it feels less innocent than the ancient knowledge -- something uncomfortable about it -- perhaps misleading -- yet I always loathe to attribute malice to things.

Let's start here ...

When unity is apprehended, we must accept that we cannot see "past" our own qualia. You'll have a lot of trouble with this if you believe physical reality is "outside" of you, rather than seeing it as part of you. That is a divide of your own qualia. Everything we perceive is within our perception and there is nothing outside of this perception. This includes the physical world itself, but also the unseen world of our mind and fantasies. It all lies within our own qualia experience. Whose else would it be? Note, this does not mean you are not receiving feedback from outside of yourself, only that the data you are even able to receive can never escape your own senses ...

If Others are "real", at best, we are still "prisoners of our own minds", because even feedback from the Other represents yet another perception that appears to be ours. There is no distinction of "outside" ourselves when the boundaries between the physical & mind have been removed. Even our dreams are still being observed from "our observer" and so also must be ours.

Most folks simply turn away from the idea of unifying consciousness in this way. Most cannot get past the "shame" of solipsism, or skepticism, or subjectivism, in order to explore these ideas, which perhaps hold all the keys to our world. There is clearly an apparent "external" reality and they simply cannot make the leap, so they take shelter in the physical world -- clear inside & outside. This has advantages and disadvantages, but we are not here to talk about those.

Ex Inanis won't shame them for this. Staring into the abyss requires a toll and not everyone is willing to pay it. I promise you:

A reminder of the standard disclaimer: these articles are not intended to "draw you to conclusions." Use this discussion as a means to find your own truth.

This article has been in the wings for a few weeks now. I had a version that I had to re-write, because it lead to me remembering some old discoveries that had gotten lost to time. Significant enough that I believe this marks the beginning of the Third Era.

As consciousness becomes more coherent, it begins to understand that it and its environment are connected. As this connection is explored, it realizes -- more and more -- that its environment arises from itself and at the absolute upper end, it realizes that it is indistinguishable from this environment. When this knowledge first arrives, it brings with it glitches and oddities that begin to occur, such as frequent coincidences, the same sequence of numbers of a clock over & over, and lucid dreams.

If one hears the call and starts upon the path, the oddities become more bizarre. You will sometimes feel as if you can read minds or that people can seem to "echo" events or thoughts you've had recently. I call these echoes or traces. You'll see news articles, or meet people in perfect timing, or you'll see what seemed like a mistake was in fact a requirement for exactly what you wanted.

Coincidences no longer seem like coincidences, but either divine intervention or some kind of script. You may experience unlikely events like the arrival of fortune out of nowhere, an old friend appears to save you out of a bad situation. You may even have "near death" experiences where it seems like you should have died but somehow dodged a bullet.

As you progress more, you may experience remembering a different world altogether -- similar to the one you are in, but with certain memories of differences. Folks in your reality may deride you for being delusional and accuse you of misremembering or having cognitive bias. But even if these disagreements come from