8-11-2017

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki
Spiritual Cyborg / Alchemical Fire

We come to the individual in a liminal space. The individual is alone in an impenetrable vastness. The individual feels the need to move. They start running. Somewhat aimlessly at first, then with more purpose until they are running at full tilt, tripping over themselves. The void disappears to reveal the labyrinthe. The individual finds themselves hovering over a labyrinthe made up of dots, lines, wires, infinities, nothingness. Infinite lines intersect the labyrinth at specific nodes. The individual feels compelled into the labyrinth. Though they are confused what they are looking for, there is a direct inspiration to find something. Maybe it is something they lost, or maybe something they never had. Something they never knew they needed. It is a strange feeling to feel compelled towards something you know nothing about. How did it enter into my realm in the first place? Did I tacitly accept it through some other means? Or has it always been here, withdrawn. Slightly out of sight but still emanating its influence until a critical point where it revealed itself. Placed here thousands of hours ago independent of its agency. The individual pauses to consider this. Does the progeny of this compulsion matter? Where do I locate it, how does it relate to my sensory apparatus. I am I above or below it, is it everywhere? Am I now everywhere, it having transformed me always already? No, thinks the individual. I will continue to the heart of the matter. There they will find resolve, meaning, purpose, significance. The individual becomes enveloped into the rhizomatic labyrinth. They feel its tendrils infiltrating their mind and body. At a threshold, the individual begins to lose the distinction between their body and the labyrinth. What is the slightest sensation that makes them feel differentiation. Was this always an illusion as well? Deeper into the consciousness delve the tendrils, trying to find where they end. The membrane of self becomes porous, as the sensorium becomes enveloped in the multiplicity. The individual has a glimmer of realisation as the tendrils get too close to something important, and shakes back into a reverie. The individual performs a ritual that focuses themself into cohesion, and continues through the infinite walls of this strange space they are currently inhabiting. The imposition of the labyrinth into their mind still seems like its happening, but only in an afterthought, in the periphery of vision. Each time the individual looks around, there is an mote in their eyes that seems an echo of themselves. Is this a copy of themself? Is that the intention of the labyrinth, to subsume all who enter? The individual pauses once again. Unsure of where they are, or how they got there. They look around and see copies of themself surrounding them, but this is not unsettling. It is kinship. They find focus once again, and continue through the labyrinth, dodging around corners, edges, surfaces, mirrors. They turn a corner and are confronted by some being. The other being is looking at them, expecting them, knowing them already. This confuses the individual, but in the miasma of confusion that is the current situation, they are not overly concerned. The individual approaches the being. It undulates in waves, and ripples around the individual. They speak.

“Do you ever have the feeling that you are supposed to be somewhere else? That where you are, is incongruent to where you are supposed to be? Or maybe it is the feeling that you are indeed in a different place, and that you are just unfortunate enough to have been left behind, fallen out of the space that you were supposed to inhabit, and there is an act of mimicry inhabiting that place. Perhaps it is that you are in all these places at once, and you can’t differentiate one from another. It is that you are feeling all of these places at the same time, and don’t have the capacity to isolate one from the other. How would you know which is the right place, and which one is the wrong place? Or what if they are all wrong and all right concurrently? Would you ever know the difference since you are inside it, wouldn’t you like to know how it all looks from above and below?”

As this dialogue is taking place, the being is slowly evaporating the physicality of the individual, turning it into the same materia that itself appears to be made of. The individual is not totally cool with this, but at some point sees becoming part of this other being as an augmentation of itself, and becomes able to see differentiations in the labyrinth, new complexities and simplicities. Again, at a threshold, the individual must make a choice whether to become part of this being or to maintain a sense of individuality. As they reach the critical point of decision, they see again the multiplicity of selves forming around them in a ritual, and choose to shake off the beings intervention. The being realises their game is up, and shakes loose from the individual.

“YOUR NOT THE ONLY ONE” says the being, and they part ways.

The being disappears into the labyrinth, and the individual continues on their quest, though something is different. They are able to see strands that reach throughout the planes of the labyrinth, the inter nodal linkages that form the superstructure of the building they are in. The labyrinth itself begins to dissolve away revealing a more mundane structure of the planes of being. The individual then is joined by its multiple selves, and they commence in a different ritual. This ritual maintains for awhile, until a threshold point when the mundane planes of this new reality dissolve into the individuals themselves.