I'm feeling my age today. Images pop up in my mind that busy work won't stop them from coming. I unsubscribed from the philosophy discussion list. More proof that philosophy won't become what I want it to so I won't have to change my approach to it. It's more mathematical than suits me. At least the members that contributed on the philosophy discussion list seemed to think so.
The situation on that list was ostensibly commonplace. I don't know for sure if it's ostensibly anything yet. I've just started using the term "ostensible" for the last couple of days. I use "seem" and "appear" way too much and I've been on the lookout for some other words I can use just to avoid so much redundancy.
The meaning for ostensibly according to the Dictionary that comes with the Mac OS says this:
ostensibly |äˈstensiblē; əˈsten-|
adverb [ sentence adverb ]
apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually :
portrayed as a blue-collar type, ostensibly a carpenter.
The definition for ostensibly is quite similar to the expression "specious present" or perhaps the result of residing in the specious present. It enables one to view the eternal now as if it were plausible, but not convincing. I already use the term "purportedly" frequently. Ostensibly should fit right into what I attempt to describe a situation where something appears to fill the bill, but something is off-kilter. It's like when I smell a rat. Something fishy is going on.
I act like if I use a certain word in the way it was originally intended, then that word accumulates power it would normally not have. Frankly, it's a guessing game for me to be able to discern if my using a particular word in a certain way that I'm getting the results I'm filtering for, because I'm filtering for events I'm perfectly willing to make anything I want to of them.
It's like I've begun writing about using hypnogogic material to shape my dream images the way I wanna see them. I'm assuming that hypnogogic material is the same stuff that dreams are made of. I don't actually know what hypnogogic dream material is. Around ninety percent of the time I type the word hypnogogic the spell-checker lights up.
I'd like to find another description that would be apparent to most of the people I might attempt to communicate with. There are not many left willing to sit with me. It's not that people in general shun me, it's more like they wonder if what I got is contagious, and whatever it is, they don't want it. No blame.
I don't really want to think that I am subjectively responsible for creating the images of my dreamtime. Just recently I've been dreaming of getting trapped inside of these huge industrial complexes that are technological marvels. I'm a country boy. What the hell do I know about industrial complexes. That is easy. I worked in a lot of them during shutdowns to do temporary maintenance jobs. I helped build a lot of them from the ground up.
Okay, but how does what I merely "saw" extemporaneously in my dreams not only appear in pedantic detail, but I "live" there and use the facilities as if in real life. I can only assume that everybody else does too. In my dreams I run up and down stairs and through hallways and climb ladders and beat things with hammers, but I'm not really because I'm dreaming. I even know in dream time that I'm gonna wake up in a while, and all that I'm seeing and experiencing now will dissipate into nothingness, as if it never was "there".
I don't know if what happens in the daytime has those same attributes. Even sitting here now I know that what I see and experience presently will eventually go away when I enter the dream time. All that I am or seem is ostensible. The events of my daylight hours when all my sensory modalities are online and playing their roles cautiously cannot be carried with me inside the dome.
Currently, I'm wondering if there is as much separation between day and night as I've allowed myself to believe. I've read a lot about lucid dreaming and tried to get it going on my own volition. That hasn't worked out that well for me. I have lucid dreams occasionally. One in particular that I still re-member.
A couple of days ago I had an intuition pop into my mind's eye about how everything I've done to try to have lucid dreams at night is what I actually do when I'm awake and in my ongoing beta brainwave state of being. I'm aware that I'm awake and dreaming just like I'm supposed to be aware that I'm asleep and dreaming. Except that I'm taking control of and shaping my day dreams in the same way I've been encouraged to do in my dreams at night.
When I had my remembering vision I participated in what I saw and experienced in that vision in the same way that I see and participate in my nightly dreams, but I wasn't dreaming. It wasn't something I was gonna wake up from and soon forget. Because my remembering vision in which I was alive and participating in was just part of the deal. I was also just as alive and dreaming in my day time personality, which just happened to be entranced by some song lyrics printed on a dayglow poster board. Not only that, there was a third dreamer present who witnessed what the two dreams and dreamers were experiencing separately, yet simultaneously.
The very idea that much more could be going on in the situation in which my remembering vision took place than the day time dreamer and the night time dreamer being witnessed simultaneously. There could be lots more dreamers than merely the two dreamers the witness witnessed There could be legions of dreamers, all dreaming separate dreams, all witnessed by the One witness coherently. With the question being: How can one of the mere dreamers be-co-me that talented witness? It can't leave it's post. Why does it only invite those that have the ears to hear to be-with-me. Join the thousands of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
There is already a word for what I'm attempting to describe: omniscience. All knowing. That's what's really scary. The notion that there could be one witness and legions of dreamers that dreamed separately but simultaneously. I don't think it's something a dreamer can understand from the outside how it could be done. Only by being it. Being an integral part of it in real ti-me. Staying in the specious present is like a log-rolling contest. Ya' gotta have balance and some fancy footwork to stay afloat.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
