This is partially a continuation of the stuff I wrote in this particular section about the Dimension Bomb, and what it means to me. Lately I’ve reread some of Fred Alan Wolf’s stuff, specifically Mind Into Matter: A New Alchemy of Science and Spirit, where this particular quote jumped out at me:
At some point in our lives, somehow, somewhere, just for an instant, the unveiling of the great mystery comes to pass. God, the magician, raises the curtain, reveals the trick just slightly, and we glimpse the illusion. But we don’t shout, Wow! No gasps of wonderment fill the theater. Something becomes distinguishable from nothing in a single creative act, but we trick ourselves into not seeing. And so it goes. No applause fills the air. We sit back, watch the show, breathe a sigh of relief, and say unconsciously, “We’ll never figure this one out, might as well just accept it.
This is a reaction commonly expressed by…all of us to a degree, really. Sometimes we’re hesitant even to understand it, like we’re biting off more than we can chew. Perhaps the only time we actually face it is when we know our lives are beginning to come to a close, and the existential terror creeps silently in. Wolf goes on to say:
We watch the boundary between ocean and land, between air, earth, and water. We watch the effervescent crust of sand, water, and air and remember the distinctions. And likewise, we live our lives in the comfortable notion that an invisible membrane separates us from that world “out there”; that “in here,” in our minds, our inner worlds of imagination, we are safe and alone. In no way can any person or thing intrude into our individual mind worlds. Every sense in our bodies continually tells us that this is true, that we are each alone. We ignore any information, any thought, any perception, any imaginative tale, anyone else’s story that confronts our sensory presentation of the separated “out there” and “in here” worlds. We look skeptical at people who tell us a different story, probably dismissing them as misguided fools, or even lunatics.
People fear what they don’t understand, its a common trait in most species, at least in most mammals. Boundaries are comfort zones–I should know, as I am admittedly a creature of comfort. This is why something on the level of a “Dimension Bomb”–a sudden and violent awakening–is needed. Like Shin (and in a fucked up sort of way, as Shin) I travel through my inner world, and in blasting through to the other side I am hit with sudden and terrifying realizations, the effects of which I may spend my entire life trying to understand, and longer even to be able to put to words. The Dimension Bomb is an awakening, a vehicle of change and transformation. Although I myself am no stranger to alchemical awakenings, each one is of a different flavor than the last, a different force, something which challenges my boundaries and my comfort, forever recalibrating my view of the world around me. As I travel on through my inner world to the other side of reality as I know it, I realize that I can never look back. The momentum from the blast drives me straight forward, and like it or not I’m in for keeps. We all are, when this sort of thing comes up, swiftly and suddenly, with the force of a bomb.
