The Heartwood of Synchronosophy (Part II, Chapter 11/12)
The Inner Wilderness
Within the chaos magic is found
〰 Tara Isis Gerris 〰
How the Butterfly Effect set Chaos Theory in Motion
In chaos, there is fertility.
〰 Anaïs Nin 〰
In 1961, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was working towards making weather predictions more accurate. This was in the early days of computers. People were able to process much larger amounts of data than ever before.
Lorenz started out with the reasonable expectation that being able to process more data would help improve his results. To his surprise, this turned out not to be the case. No matter how much information was gathered and fed into the computer, it didn’t seem to make any difference.
Lorenz came to the conclusion that the nature of weather itself must be the reason, and so discovered the chaotic nature of weather.
As a dynamical system, the weather is composed of virtually infinite interacting elements, which makes it extremely sensitive. Even the tiniest change, like heat rising from the body of a cyclist pedaling uphill, can have an effect on the weather.
In 1972 Lorenz gave a talk with the title, Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas? This metaphor is now famously known as butterfly effect.
The idea that small causes can have large effects wasn’t new. In 1799 the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte wrote, “you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.”
The same year, while Lorenz was thinking about weather predictions ~ over a decade before his talk about a Brazilian butterfly setting off a Texan tornado ~ Norton Juster, an American architect and writer, published his bestselling children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth.
It contained two sentences, which now sound very familiar, “…whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world.”
The concept of insect wings causing a storm in the atmosphere, which inspired a meteorologist and a children’s book author in synchrony ~ possibly without knowledge of each other ~ has become one of the underlying principles of chaos theory.
In his book The Essence of Chaos Edward Lorenz defines the butterfly effect as “the phenomenon that a small alteration in the state of a dynamical system will cause subsequent states to differ greatly from the states that would have followed without the alteration.”
In other words, what Lorenz identified as ‘chaos’ is more accurately an unpredictable blip in the results, which would be expected, if our weather was a ‘reliable, neat and methodically predetermined system’ run by a computer program.
Chaos theory examines living systems ~ known in scientific jargon as non-linear ~ in which arbitrarily small variations in initial conditions become magnified over time. The ‘nonlinear phenomenon’ ~ observed by Lorenz and his successors and colloquially known as ‘butterfly effect’ ~ is called ‘sensitive dependence on initial conditions’ in formal terminology.
The Difference between Chaos and Chaos Theory
So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy,
life is the working of Heaven;
death is the transformation of things.
In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue;
in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.
〰 Zhuangzi 〰
A century before Edward Lorenz was trying to make more accurate meteorological predictions by observing weather patterns, German physicists ‘discovered chaos’ in a different field of research. Realising that machines always lost energy, they called this phenomenon the ‘measure of the disorder of a system’ and gave it the name entropy.
Based on the principle of entropy, scientists predicted that the universe itself would one day disappear, dissolving into thermodynamic chaos.
In the meantime, the scientific assessment of our world has taken a quantum leap and shifted into the view that we are living in a continuously expanding universe. Dissolving into chaos is now officially off the agenda and no longer something we need to worry about.
Chaos theory is sometimes called the science of surprises. Chaos theorists study the nonlinear and unpredictable. They say, this field of knowledge teaches us to expect the unexpected.
Chaos theory explores complex nonlinear systems in nature, which are impossible to predict or control, like weather patterns, eco systems, economic systems, social dynamics, and activity in the human brain.
Chaos itself has been known to humans much longer. Detached from the strings of theory, Chaos is a name for “the state of the universe before there was any order and before stars and planets were formed.”
The ancient Chinese saw reality as being continuously re-created out of the interaction between Yin, the dark chaos, and Yang, the ordering principle.
In the tradition of the Abrahamic religions, God began to create the world by hovering over the darkness and calling forth the light to bring order into the chaos.
In other words, Chaos is considered the original source of life, which has given birth to the universe, our galaxy, planet earth, all eco-systems, and gazillions of dynamic systems, including humans.
This means, ‘Chaos Theory’ is not about studying chaos at all. Instead, it is the study of those aspects in dynamical systems where the ordering principle fails to offer an explanation. It is the study of the boundaries between Yang and Yin, where the ordering principle meets the all encompassing chaos and the observer is taken by surprise when witnessing the unpredictable.
Patterns of Chaos Theory and the Thumbprint of God
My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents.
Yet when I look back, I see a pattern.
〰 Benoît B. Mandelbrot 〰
What is true for our ever changing climate in the outer world, also applies to the atmospheric conditions of our inner eco-system. Being a dynamical system with the same essential properties as the universe, the living organism of human Consciousness also shows a sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
That is precisely what we observe in the experience of trauma and its long term effects. But before turning our attention to the human subjective experience which sets off a disturbing butterfly effect, let’s take a look at another phenomenon we have been gifted by chaos theory.
Why are dynamical systems so sensitive to their initial conditions?
John Briggs explores this question in his book The Pattern of Chaos. The answer has something to do with two characteristic features
(a) nonlinearity and
(b) positive feedback.
The term positive in this context is as misleading as the word chaos in ‘chaos theory’. The experience of a ‘positive feedback’ can actually be quite negative.
John Briggs gives two examples of positive feedback:
“When a microphone is placed beside a speaker and the microscopic static generated blows up into a deafening screech, or
“when a tiny grain of ice on a plane wing explodes into a turbulence substantial enough to cause the plane to crash.”
Dynamical systems are called nonlinear because they are unpredictable, unlike linear systems, where every move can be predicted by linear mathematical equations. They behave in this unpredictable nonlinear manner because they are so complex and sensitive that the slightest interference can trigger a ‘positive feedback’.
An example for positive feedback in nature is water in a stream which is constantly folding in on itself. Through this constant folding backwards and forwards, the dynamical system creates what’s known as self-similarity, now typically associated with fractals.
“In nonlinear systems,” John Briggs writes, “the folding and refolding of feedback quickly magnifies small changes so that the effect – like the small rolling pebble that unleashes an avalanche – seems all out of proportion to the cause. Nonlinear systems behave nonlinearly because they are so webbed with positive feedback that the slightest twitch anywhere may become amplified into an unexpected convulsion or transformation.”
Fractals have become a well known phenomenon through the work of Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010). He coined the word fractal and kickstarted research in the field of fractal geometry.
His book The Fractal Geometry of Nature became one of the most important contributions to 20th century science. In the book Mandelbrot shows that the world we live in is basically a dynamical nonlinear system, made up of fractal patterns, and webbed with positive feedback.
The well-known Mandelbrot-Set ~ obviously named after him ~ is also called the Thumbprint of God because it can be found anywhere in nature, from a snowflake to a tree, from broccoli and fern leaf to a landscape, to all patterns of the universe. Due to such great variations, Mandelbrot suggested “to use fractal without a pedantic definition, but as a generic term applicable to all the variants.”
If the ‘Thumbprint of God’ can be found anywhere in the universe, then it must also be present ~ you guessed it ~ in the inner universe. Now we can start to put the pieces of the puzzle together and try to create some order out of the chaos of the human condition.
Trauma and Positive Feedback
A return to primordial chaos is indispensable to any new creation.
〰 Karen Armstrong 〰
If Consciousness is a living organism, then it is also a dynamical system, highly sensitive to initial conditions, made up of fractal patterns, and webbed with positive feedback.
Some of the most noticeable ‘initial conditions’ in human life are traumatic experiences. They have a significant impact on the atmosphere in the inner space of Consciousness for two reasons:
(A) Traumatic events inevitably happen during a time when the emerging organism of Consciousness is highly sensitive.
(B) Traumatic events have far reaching and complex effects because Consciousness is a nonlinear system, is therefore unpredictable, and triggers positive feedback, which creates a personal trauma pattern.
What looks like ‘being stuck in a trauma trap’, what we perceive as being ‘frozen-in-trauma’ in certain aspects, what we experience as ‘recurring trauma symptoms’ is in fact in continuous process.
We, the hosts of human Consciousness, are trying to ‘create’ our world according to some dream of a life in perfect harmony, while the initial trauma experience is continuously folding and refolding itself in a Thumbprint-of-God pattern, recreating its own nightmare of destruction and disruption.
These two opposing forces within ourselves may explain what we experience as the constant struggle for survival, individually and collectively. This is the situation. It looks like this is more or less the ‘initial condition’ for everyone (within a wide spectrum of variations).
Every human I know, and billions of people I’ve never met, get caught up in this chaotic vicious cycle, heading for self-destruction…, towards dissolving…, eventually…, into thermodynamic chaos…?
No, wait! This is only what it looks like, from the perspective of 19th century physics. But we’re living in the 21st century now. Being sucked into the chaos by the forces of entropy is not something we need to worry about anymore. The quantum leap of scientific realisations has enabled us to see that we are not only living in a continuously expanding universe.
We are part of a continuously expanding universal consciousness.
We are continuously expanding human Consciousness.
That means the future looks bright. Much brighter than our now outdated thoughts and theories, imprinted with anthropocentric doctrines, and more hopeful than ever.
Into the Inner Wilderness
Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
〰 Henry Adams 〰
At a time when spiritual/ personal development teachings became wildly popular ~ spreading the gospel of positive thinking, laws of manifestation, and emotional detachment by living in the eternal now, recommending methods to skip the 4D reality of ordinary muggles (= 3D + time), selling spiritual hacks to gain access to higher frequencies, and promising fast tracks to enlightenment ~ the Noctarine sprouted a field of wild practices, away from the limelight of commercial spirituality.
This wild crop, which seemed to have appeared ‘out of nowhere’, showed a way ‘forward by going backward’ so to speak. It felt totally counter-intuitive, pointing in the opposite direction. It nudged me towards engaging with negative experience, rather than hammering positive affirmations into my brain.
It encouraged me to let myself drop into inner chaotic darkness, rather than reaching towards a neatly pinpointed outer light.
Instead of trying to avoid negative experiences, it shouted ‘embrace them! Dive straight in! Explore the whole catastrophe as if fear didn’t exist,’ and I found myself emerging from the chaos stronger, wiser and genuinely relieved of the ‘baggage’ which is generally considered part and parcel of any ‘normal’ journey through life.
These deep dives into the dark and wild side of my own Consciousness ~ triggered by negative experiences in everyday life ~ gave birth to the practice of Synchronosophy.
With the Noctarine as a reliable navigation instrument such explorations were gentle, swift, accessible and fun.
I discovered that troubling problems, traumatic events, which many fellow humans struggle to resolve in the course of a whole lifetime, can be brought to their natural release and closure with comparative ease and relatively fast.
The trouble with sharing and teaching the way of Synchronosophy doesn’t lie in the method itself or any doubts about its effectiveness. Difficulties arise regularly around the understanding of and alignment with the underlying paradigm.
Like the early meteorologists who intended to overcome unpredictability of weather patterns and find ways to offer 100% reliable perfect forecasts, many contemporary fellow Western humans are attached to the belief that life could or should be made 100% reliable, safe, and perfectly matching our ideal of happiness and well-being.
It’s nobody’s fault. This is the promise mainstream media, science, technology, economic and political power brokers, the entertainment industry, spiritual gurus, and celebrity culture are dangling in front of our noses like the proverbial carrot on a stick.
Many of us are, or have been, desperate enough to believe it. But here’s the good news: this virtual carrot has no substance. If it did, we would all have long since died out.
There is no fast track to enlightenment. And there is no guaranteed safe, secure and predictable trail through the wilderness of life.
Without wilderness there would be no life. Like the explorers of nonlinear phenomena of dynamical systems, we are confronted with surprises and unpredictability in everyday events.
Trying to shut out all unpredictability, any turmoil and turbulence means cutting ourselves off from the source of life itself. A neat and tidy organised life, all secure, domesticated, and predictable, all on the bright Yang side of the Taiji symbol, as painted by some AI generated utopian future is exactly that ~ utopian.
The ancient Chinese concept of Yin & Yang describes a self-perpetuating cycle of life, which emerged from Wuji, the primordial universe/ chaos (represented by the ‘empty’ circle of infinity).
Yin & Yang interact to generate a dynamic system. They are not opposing but complementary forces. In the same way ‘chaos’ and ‘order’ must be seen as complementary forces. It is not one or the other, but their interaction which brings forth life, and guarantees the continuation of life.
This principle has been recognised by many creative fellow humans, including Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (author of Frankenstein) when she wrote, “Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.”
Shelley used void and chaos as contrasting terms. Presumably she understood void as ‘lacking, vacant, empty’, whereas chaos is buzzing with creative potential. This is intriguing because dictionaries offer void, abyss, vast empty, immeasurable space as definitions for the word chaos.
Side note: Chaos, from Greek khaos, is the term for the infinite primeval space defined as the vast abyss in over 40 languages! Most European languages call it ‘chaos’ apart from Icelandic, where this phenomenon is called glundroða and has two meanings ~ chaos and confusion. And the Celtic terms for chaos Irish (anord) and Welsh (anhrefn) translate literally as disorder.
Chaos is anything but empty. It is more accurate to imagine it as the immeasurable vastness of all potentiality. Or perhaps as the never-ending wellspring of life. Equivalent to the Chinese Wuji, this is the primordial source, from which the whole of creation was born, and which continues to regenerate life on earth.
The relatively minor part, which our anthropocentric ancestors have called ‘order’, are only those aspects which humans have been able to figure out so far ~ elements they have nailed down as ‘laws of the universe’ (which may or may not survive as ‘truths’ in the longrun).
What we do know, and can predict with relative accuracy, is the trajectory caused by the anthropocentric worldview. Clinging to predictability and order ~ with the alleged intention to eliminate unpredictability and chaos ~ this outdated paradigm is promoting the current decline of our manmade world into self-destruction… hurtling us all towards chaos at increasing speed.
The Primeval Forces in the Inner World
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it,
I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
〰 Parker J. Palmer 〰
The Noctarine is a map of the inner world of human Consciousness. Because it’s ‘only a map’ it can show the landscape in countless different ways. To get an overview of what might be going on in that immaterial but very tangible territory, which pretty much determines every moment of every experience of life, we look at it here in two ways:::
(A) a visual representation of eight Faculties of Consciousness, shown as threads of light in different colours, as in the two diagrams above.
The titles ~ NOCTARINE in Homœodynamic Balance and NOCTARINE in Turmoil speak for themselves.
(B) a web of words representing the eight Faculties, which regulate the human microcosm.
The table shown here is an excerpt of the ‘Web of Consciousness’ of the Noctarine, introducing the Functions of the 8 Keepers of Integrity. More keywords will appear in the coming chapters.
In the previous chapter you have caught a first glimpse of this ‘Web of Consciousness’, which of course is far more complex than we can currently grasp. But like children, learning to read a written language, starting with the shapes and names of the letters of an alphabet, we can begin by gazing at the components of this unfamiliar terrain with curiosity and a playful attitude.
Are you wondering, which Faculties represent chaos, and which ones relate to order?
This type of question is born of anthropocentric thinking. (It’s a habit, and might take a little time to unlearn)
The primeval forces of life are active in each of the eight Faculties and their Functions. Each can express itself in a ‘chaotic’ way or in an ‘ordered’ manner, although neither of these words are specifically used in the terminology of Synchronosophy.
Word-pairs depicting polarity, in sync-sophical language, are autonomous – voluntary and feminine – masculine.
Four of the Faculties are predominantly ‘Yin’ (= feminine), the other four have a dominant ‘Yang’ (= masculine). These qualities have nothing to do with social gender or biological sex, but represent the dynamic polarity of the primeval forces chaos – order.
The ‘feminine’ Faculties are predominantly autonomous, the ‘masculine’ ones are primarily voluntary. Definitions of terms follow in a later chapter.
This is neither an exercise, nor will there be any test. It’s an opportunity to ponder which Faculties have which qualities, to let all this information sink in.
What does this all mean?
What are possible implications?
What thoughts, ideas, feelings or questions do the Functions and Titles related to the Faculties bring up in your Consciousness?
Chaos theory and Mandelbrot’s fractal theory of nature
grant Synchronosophy an
understanding of our own Consciousness as a
dynamical nonlinear system,
made up of fractal patterns,
webbed with positive feedback,
and blessed with a sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links
The Rootstock of Synchronosophy
Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma
The Heartwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 The Value of Subjective Experience
I feel this article is getting to the heart of the matter of living well in an essentially unpredictable world. The Anthropocene answer is to try and nail it all down. To nail down life within some arbitrary parameters of 'safety'. This requires various tactics of command-and-control, everything from tight laws criminalising dissent, to economic wage-slavery, to school indoctrination subverting the inner world of young impressionable minds - funneling people into psychological gulags. In other words, it requires violence to the human soul.
Is there any hope? Is there a genuine alternative?
Yes there is. The inner world is also a dynamic system where small events have far-reaching unpredictable consequences. The approach of Synchronosphy is to trust the forces of (inner) life with a special appreciation of negative experiences, which, when understood through the lenses of the eight faculties of the mind, produce beneficient unpredictable changes in both our inner and outer worlds. That is our true power. No middle-men and no 'pills' required. But a good map and a wise guide are certainly welcome.
“What we do know, and can predict with relative accuracy, is the trajectory caused by the anthropocentric worldview. Clinging to predictability and order ~ with the alleged intention to eliminate unpredictability and chaos ~ this outdated paradigm is promoting the current decline of our manmade world into self-destruction… hurtling us all towards chaos at increasing speed.” I feel the urgency of this paragraph in my own work with the chronic illness community; a population of humans rich with insight for the potential within limitation, but so very silenced by our society’s view of their inherent value, except to be fixed.