Seizure Dream [seize-yr-dream] @seizuredream - Tumblr Blog

The Infinity Equation

These are plots of random recursive equations. From this chaos, order is produced.

For every time (t), a point (x,y) is initialized to (t,t). The equation is applied to the point many times, and each iteration is drawn in a unique colour.

#mathematical art #maths #mathematics #chaos equation #geometric #abstracart #artists on tumblr #chaos theory #infinity

The Mind is a Maze

In the normal everyday state of mind there is no awareness that there are things which are concealed from us. We are convinced that everything is laid out in front of us, plainly and straightforwardly.

Yet it is evident we are trapped in the maze of the rational mind, unable to see over the beliefs and assumptions that surround us on all sides and channel us in directions that have already been laid out for us without the freedom to choose. And unlike a maze, there is no natural end or exit: it is a blind maze full of dead-ends and routes that at first appear to go somewhere, but which in reality go nowhere at all.

Because our minds have this maze-like character, so to do our lives. Because the rational mind is in essence no more than a finite collection of passages or channels that go nowhere, my life is going to reflect this fact: a cyclically repeated attempt to escape through all the various deceptive exits that my mind provides me with. Because my understanding is finite, so too is my life. If my mind is like a maze, then naturally I spend all my time trapped in this maze instead of being free to experience the world outside which by definition is not finite.

Insomuch as ‘who we are’ is tied up with our rational or finite mind, we can also say that the personality which we take on is also a complicated arrangement of blind and circular labyrinthine pathways we get trapped in. The blindness inherent in the mind-maze of the personality includes the chronic inability to see the unpleasant truth of our situation, which is that there is no escape from the maze within the terms that it offers us which are also the only terms that we are aware of.

From this blindness, a sinister reversal takes place whereby our consciousness becomes conditioned by the limited or cyclic pattern of the maze, and ends up, as a result of this conditioning, identifying itself with this set of limits. The consequence of this is that we no longer really want to escape from the maze because we think that the maze is who we are. The process of passive identification that constitutes the personality means that consciousness mistakenly believes itself to be the same thing as that collection of blind alleys that think they are leading somewhere.

This is what puts the final lid on our chances of becoming genuinely free because even when we do get sickened and disheartened by life in the maze our attempts to escape are never any more than theatrical efforts designed to temporarily distract ourselves from our misery. Deep down, we are attached to the limiting pattern of our lives. We are the pattern, or rather the pattern is us, and it lives out its own meaningless and false life through us with our willing compliance.

If anything ever did happen to threaten the integrity of the hypnotically repeating pattern of the finite mind, then we would automatically and forcefully react to protect and perpetuate that pattern. Ironically, we cherish the trap that imprisons us and nurture it carefully day by day. By serving and obeying the trapping pattern as if it were your own true self, you ensure the hypnotic sway held over you is complete: this is the total enslavement of consciousness by a false master. And all the time the pain of the imprisonment grows, until it becomes so bitter and so all-consuming as to be practically unbearable.

What we call depression can be explained purely in terms of this situation. It’s not some illness but rather the realisation that we are experiencing the pain that comes with being trapped in our own rational minds and aware of the truth of our situation: that life is futile and meaningless and false. You don’t want to carry on with your life because the thought of spending it enacting the same wretched pattern over and over again fills you with existential dread.

We are not encouraged to think too much about this. Instead we are encouraged to join in the distractions of ceaseless, frenetic, artificial social life, making ourselves too busy to be able to see that we are actually leading meaningless lives. If I am busy enough, committed to my rational goals enough, then I will not notice how empty my life is, and how hollow my goals are. Thus, caught up as we are in the fast track of life in the 21st century, we find ourselves progressing rapidly to the condition of being hollow people who are too distracted to know that they are hollow.

To understand the predicament of consciousness that has become identified with the blind maze is to reflect on what happiness really means. For the identified or conditioned self, happiness means ‘happiness on my own terms’ or ‘happiness in relation to me’. In other words, when I am identified with the trap that is the mind maze, I want this trap (which is who I think I am) to experience the happiness. I want happiness, to be sure, but I want it for the false-self. The parasitic false-self wants the happiness. But of course there can be no true happiness for the false-self any more than there can be true freedom in a blind maze that does not know itself to be blind.

All that the false-self can ever experience is false happiness or pleasure, which is the satisfaction that it gets when things go its way. However, for every delightful drop of pleasure that it gets it must pay later on in the form of excruciating pain, since pleasure and pain are the two sides of the same coin. All satisfactions ultimately give way to the corresponding dissatisfaction since the outcomes are not real, but are the merely the static projections of the rational mind onto the ever-changing and unknowable world.

#maze #labyrinth #essay #illusion #wall of text #mental health #identity #long form #philosophy

#david bowie #blackstar #art rock

#heathen #david bowie

The Mirror Equation

These are plots of random recursive equations. From this chaos, order is produced.

For every time (t), a point (x,y) is initialized to (t,t). The equation is applied to the point many times, and each iteration is drawn in a unique colour.

#mathematical art #chaos #chaos equation #maths #mathematics #geometric #artists on tumblr

The Universe Equation

These are plots of random recursive equations. From this chaos, order is produced.

For every time (t), a point (x,y) is initialized to (t,t). The equation is applied to the point many times, and each iteration is drawn in a unique colour.

#chaos #equation #mathematics #maths #mathematical art #geometric #universe #creation #artists on tumblr

"The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity that there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream."

#thomas ligotti #pessimistic #illusion #perception #mirror #selfie