in two classes i am reading things which directly correlate with my saturday experience. on sunday i read a book about wagner's ring cycle, for humanities. the first chapter was about the concept that all the elements are created out of the same undifferentiated mass, at the beginning of time. wagner's music expresses this in the first opera. but, even more interesting, is an article i read by edmund leach about taboos, for my signs class:

"I postulate that the physical and social environment of a young child is perceived as a continuum. It does not contain any intrinsically separate 'things'. The child is taught to impose upon this environment a kind of discriminating grid which serves to distinguish the world as beng composed of separate things. This world is a representation of our language categories, not vice versa." (linguistic determenism) Then he explains that when we define a thing as P, we must make it distinct from its environment, which is not-P. "If by a fiction we impose a taboo upon any consideration of the overlap area, then we shall be able to persuade ourselves that P and not-P are distinct, and the logic of binary distinctions will be satisfied." (this is his explanation of where various taboos come from, like why we don't eat certain animals, etc.)

but here is the best part: "The child's first and continuing problem is to determine the initial boundary. 'What am I, as against the world?' 'Where is the edge of me?' In this fundamental sense, feces, urine, semen, and so forth, are both me and not me." (and therefore taboo).

luckily, i have regained my ablitiy to find the edge of myself. more mutal arising-- my cousin julia sent me this:

"A famous ego psychologist named Margaret Mahler wrote a book in which she describes the emergence of the self, or what she calls Psychological Birth. This involves a separation/individuation process that begins a few months after literal birth, and continues through about age 2. What I found interesting was what you described almost exactly mimicked this notion of a psychological birth in young infants.

Here's some basics about how this "stage theory" works:
1. Normal Autism (1 month old): oblivious to the outer world, lost in an inner-directed fantasy ... cannot distinguish the self as separate from anything else (reminded me of your notion that you were everything).
2. Normal symbiosis (2-4 months): Symbiotic union (usually with the mother): "mommy and I are one." ... this reminded me of when you could not distinguish yourself from Donna or anyone else--
3.Differentiation and Development of the Body Image (5-9 months): beginning of differentiation between the self and others; a psychological "hatching" of the self -- characterized by exploration of the mother's face (like what you were doing to donna; sticking your hand in her mouth and stuff, and then realizing that it was YOUR hand, and when you realized that Donna was a separate consciousness)."

here is something i found here. i really like it. read if you want, i think it's pretty fascinating:

"Space is filled with miniature worm holes. A black hole is on one side of the wormhole and a white hole is on the other side. Electrons are black holes with intelligence. Black holes that are moving backward in time are white holes. Demagnetized, they become polarized to represent the moment of the arrival of destiny, the destination of the polarities' inherent collective will. This latent ability, or potential, exists in all dimensions simultaneously, extraneous to the development of quantum mechanical intelligence at the source of the dichotomy.

If you peer at the edge, the forces of covalence converge on the retina of your eye and you perceive a focus that matches a pattern preconceived in your mind. Such is the nature of matter that we must agree collectively on two levels, both within and without.

The collective intent must predominate. When the majority perceive a matter to be, that perception becomes a thing of force to rule the unfolding of the universe. When the community imparts great emotional charge to a matter, as with disease or addiction, it is difficult for an individual to operate with differing perception.

However, time is like a sandwich. The moment exists between two agreed upon abstractions called past and future. We assume that these projections expand the moment in a logical, linear way. We imagine that we are living on a line. Fortunately, this is incorrect. The universe expands in all directions from my point of understanding.

All collective agreement in perception operates as statistical probability. Exceptions must also exist. No system can be closed, although all systems may strive for closure.

At the edge of all existence is a zone of interference. If you peer along the edge, you may glimpse arising of alternate realities. We may develop and nourish this perception through prayer, sacrifice, and other means of focusing intent.

All perceptions are habit forming in that they tend to expand through time, and contract through time. Tie yourself to that portion of the collective will that supports your perception of reality to nurture and support your reality.

The collective will requires no particular number of believers to support a perception. Generally, more people mean more support. At some point, however, saturation occurs and an oddity is released. The release of oddities encourages crystallization of the collective perception, erosion, and eventual dissolution. The perceived edge of reality becomes the focal point of a new way of perceiving.

The potential energy at the edge includes all that we deny to enforce our temporary reality perceptions. At the edge of existence of any thing-event we can perceive the mutual arising of infinite potential, expanding geometrically through time. Eventually, the resisting force of the potential overcomes the dominating force of the collective will.

Any thing-event, as a construction of potential, is a hologram of the universe that created it. It is the universe, in a particular way. Being the universe in a particular way, place and time, a thing-event must include the potential for all other ways, spaces, and times. This suggests the point of view of hyper-space-time, multidimensional reality that includes thought and emotion as motivations for perception.

It is possible to change the past. The past is only an agreement. Of course, to change one thing is to change everything. However, only the agreement about perception changes. The forms are timeless. We may turn evil to good from another perspective, not by denying the original event, but by releasing the proper antidote at the proper time. The antidote arises within the condition. You can find the antidote for any condition as an oddity arising at the edge.

A thing-event exists before its birth as an impending wave and after its death as a retreating wave. The system is not closed at the ends. Birth is the moment when the collective intent achieves saturation. All births are oddities. The birth of one thing-event occurs at the saturation point of another to which it is related causally.

The death of a thing-event in one universe is the arising of a thing-event in another universe. Birth and death are connections in a chain. Death also releases all repressed or denied potential. The entire universe is modified by a death or birth.

Within a lifetime there is a point of saturation when the maximum expansion of life force occurs. At this point, an infinity of possibilities exists from which the individual may choose. This may be like a second birth, if the individual so chooses. What he wills is born somewhere, and his experience of life is forever altered. [footnote]

We cross the point of saturation whenever we perceive it. The universe is infinitely malleable in our experience of its reality. The present moment is the birth of the future and the death of the past.

We can't measure the present moment. The universe exists in multidimensional reality like a sneeze in another multidimensional universe. Alone in the cosmos, an individual can't exist for a moment, if a moment is all there is. Only a multitude of infinities can support the mutual arising of moments.