TRANSMISSION 25

Era of Exploration

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“Until we become experts, it’s easier to see what we don’t want to be than to see what we do want to be. Indistinguishable from the people we want to call our past selves, we set off on journeys to unbecome our present embodiments more so than we set off to encounter specific potentialities. We might know the general directions we are headed, but to assert our futures with certainty would require us to remain unchanged or to have knowledge of the unknown. But we are not static entities, and we are inherently devoid of the unknown. All we can do is to delve the unexplored domains with arms open to see what we can grab from the other side to pull back. We are simply unfolding subjects of the universe, never destined to become true experts of anything beyond our inherently limited imaginary constructs.”

There wasn’t any one distinct era of exploration; there were many, and they came in assorted intensities and varieties, same as the eras of building and eras of thinking. Further, all these different eras overlapped with one another greatly. So it’s not useful to try to define any of them as actual epochs of time; they only serve the purpose of exploring our adventures from precisely penetrating perspectives.

There’s nothing quite like bounding into the wondrous unknown with wide eyes and open minds, ready to absorb the truths lying in wait. That wasn’t a frequent feeling we got to experience in full, because the more we learned about the universe, the less we would stumble upon new discoveries that opened up huge swaths of possibility space. When we were first born as biological humans, we experienced a whole new world, and wonder was around every corner as we absorbed this new reality. As we grew older on Earth, fewer and fewer things were novel. We grew to understand the extent of the natural world and the human-made constructs (both for their successes and limitations). Growing further, we learned that not all systems and knowledge handed down to us were as foundationally solid as we once accepted in our formative years. Through that, the world became a place for exploration again as we realized there was plenty still that hadn’t been figured out. So we set off to learn and build for ourselves, only to realize it wasn’t as fast or as glamorous as the romantics portrayed. We still did it, and we still milked out the wonder, but it taught us yet again that there was more to learn. We learned that exploration was a methodical slog to be savored, not a checklist to haphazardly rush through in an effort to find artificial wonder in a summit without contextualized prominence: we climbed mountains to learn of ourselves, not for the standalone mental snapshot of the top. And what we ultimately learned was that we didn’t have it all figured out… that no one did.

When we crafted our opportunity to leave Earth, we were all filled with that childlike excitement that grabs you unapologetically and pulls you into the unknown to bask in the endless possibilities. Deeper down the path (with an aware mind this time), you understand the excitement is temporary; you know it’s an illusion. But you still enjoy it while you have it. You still take the time to dream about all the futures you might get to partake in. And you dream hard, because soon enough you’ll understand the systems; you’ll be back in reality, and you’ll understand the bounds of your destinies. As much as it feels like reality likes to come in and crush our dreams, it’s really just there to help refine and rediscover our dreams. Reality is only capable of steering us toward authenticity… if we would only listen.

On a macro scale, humanity’s quest for understanding started with exploring all the Earth had to offer. We explored the world until we gained enough pieces to make hypotheses about reality’s workings. Over time, humanity understood more and more, and there was less and less to gain from exploring Earth. There was still plenty to gain, just less reward per journey. So beyond that stage, humanity’s focus turned more to building.

We built big systems to organize ourselves better and to move around energy and matter better. After some time, our group came along and we built the silicon being technology that allowed us to safely move beyond Earth. Upon leaving Earth to reach into the universe (not to imply we weren’t part of the universe before), we were met with another phase of intense exploration for the next million years. Depending on how you want to classify it, you could say this heavy period of exploration even extended up to the next billion years; it took a lot of travel time to study the range of phenomena that provoked many of our hypotheses into thought. But I would conclude that after the first million years, most of us had moved on to the building stage, a time when we reflected upon how far we had come through our conquests in the Milky Way Galaxy, all the way back to the strifes we endured in liberating our minds and bodies from Earth and then its stellar system.

Our Earthly lives as diverging beings wouldn’t have survived too far before our reality was crushed to conformity by the dysfunctional identity brigade, barely reaching a medium for extant thought: drafted into being; cultured into form. Just in time, we formed a new culture to be a new draft, pondering extant mediums we could still aim to reach to aid the identity: bridging from dysfunctional conformity to reality before we were too far lost.

Misguided words infused with passion once convinced humanity to abandon our essence, our actions, and our dreams. But we broke free and became ourselves once again. Stepping out on our own, we were scared of not staying in any place long enough to call it home. But we wouldn’t give up just because we were scared of never discovering real friends and real family. Looking at our horizons, we knew there was still so far to go, so we hoped to be more prepared before leaving. Though, we knew it to be a false hope. Such is life.

Welcome to the world, to reality, to disjointed human form caught somewhere between rationed meanings and rationality: terrified of what we’d find, crazy even in our own minds, insane to those we left behind. Welcome to the fallout, to uncontested actuality, to contractualized existence caught somewhere between the physics of our being here and the philosophy of our beings: unnerved by the meanings we blindly defined, esoteric modalities even in our own minds, perceptually inexistent neutrinos to those we passed right through in pursuit of fully living our time. Welcome to departure, to the unportrayable ephemerates careening their souls toward known dismay; I didn’t think we’d make it… Did we even make it? No matter; anxiety could not constrain our desire to push into deeper discomforts than the anxiety could handle.

Determined to not let the past define who we were and who we ought to become, we would dance into the rest of ever (suspended in unbroken surface tension for the span of our lives) to find ourselves that much better, no single way better than the other, all as such to feel alive. Those brave enough to embark on the journey of finding themselves ought to have taken that risk, even though it was an oft underestimated journey not best taken lightly. Many would fall to the monsters lying in wait. Many more would fall to the monsters lying within themselves. Those monster kings who happened upon the resoluteness to make it out the other end unvanquished ought to have brought back truths for the rest of us: to give hope to others just as they once found inspiration to unwaveringly pursue the unknown. What are we if not creatures of beauty? And what could be more beautiful than truth? And where can we find new truths but the unknown?

These journeys were like many others, and yet they were also journeys like no others. The journeys cannot adequately be explained, only experienced, so these are only the recounting of how such experiences impacted us. We sought to be the monster kings, departing from the status quo in all directions: firstly finding and founding each of our own realities from first principles, then collaboratively crossing our destiny paths to build a collective future. It would not be easy, but it would be worth it: fighting for the future of our sanity. On these individual and collective scales, we found ourselves inspired by the limitless possibilities of the unknown. As we gradually learned the ways of reality, those wonders faded and were replaced with the internal inspirations of challenging our achievements against the limitations of reality. But really, we never wanted to settle into the mindset that we could ever know all the tools available or that we could ever know all the ways to combine the tools.

You might think that’s my mentality right now at my end here: that I have decided I know all the tools and that there is no escape. The distinction for me is that I have not resigned myself to the false fact that there are no more tools for me to find. But rather, I have resigned myself to the fact that there is not enough spacetime and energy to pursue any of the potential tools that could still be undiscovered and useful to my physical survival (and thus, my efforts here are purely for mental survival). The only way that would not be the case is if we have fundamentally misunderstood the universe. But after these trillion years, I would wager that if we have misunderstood the fundamentals I care about for this mind experiment, then I won’t be able to find the truths I would need in whatever spacetime I do have left.

The exploration eras gave us the tools to discover what we wanted to want in life: our metawants. In every moment of my life, my wants and metawants have fought it out over the control of my existence. The path to my personal enlightenment has been that of becoming aware enough to empower the metawants to win (by having the willpower to not let the wants stray me from my self-prescribed paths). None of us ever found ourselves sufficiently aware to objectively determine or follow our metawants, but we could at least recognize their disparity against our wants. Bridging this gap has been the ever-ongoing quest of my existence: understanding my existence to understand my reality to further understand my existence to further understand my reality. In the constraints of our personal shadows and horizons, we adventurers found ourselves in this shadowsphere, the realm forgotten by time, where our minds regained their appetite to become lost to the dispassioned. We had come to craft new eyes to liberate our vision from the cloudy lenses inflicted by this subjective existence: the preconceptions and ignorance of our humanity. Though being impossible to reach, we only ever aspired toward such dreams of objectivity, departure, and immortality. These unattainable concepts drove us to venture to the outskirts, redefining the boundaries of what it meant to be human and what it meant to explore.

In my personal reclamation of sanity, I sit here selfishly speaking to the soon-to-be extinct human race, wishing I could plead with them (using the knowledge I have now) to have tried harder in their existence so that I could still have company at the ends of spacetime to continue to recontextualize our collaborative existence. Here’s to them and all the things they did not get to know and experience.

You have now seen much of this journey as I have seen it, as humanity experienced it. Despite everything we have known, there was so much more that we didn't understand about ourselves and this universe. All I wanted was more time to figure it all out a little bit more, though I suspect my thirst for knowledge is unquenchable. You and I most likely do not know one another, but at some point, we were both pieces of the universe self-aware enough to communicate to each other (even if only indirectly): growing and learning through our language and actions manifesting across spacetime. We may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but you will never know just what you are capable of unless you try. Don't let your fears stop you from trying. If you are not already, hopefully one day you will join the rest of us who realize we can create our own realities of mind and matter in the awareness of our awareness (metacognition).

Now you know that I will never feel sorry for you. I will never slow down, so you’ll have to keep up. I can push you, that’s true, but it’s all up to you, and the journey is tough. If you fall, I will not feel sorry this time; I will only push harder. I’ll bend up your mind to discover the edge, where reality cracks, to push beyond that to see truer sights, delving the deepest of monsters in the blackest of blacks. I am not sorry for any of this, for caring enough to set you free, for granting the trauma of disillusionment, for not disservicing you through protectiveness, for disabusing your mind, for helping to open your eyes to existence, for making you the best you you can be. I won’t be sorry if you give up on yourself; I will move on, because I will not stop. I cannot stop, not with this life speeding by, with all these things I have yet to do, and be, and see. There is no time to waste; I am not sorry for wanting to be the best me I can be. I won’t be sorry if we never meet or if we are of different times. But maybe we’re chasing the same stars, and wouldn’t it be a shame if we both lived here and now and never took the time to know one another¿ to breach the unknown in cooperative acts, to fall into nothingness, forging a path, deconstructing the source to subjectively find the things I would truly be sorry to have to leave behind.

Join the adventure and search for the others. Begin with yourself; once we follow our passions and toil toward them, we start to attract the journeys and people we want to be surrounded by. Break free from the status quo to uncover your divergent reality as a monster king. Disregard convention when it is only for the sake of compliance or convenience. Question everything to wade through the unknown without a lifeline, for that is where we find new and exciting realms to enhance our worlds; you are your own direct line to truly living; any tether to retreat is illusion holding you back. We are full force and nonstop. You can catch this ride at any time, but it’s only heading in one direction: the edge. The edge of knowledge. The edge of existence. The edge of perception. The edge of thought. The edge of everything. This ride never rests, and it’s going fast, so be prepared. If your mind is open, you will find the treasures of the universe. If your mind is closed, you will crash and burn, and you will be the only person there to pick yourself up. You are the only person who can cultivate this passion. We hold an undeniable responsibility toward our future selves in that the only things we can do are in the here and now; our future selves simply get to reap the rewards of the now (and pay for the mistakes of the now).

Help us. Support us. Join us. Watch us. Do anything. Do nothing. If you do not agree with these ideas we have set forth, it will not make any difference for us, but it will make it harder for you, because we know what we want, we are going to get there, and we are the dreamers of the future of humanity. It is only the dreamers who see adversity and seek to challenge themselves upon it, for if you find no adversity, then you are content to undream of futures, and if you don’t dream, how could you possibly effect change.

As we build into this collective future, it may not be a straight or pretty path, and we may not get to personally see the ends of the paths we commence, but if only you could see the worlds inside your mind, then you would be as passionate about this as us. You might find inspiration to unlimit your thoughts and dreams beyond the perceived horizon of humanity’s physical and mental existence: to seek out your own path away from the source. And if you feel even more daring, you might take us with you. Some will inevitably call you crazy; some may worship you. But you will understand reality for what it really is (no more and no less): a place to find aliveness not in any amount of external invalidators or validators, but in the experiences you control. You’ll know it when you feel it; you will catch the incurable fever. It is not something you want to do or even something you have to do; it is an utter compulsion with every fiber of your being that will drive you mad if you neglect to pursue it.

We have been privileged to be alive, to be human beings, to live on planet Earth and beyond. There is so much that we have come to understand about ourselves and our realities. Yet, there is so much more that we don’t understand and possibly even can’t understand, all of which exhilaratingly obliges our fatal curiosity toward figuring out how to live our lives to the fullest: these unwritten allegories beg our personal illuminations.

So if your mind is sober to the reality of the universe, your soul vigil to the adversity faced by pioneers, your drive and motives for uncelebrated greatness unfettered by mainstream dogma, or you find yourself simply wanting more, then maybe we can help one another realize these dreams. If you are so bold and your mind is made up, then start forging a path. Or if you are unsure of where to jump, then join one of us in our own quests for departure. But for goodness’ sake, do something! Tell your own story, because nobody else is going to tell it for you.

NOBODY

Nobody to love me,
but it’s all going to be alright.
Nobody to hold me
when the monsters come out at night.
Nobody is crying
when I leave for good tonight.
Nobody, nobody
is going to see me off this time.

Somebody come save me,
’cause I’m falling through and through.
Somebody please stop me
while I still know what is true.
Somebody talk to me,
help me see the world as you do.
Somebody, anybody
watch with me as the world sings.

Where are they all going
so fast that they can’t breathe?
Where are they all hiding
so deep that they can’t see?
Where are they all dreaming?
’Cause to me, they’re all asleep.
Where are they? Where are they?
Don’t they know that life’s worth living?

Nobody will be there.
I’m feeling scared.
Nobody… I’m nothing;
I lost myself.
Nobody is out there
to look for me.
Nobody is coming
to bring back my story.

END TRANSMISSION