{"id":3744,"date":"2023-12-22T16:18:49","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T15:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/?p=3744"},"modified":"2026-05-08T23:53:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:53:32","slug":"similarity-in-the-celestium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/2023\/12\/22\/similarity-in-the-celestium\/","title":{"rendered":"Similarity in the celestium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today’s thoughts on similarity (inspired by Christmas friction):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the diarists of the Salt Island Diaries<\/a>, Clara, describes her visits to a heavenly dream-world. That heaven is part of a larger celestium where awarenesses of every conceivable type exist. In the vastness of possibility, very similar things huddle together. Awarenesses that are attracted to like awarenesses form poles of attraction<\/a>. These are heavens, for lack of a better term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awarenesses that are annoyed by like awarenesses do not huddle together. They do not form heavens. However, they cannot escape each other: what it means to be in a reality is to share it with other awarenesses that are similar enough to perceive it the same way. For example, people who are traveling at the same speed in the same gravitational well agree on the passage of time. Other people experience time differently. The insight is that the perception of reality is what makes reality what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Realities are shared, or they are not realities \u2014 the latter are madnesses. And if realities are shared by beings who frustrate each other, they are hells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, there are always more potential hells than heavens. This is due to the fact that there are more ways for things to be dissimilar than similar. Two paintings can be identical in exactly one way, and dissimilar in a nearly infinite number of ways. Two mechanical devices are more likely to have mismatched features; friction is more likely than harmony. This only increases as complexity increases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, any consciousness complicated enough to think about similarity is going to perceive much more dissimilarity in the celestium than similarity. That is logically unavoidable. Most of that dissimilarity is going to be disharmonious because there are simply more ways for dissimilarity to be disharmonious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is so much hell, there is a temptation to consider Hell the default condition. Heavens seem to be idealistic fantasies, incongruent with possibility, when they are, logically, merely rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the Diary<\/a> dreams taught me is that waking reality is very much part of psychedelic reality. It obeys the principles of similarity: there are many situations in which things are going wrong and very few heavens \u2014 but both are possible. The only impossibility is to avoid working<\/a> on one or the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

waking reality is very much part of psychedelic reality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108,121],"tags":[160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4995,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions\/4995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}