Life as an Interface
Inner Essence and Outer Expression
I had what felt like a “Eureka!” moment yesterday. Here is what it looked like. It was realizing that the community of the holobiont—a living organism composed of other living organisms—is connected by the same patterns at the scale of a human being, at the scale of a community, at the scale of a planet, and at the scale of a solar system. By making the hypothesis that the physical is a metaphor for the metaphysical, I am exploring the possibility of communication between ourselves and the self-organizing, self-directed, and self-regulating Earth recognized by the Gaia Hypothesis of Lynn Margulis and John Lovelock. The way I am communicating with the parts of myself, in all these different modes of interaction, is similar to the way Earth is communicating with its parts.
This forms the basis of an understanding of inner and outer architecture.
Inner Essence
Intention (mind: cognition)
Intimacy (heart: emotion)
Inspiration (body: action)
Intuition (senses: perception)
Interbeing (spirit: interaction)
Integrity (soul: integration)
Outer Expression
Synchronicity (time: mind + spirit)
Synergy (energy: heart + soul)
Synarchy (matter: body + senses)
Synesthesia (senses: body + mind)
Synthesis (spirit: mind + heart)
Syntropy (soul: heart + body)
The dualistic conceptions of the self do not encompass the complexity and the diversity of the whole. Without a complete model of the self, we are stuck in insufficient and obsolete modes of conflict between reason and emotion, between mind and heart, between body and spirit, between male and female, between West and East, or between colonizing societies and indigenous cultures.
To transcend these dualities, we need a more comprehensive image of a living being that encompasses the particular, the universal, the physical, and the metaphysical that facilitates the emergence of the syntropic and the pataphysical—of life in all its complexity, diversity, and beauty.
This is an image of love. Love embraces the whole.
When I created the logo for Qualis, I was just quickly throwing some ideas together. It was meant to represent the relationship between the Sun and the Earth, between the Earth and the Moon, and the cyclical nature of celestial bodies in relationship to each other. It was also meant to represent the sphere and the tetrahedron, the most basic structures in the universe from which more complex living systems emerge. The logo for the Qualis publication on Substack combines the image of the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula captured by the James Webb Telescope.
I did not expect it to become a model that simplified and clarified the models that I have been working on for several years. Yesterday, this was my initial reaction to basing my model for a living being on the combination of the circle and tetrahedron that I used for the Qualis logo.
Today, I figured out how my model of a living being connects with my model for our orbit around the Sun, which seems to connect to my hypothesis that the physical is a metaphor for the metaphysical.
The diagram hints at the meaning and purpose. I titled the diagram with the word “Life.” I also added the words “interface” and “insight.” I am suggesting that life is an interface for experiencing insight. This has been my way of thinking about myself.
I am the interface.
I am the medium.
I am the message.
In these thoughts, I feel, are the seeds for connection.
The perception is guided by the instrument and the pattern recognition is inherent in humans. The circular/ spherical perspective is more inclusive being only two sided, within and without. Beautiful design and the model that arose from it in three dimensions.