FeE: Yarn of The Matrix

 

I learned the term 'matrix' in math and earth science class before seeing the Matrix movies or thinking of the Latin root (mater), so have had to wrap my head around common use today.  My conception is the matrix is the boundary between chaos and order, both being the unfolding of human consciousness.  That unfolding is our journey back to our original estate.  We move between the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine, touching both, but essentially more: The intersection.

Perhaps from my mathematical and, later, semiconductor studies, the word "matrix" evokes an image in my mind of a mesh something like a net or screen, elements being at right angles, more or less, to each other.  Both order and chaos are at right angles to that - the 'Z' axis so to speak.

Irony is a wonderful word.  First and perhaps most commonly, the term is used to describe language expressing an idea diametrically (e.g. 90 degrees, 180 degrees) different from the literal meaning.  The contrast between apparent and intended is deliberate, often humorously.  It may be a skeptically humorous expression.  I think of the profoundly skeptical humor of Zen masters as ironic.  In this and other spiritual senses, it might be considered a method to express ideas for which words are inadequate.  Consider O. Henry's short story of the woman who sacrifices her beloved locks to buy her husband a watch chain as he sells his heirloom watch to buy her a hair comb ("The Gift of the Magi").  It is a story of irony - a touching story at that. It expresses a sense of humanness that is difficult to put into words (the logos, order) and impossible to see as merely the potential of chaos.  It's at the boundary between the two.

My favorite literary use of irony may be Cervantes' Don Quixote.  It is a funny, poetic dialectic between truth and fiction.  How often we joust with windmills, eh?  Central to the story is Dapple, the donkey, carrying Sancho Panza's ironic wit to great adventure and gentle expression of the meaningful tension between what is and what is only apparent.  Dulcinea would be the perfect mother of generations of chivalrous knights errant to come!

Did you know that semiconductors are grown as crystals from a matrix?  And the matrix of electronics zipping around a nucleus, shifting up and down between valence shells (greater and lesser potential), provide us with seemingly solid structures that are mostly space. Ah, the irony of what appears to be and what is!

The boundary between chaos and order is where we are invited to be and from which we grow.  It's only a prison cell for those thinking two-dimensionally.  The plane of the matrix offers no adventure, but jumping - shall we say "bounding" (more irony) - above and below it, we stretch our spiritual legs, learning of the heights and depths beyond the womb (i.e., the matrix).  The matrix is the safety net to keep us from utter chaos and madness.

A Search for God has a wonderful expression of this in the late lesson, "Destiny of the Soul".

"The development of our souls in a material world is as a garment that is made up of the warp and woof of materials that we have gathered through our experiences in every plane of consciousness."

I read that sentence maybe 100 times before I looked up "warp and woof", presuming it had to do with weaving.  It does, as in the lengthwise and crosswise (matrix?) of threads, but the term has a broader meaning as the underlying structure, base, foundation.  Of course, Cayce's "every plane of consciousness" extends across lifetimes, planets, and solar systems!

There must be air entrained in all this FeE, else I would suffocate under the density of life!

Towers of Babel

 

The commonly used definition of insanity is mistaken. Real insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing with no expectation of results.

American public safety agencies have steadfastly neglected the need for communications interoperability since, oh, shortly after the Detroit Police Department heated up the tubes of station KOP in 1922. Failures in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13^th were just another chapter in a long history of that neglect – a neglect born of pitiful arrogance across multiple dimensions.

The angle receiving most attention is that the United States Secret Service (USSS) blew it. Well, from consideration of their clearest mission, that is indisputable. The agency has a well-deserved reputation of arrogance. They may argue that the few presidential assassination attempts in modern history show their effectiveness. We may counter with an alternative and equally difficult to prove theory that there merely have been few. They’re understandably faced both with the traditional policing problem of adequately estimating crimes prevented combined with a unique mission, shall we say “service”, deserving of much secrecy.

Whether born of simple, inbred arrogance or some greater degree of hubris, the Secret Service has earned in our personal experience its reputation for not cooperating with other public safety agencies. Their demonstrated attitude is similar to that in the past of a couple large fire departments: To wit, “We don’t need to communicate with other agencies. We ARE interoperability.” That attitude has invariably, if only eventually, proven expensive to the citizenry covering costs – in taxes, property lost, and even lives sacrificed.

Six shots fired to no observable effect at an assailant within spitting distance, armed with a carbine that even the Viet Cong traded for AK-47s, scoped with the tactical expediency of hose clamps, says a lot.

Back in Butler, reports suggest that the Secret Service once again worked hard to isolate their share of the larger operation. There are many public safety and protective service missions in such an operation, not the least of which benefit hundreds or even thousands of persons at the event. Consider the demands of traffic management, outer perimeter security, and emergency medical care just to name a few. The notion that a true unified command would coalesce all those into a coherent action plan underwritten by an integrated communications plan is considered quaint.

Consequently, shit happens. Not always and rarely at levels this high, but often enough that a pattern has emerged. Thirty years ago. Ignore the principles of incident action planning and comprehensive resource management at your own peril! Or, worse yet, at the protectee and public’s collective peril.

Congressional Task Force on Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump:

Failures in Execution

Why it matters: The fragmented communications structure and lack of timely information sharing resulted in missed opportunities for the Secret Service and its state and local partners to apprehend Crooks and make informed decisions about managing the protectee prior to shots fired.

And the pattern continues with hand wringing and cackling about the sky falling if only the latest-and-greatest round of Next Generation technology cannot be had. Ignore the fact that it is always the next generation that will fix problems of communications interoperability. Or that it will simply add another floor to the Tower of Babel.

The Secret Service is emblematic of a larger, national problem exacerbated by the number agencies at all levels of government tasked with public safety. Would the problem be lessened by involvement of few agencies, if possible? Perhaps, but large agencies demonstrate the same types of insular specialization, smokestacks, and seemingly inevitable hubris. Consider that the USSS is part of the agency, the Department of Homeland Security, tasked with assuring communications interoperability across all levels of government and types of service – an agency that both struggles internally with the same between subdivisions and studiously ignores reports from its own Inspector General of inadequacies in this regard.

Put down the radio and back away from the technology! Nothing will change without serious accountability for command failures.