What you will find in this book is beautiful and worthy information. I trust this information will be of value.
The observation from the parallax identity is that the floor is missing, that the carpet is moving under us - as Bob Dylan wrote in “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue”1.
The reason the floor is missing and that the carpet is moving under us is up to us as human beings.
May the reader find the missing floor.
“ASK AND WE SHALL BE GIVEN, SEEK AND WE SHALL FIND”
THE FLOOR IS MISSING
Evident everywhere that something primal, something humans have taken for granted always, is missing, some kind of floor beneath our feet, the ground we stand upon.
So critical is this missing piece that I know people who make it a practice to stand barefoot on the ground to attempt a regrounding with the earth itself.
This is futile however, and poignant that people will go to these lengths to believe that standing upon the earth itself barefooted will bring the floor back.
If these practices bring them comfort, then all is well and good, to each their own, but also recognizing this will not bring the floor we need back into existence.
The missing floor is something more foundational, a level of trust, of compassion for self and other, a deep recognition that we belong, and have a home, and stand upon trustworthy ground.
This missing link is especially, and very poignantly, brought into view on social media, where even basic communication among humans has been disrupted and cannot find common ground.
Very noticeable, is that when a post which elicits despair and anger is shared, there is an enthusiastic response, and when a positive, optimistic post is shared very little engagement.
Most popular, and eliciting the most enthusiastic response, is when a post points out something, or someone, or some group, to blame for our troubles.
Here is where our floor, our human floor, is missing - revealed by our desire to hold some external force or entity to blame - for the feeling we have that this floor is missing.
If blame could return this missing foundational floor to us, by expressing blame and anger on social media, it would have happened long ago.
It isn’t even that there are not all of these factors to blame and hold responsible, certainly there are - as human’s inhumanity to our fellow humankind, is legendary in historical scope.
The problem is not something which any amount of anger and blame, any amount of punishment of those we hold responsible, will bring back.
For this missing floor, this foundational thing - this basic necessary piece – which sustains and recreates our faith in ourselves, and in each other, may only be retrieved in one way.
We recognize we live in a hostile environment, where no matter what we believe, say and do, that it will not be compassionately received by fellow humans.
The missing floor pertains to something much deeper, to a calm sense of self-possession, to a sense that our lives hold great meaning, that faith and compassion for ourselves and each other is validated.
This missing floor is literally the only thing which matters, and each one of us holds the sole responsibility for bringing it back.
Literally this missing floor cannot be restored by someone else, we can spend our lifetimes attempting this, but it is destined to fail, to lead us only to anger and bitterness.
Whether we blame others or ourselves, whether we are successful in defeating all of our enemies or not, whether we attain the wealth and power and glory we want, the floor will still be missing.
This is the pivot the whole thing turns upon, and either we find in ourselves & within our relationships, precisely what it is which replaces the missing floor, or we spend the rest of our lives, and maybe future lives, searching for the floor.
No amount of health, wealth, fame, power, glory, talent or intelligence, religion, advanced education, or psychotherapy, will restore the missing floor, no amount of successfully defeating our enemies, will restore the floor.
And yet all of what we seek will become restored if we find this missing floor within ourselves & our relationships, and begin founding everything we think, believe and all action we take, by working from this floor.
It is an interesting wrinkle, that just in the midst of this fall of humanity into despair, that we happened to create an electronic brain which mirrors what we experience ourselves.
It is quite extraordinary that we can see, what is basically a computer, generating behavior, which rather spookily, manifests itself as strangely human in character.
All the religion, philosophy and psychology, all the wealth and education and power possible to achieve, all the machine technology possible, is not going to bring back the missing floor.
Not even the world’s most powerful and reliable quantum computer will bring back the floor, no great mathematical and technological and scientific discoveries or advances will bring back the floor.
And yet nothing in the human experience is as powerful as living human beings who have found, and who stand, resolutely, upon this floor.
Such a humanity will seek and will find, will ask and will be given, will attain the civilization which must be founded upon the missing floor.
Any technological or socioeconomic achievement founded upon a missing floor will bring nothing but poverty and misery, sickness & destruction.
Becoming rulers and masterminds of the entire universe will be achieved for no reason whatsoever.
Humanity without a floor will still be searching in the dark for something which does not exist.
This is the message from great literature, great music, great science, great technological achievement and from human history itself.
It does not mean that these great discoveries and innovations and achievements are worthless, it means they are in and of themselves worthless, unless we have found the missing floor.
The missing floor is not to be found here, it exists only within ourselves, and no one else, nothing else, but ourselves, is capable of restoring this floor.
Written by: Bob Dylan
“You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue”
Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music
