I think the Universe is not a thing or a process but is instead the essential "impulse" of self-creation. That is its breath and air. The universe is a creative impulse, and creating from and of itself makes it the creator and the created at once. The fabric of the universe "bubbles" with endless self-creation (with instrument-extended perception, scientists observe that matter and antimatter pairs of virtual particles emerge spontaneous even in a vacuum and annihilate one another within fractions of a second). Creation, as we perceive it, requires subject and object and a link between the two, but in fact that's mistaking a manifestation of reality for reality itself. It's like a fountain where from a distance it looks like the water spout is static but as you get closer you see it's dynamic and flowing. It's metastable. It "is" only because it has an impulse to express its "is-ness.”
What it expresses is why it expresses, and vice versa, and it is never quite there. It's like a voyage whose destination is the voyage itself, whose destination itself is again a voyage, and so on ad infinitum. Reason is a tool that let's you get close to sensing this, but I can only really "get it" for brief seconds after long meditation/contemplation. The universe is self-emerging forever This doesn't make me feel reality is like a dog endlessly chasing its tail around and around. It makes me think of the universe as a flower that is always in bloom: at the same rate as a petal expires, a new one grows. Like the water fountain. So, to me, it's not meaningless-seeming and terrifying; it's the opposite to me: everything is suffused with meaning and is as it should be, and that is a deeply comforting feeling. The universe is an artist always creating itself as art. We are part of that great artist and its art, but even in saying that we are making a distinction between us and it. Maybe really grasping that is not so much feeling a part of it all but rather feeling indistinguishable from "all." That's what I have come to feel at least.
— Gabriel Fenteany, September 25, 2015
