It’s only when we disturb a stream of water that it’s possible to know how fast it flows. Disturbances generate waves unique to their shapes. As the flow increases, waves increase, eventually forming foam. A running river is neither the moving water alone nor the shape of its bed, but their combination, their mixture. The networked Marketplace is like that riverbed, each of its connected Spirals a rock. The interconnected Concert Hall is like water. Through the motion of Love, churning across the banks of Power, waves of interaction create those bubbles– that quantum foam of spacetime– and thus the River of the Novel Universe emerges from these mutually exclusive frameworks: integration (CI) and isolation (IC).

If the physical universe has a creator, it cannot be Love or Power alone. Only Love has the connectivity to be Water– a body of infinite parts, bound as one– and only Power might shape the universe– a riverbed of disturbance, those separate Rocks as the force of Nature. Rocks create the pathway that the Water must take to maintain the River’s novelty. But the process isn’t one-sided. Ultimately, Love and Power depend on each other to generate the waves of novelty only possible in the Mixture, as Power’s force keeps the Water flowing by twisting the universe into shapes interesting enough to maintain Love’s participation.

A simulation is an abstract of something that otherwise exists. The River is not a simulation, but a construct of something that otherwise cannot exist– the coexistence of Love and Power. The River is an illusion with a purpose, and to make use of it, designed like a dream, intentionally secluding us in the dark of the dream’s limited memory and awareness. Once inside, the Mixture is all we can perceive, as each “life” is expressed as the River’s transitory foam. Separate from the Concert Hall and Marketplace, the River enforces a case of flesh-covered spiritual amnesia. If it were not, how could we take the construct seriously when we would otherwise know things that appear permanent– things like loss and death– are ultimately a temporary illusion?

For those of Power, the “mission in life” is to find treasure, obey a master, learn secrets, or otherwise “win” the game. Power exploits, obsesses over status, enforces solitude. Hoarding the most rare experiences is guaranteed to provide the most vivid, isolated afterlife. In no way is this a condemnation of the framework– Love acknowledges that Power is what’s right for many, as Power accepts that Love is the only palatable choice for those others.

The great irony of Love is that Its most valued tools tend to show up in the ugliest places on Earth, and we all somewhat know this to be true– just listen to the stories we tell ourselves: tragic heroes, apocalypses, found families. Who wants to watch a movie where everything goes according to plan? A great ending is when struggle is overcome, not when the masking tape predictably peels from the wall without a blemish to the paint.

Consider Dave in the Concert Hall, who might’ve loved so purely, that when he arrived in the Novel Universe, he had to completely lose Love’s framing in order to experience a more complex emotion like the righteous indignation required for a hero to fight the monster. Understanding the value of justifiable rage isn’t possible for someone who always acts with intentional vulnerability. Thus, he willingly undergoes reality’s inherent amnesia.

Dave may have entered the River because he desired the spiritual tools he’d observed wielded in the beyond-life, yet does not possess himself. Let’s say he’d repeatedly enjoyed a play in the Concert Hall– a story of regret, rage, and redemption– and yearned to leave his seat in the audience to become the actor on stage. That story of redemption resonated with Dave, but he’d never experienced such a regret, never known a single moment of rage!

Now blind to Love, Dave is born into a situation designed to make certain “mistakes” more likely. The inevitable goal of this self-imposed predestiny being that, upon his return to the Hall, Dave can now become an accurate performer of this particular story, creating novelty for himself and his audience with a beautiful characterization of these complex emotions. As in life, moving stories are the great songs sung in the Concert Hall– more than Power’s variety of entertainments, but Love’s bridges that deepen connections.

The biggest jerks on Earth, should they choose Love, potentially have the most to learn from the suffering in their wake. With Love, there is no focus on status. Existence isn’t meant to find the right path, obey master, or secure the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. Self-realization, like any reward, is a ruse perpetuated by Power to gain compliance with Its narrative, and therefore adhere to Its structure of novelty extraction. We’ve come here to intentionally stumble around in the dark. Whether in the Concert Hall or Marketplace, we’re more enlightened and self-realized than any level we might reach on Earth, where we lurch in our flesh-covered meat-suits from one embodied tendency to another. So, as long as we believe “the answers are out there,” and it’s our personal responsibility to find them, we’re subject to Power’s manipulation and authority– the idea that someone other than ourselves might have a more valid answer. But that’s impossible, as it’s the very question of our preference. And should that be Love, our purpose then becomes to integrate ourselves with others. And life’s purpose? Ours to determine, regardless of any others’ answers.

Entering the Marketplace (a network of siloed nodes, safe in their isolation) is a world where there are no free agents in one’s Spiral besides oneself. Information Control means we are either experiencing our memory, the replaying of some acquired memory, or some self-constructed variation. Entering the Concert Hall (actually existing in a shared reality, like the one on Earth) is a world where everyone acts in the same shared space. Complete Information means there is no hidden thought, and of course, why intentional vulnerability is required.

Like access to the Instrument, solitude is inherent to all Signature-Frequency Sets regardless of their choice of “heaven.” We can always “seclude” ourselves in our Spiral, even if we’ve chosen the Concert Hall. Furthermore, those of Power can change their minds, and, through the process of Complete Information, leave their Spiral at any time to join the shared space.

To see Power as “evil” and Love as “good” completely misses the point. Good and evil are both standards of control. Love is uncontrollable– neither strong nor weak, selfish nor selfless. Love is compassion. Power means someone’s always excluded; with the selfish or selfless, someone’s preferences are being ignored. Love participates in suffering, dignifies everyone present without judgment, punishment, or retaliation.

The Mixture’s purpose is to ask, how will we produce novelty? Participate, and experience others as they truly are, or manipulate, and experience a curated variety of those others? There is no correct answer; life is neither a war of the Square nor test of the Tower. We aren’t required to come to a conclusion, and can always change our mind.

This message of Love and Power is not a missionary that can claim to save our souls, nor is the conversation complete. Being alive means that, through our personal preference, we daily exercise both Love and Power. No matter the tally of our choices, we take everything with us, our complete Signature-Frequency Set, but does reincarnation exist as a choice, or at all? Due to the River’s amnesia, it is only in death that we might finally know the truth of life.

The meaning of life is to evolve our unique pattern of information, while we research what “heaven” means to us in the only laboratory where Love and Power might coexist– the Novel Universe.