Isdom's quenching boundary

The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: Embodying time as the heartland of humanity (Part #6)

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As a domain, Isdom is surrounded by what may be termed a "quenching" boundary. Its nature is "quenched" by any encounter with the cognitive "not-ness" of conventional understanding of space-time.

The metaphor of quenching derives from the research on nuclear fusion (in contrast with nuclear fission). This fusion process is dependent on plasma that can only exist under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure and is "quenched" when it comes into contact with the container in which the fusion reactions take place. Many decades of research have been devoted to the design of a container capable of containing plasma -- in order that nuclear fusion can take place as a prime source of energy for the future. The art has been to contain the plasma within a "magnetic bottle" such that magnetic field effects repel the plasma from any part of the encircling container wall. In the larger scheme of things, it is perhaps no coincidence that such research is now entering a new phase with the construction of ITER as a major international project to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. This work on the "governance" of fusion processes essential to economic development may be as valuable as a metaphorical pointer to governance of psycho-social processes of sustainable development.

Understanding "plasma" as a quality of intensity, of attention, it might then be understood how the high energy "is-ness", characteristic of the state of being within Isdom, can readily be quenched by contact with any mundane cognition. Sustaining interaction within Isdom therefore calls for an analogous existential technology to maintain the detachment of being from that containing spatio-temporal world. This existential technology may be considered as having been identified in many spiritual disciplines (see Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002; Psychology of Sustainability: Embodying cyclic environmental processes, 2002)

It is useful to consider various efforts to capture and contain the essence of the moment of being:

• beauty may be admired, sought and acquired as a possession, only to discover that what is acquired is but a carrier for a quality that is not permanently attached to it
• culture / art, as a form of beauty, may be sought and acquired for its own sake -- perhaps with some expectation that the original qualities and creative insights that gave rise to it will rub off on the possessor
• theories, notably in the form of Theories of Everything, are sought as the ultimate instrument of conceptual control and of the creative moment from which they arise
• merit-worthy actions, are a prime objective, notably in some religions, as a means of improving subsequent chances of a "seat in heaven" or "release from the wheel of life" -- ignoring the release offered in the moment at which they were undertaken or the manner in which they may be negated through being sought as an objective
• honours / initiations, are sought and offered as a reward for achievement -- forgetting the dramatic contrast between the existential reality justifying a medal (such as heroism under fire) and the subsequent institutional efforts to appropriate this reality
• groups / hierarchies, may define themselves in such a way as to hold within their higher and inner reaches an essential quality that may be of purely symbolic significance, long dissociated from the existential reality that gave rise to such nested levels of realization
• performance / expression / mandalas
• parties / happenings may be treated as a context for celebrating being alive with all the confusion arising from the forms that happenings may take that may be but a pale reflection of that sense
• charisma / gurus may be sought as a means of directly experiencing an alternative reality in the moment -- without realizing that such external projection essentially undermines subsequent interior realization
• property, namely the possession of artefacts or qualities as in many of the above, establishes a relationship that negates the quality of being that is assumed to be held by that possession

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