The Information Line

What does the two that are one have to do with the Information Continuum? How, in fact, does the two that are one connect to information? Let me begin to answer by now defining the two types of information, thought and emotion.

I define thought (the language of the physical body) as any information which describes (informs us of) things we can actually or potentially measure, and I define emotion (the language of the spiritual body) as any information which describes (informs us of) things we can not actually or potentially measure.

How do these languages manifest in real life?

Hand to Eye coordination, your child's body temperature, how much ice cream you just ate, a person's eye color, the diameter of a star; all these things can actually or potentially be measured. Therefore, hand to eye coordination, your child's body temperature, how much ice cream you just ate, a person's eye color, the diameter of a star; all these things are thoughts. All of them are expressions of measurement and therefore, are expressions of the physical body.

How much you love someone's skillful movements, how concerned you get when your child is ill, how fond you are of ice cream, what you intuit when you look into someone's eyes, your personal experience of Nature; despite the "how much" implied in these phrases, none of these things can actually or potentially be measured. Therefore, how much you love someone's skillful movements, how concerned you get when your child is ill, how fond you are of ice cream, what you intuit when you look into someone's eyes, your personal experience of Nature; all these things are emotions, meaning, they are expressions of the spiritual body.

Some may be troubled by the fact that I am defining this second type of information, emotion, indirectly, by saying what it is not rather than by saying what it is. This inability to directly define what emotion is, is simply part of the nature it, in that any definition would be a form of measurement. Interestingly enough, some spiritual communities use this same indirectness to define God.

This concept aside, remember that here, too, although I am defining these two languages individually, they are also, in the same instant, one language, with a nature far beyond the sum of these two parts. Thus, everything we inform ourselves and others of consists of some mix of these same two basic types of information; thought and emotion, in the same space and time. Further, something gets created during these expressions which is far beyond the sum of their parts.

What is also important to see here is that nothing we experience can be fully described with only one of these kinds of information. In other words, in order to be fully informed of anything or anyone, we must experience these people or things with both types of information and we must experience both simultaneously.

Why both? Simply because both always exist. And why simultaneously? Because the sum of the two types of information never includes the nature of the combination. This nature is accessible only when the two types are experienced simultaneously.

For example, if you wanted to fully experience a star (to the best of our ability as humans), you would obviously need to examine this star with the best scientific instruments you could find. But you also would need to experience it emotionally. Why? Because all stars exist in the two that are one, meaning they exist simultaneously as both mental and emotional information.

Here, the physical world information is easy to recognize. But some will struggle with the emotional content of a star. If this is you, consider the fact that a room still exists even when it is dark and we can not see it. Thus, the star's emotional information also exists whether we can see it or not as well.

More so, the opposite is also true. Thus, if you wanted to experience the feeling of awe about something, you would also need to mentally measure the person or thing you were awed by. Why? Because we can not fully experience these so called "emotional situations" without having some measure of the something or someone we were in awe of, as, in truth, everything we can be awed by exists in the two that are one as well. This means whatever we may be awed by always exists as something in the physical world as well as something in the spiritual world.

At the same time, we also can not fully experience awe simply by sensing the two types of information involved separately and then by summing these experiences together. Why? Because, in doing so, we lose our sense of the underlying nature of the combination.

So, although at times, we may be aware that both views exist and so, believe we comprehend these situations fully, unless we consciously experience both the mental and emotional information in the same instant, we can not have experienced the true nature of what we just sensed, a nature which is accessible only when the combination is experienced simultaneously.

Can human beings overcome this difficulty? Absolutely. In fact, I recently had a session in which a man experienced this very difficulty and was momentarily able to see past it.

We had, in fact, begun his session by discussing how hard it can be for people to consciously experience the two that are one, and how I struggle to find ways to teach it to people. More to the point, though, this fellow had actually spent a good portion of his session asking me about this difficulty. Then eventually, we went on to work on a scene from his life, one in which he and his fiancé had been mean to each other. No coincidence, he began this work by saying that this event had only affected him emotionally.

I somehow knew to let this untruth pass.

We then went on to work toward his being able to consciously experience this scene, and within a short time, he was able to connect and experience several related scenes from his childhood. In doing so, of course, his anger toward his fiancé dissipated, and he was again able to recognize his love for her as well.

Now, at this point in my life, seeing people have scenes emerge no longer surprises me. What did surprise me here, though, was that at this point, the fellow commented that his initial comment, that this event had only affected him emotionally, was not accurate, in that he had noticed during his work that he had not only experienced the anger emotionally, but also in physically as well, both in the same instant.

I mention this story to offer people hope. My hope, here, is that if I talk about this seemingly simple idea in as many ways as I can, that others will have their own awareness of this concept emerge.

The next thing that is important to know about the Information Continuum is the idea that we can consciously recognize information and yet not understand it. In other words, "being aware that information exists" and "knowing what it means" are two very separate parts of consciousness. This separation happens to be one of the more important things to know about the Information Continuum and about the Conscious Metaphor in general.

How this looks in real life is, we often sense things and assign them no meaning. For instance, we may see a point of light in the night sky, and we may even assign it a name. We may call it a star. But sensing this information (even if we give it a name) in no way implies we have understood this information, or even that we have assigned a rudimentary meaning to this information. Sensing this information simply means we have become informed it exists.

Here, too, this idea may also seem blatantly obvious, and you may again wonder why I am even stating it. Yet if you search for places where this idea is mentioned, in all likelihood, you will be unable to find any. The point is, though, that despite the fact that we can see this is true, we are also not usually aware of it. This means we each operate under the assumption that knowing something exists means we have assigned some kind of meaning to it, whether trivial or profound.

In reality, we never assign meanings to most of what we experience in life, let alone assign it personally definitive meanings. Yet most therapies, religions, sciences, and philosophies teach us we can change the way we experience life if we can change what things mean to us.

Actually, only the reverse is true. Thus, we all get influenced by things which we have assigned little or no meaning to, and the only way to actually change what these things mean to us is to change how we experience them. Even then, the meaning we assign changes only if we can consciously experience these things. (Consciously experiencing things is what emergence is.)

My point here, though, is that we often sense things and do not understand them and in fact, we do this with most of the information we experience. Rarely do we actually recognize this fact, however.

An example of the way we miss seeing this would be how most of us experience the formula, e=mc2. Most of us can easily read and recite this deceptively simple phrase. Some can actually recant the literal meaning of the few variables involved as well. Yet few people actually grasp how profound these few simple variables really are. Do you?

To be honest, if you were to spend the time necessary to deeply examine this equation, you might be quite surprised to find that it is simply a physicist's way to state we live in two worlds simultaneously; we live in a world of matter (a physical world), and we live in a world of energy (a spiritual world), both in the same space and time. Said in my language, e=mc2 means we live in a two that are one.

Relativity aside, though, the point here is, we, by nature, experience "what we have become consciously aware of" (the degree to which we consciously know that something exists) separately from "what it means to us" (the degree to which we assign a meaning to what we consciously know exists), so much so, in fact, that we assigning no meanings to most the information we sense. For this reason, we must chart these two parts of our natures separately.

This is exactly what happens in the Consciousness Metaphor, in that the Information Continuum charts only the first part; how aware we are that something exists, while the Meaning Continuum charts the second part; how much meaning or lack of meaning we assign to this something we become aware of.

In addition, because information itself comes in two flavors and because the Information Continuum shows both at the same time, it also shows the mix, or blend, of the information we sense; how much we sense through our mental senses (through our physical bodies) and how much we sense through our emotional senses (through our spiritual bodies.)