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Everything that exists or has ever existed leaves an imprint on eternity. For better or worse, we’re all shedding legacy constantly, like an over-furry dog under a hot sun. Every one of your thoughts changes the unfolding of the cosmos. They all have a factual actuality because at that moment, you had that thought and no other. Every thought has what Alfred North Whitehead called “the formality of actually existing.” A complete history of the unfolding of the cosmos must include that cognitive event.
If anyone has info on the talent artist who created this image please let me know so I can credit. The only possible source I could find is a YouTube called “Ripple.”
Thoughts leave an imprint on the collective unconscious. Your legacy, whether you are the leader of a superpower or a street person, is your imprint on actuality. Since actuality has many layers, the imprint you leave has many layers.
For those of us presuming to incarnate as social mammals, the interpersonal domain is a crucial layer. Every social transaction you have leaves an imprint on the unfolding of actuality. Your imprint on the interpersonal layer has light and dark elements, just as the interpersonal realm has imprinted light and dark elements on you.
Victim identifiers see the world as though the world has always imprinted them with darkness. But what everyone reading this card has in common is that however imperfectly, some person or persons helped keep them alive when they were helpless infants. Also, anyone reading this card has left light and dark imprints on others.
Conventionally, people look back at their lives with greater emphasis on the moments of impression they received, the twists and turns of interpersonal plotlines, the traumas that happened to them, and so forth. They may disproportionately neglect to look at the imprints they’ve made on others and life in general.
For example, a young man once told me his desire was “to take a big bite out of life.” I asked him if he wanted his legacy to be a series of biteholes.
If you’re aware that you are continually imprinting yourself onto actuality and are willing to intentionally work on your imprint, then you are a Magician. If you are concerned about the moral impact of your imprint and are willing to do something about it, you are on the road to sainthood. If you take full responsibility for your imprints and are focused on making them as impeccable as possible, you are a Warrior. Refuse to take responsibility for your imprints and you engage a different set of archetypes — victim, slacker, fool, opportunist, vampire, etc.
Here’s one sentence and one question to increase imprint quality control. Many years ago, I founded a one-sentence religion that is open to members of any denomination, atheists, etc. Here’s the most concise version of the one sentence:
“Carry the torch of consciousness forward and engage in rigorous self-examination to advance ethical conduct.”
And here’s the key legacy question. Before making a major imprint, ask yourself: “Will I remember this well on my deathbed?”
The good news is that your legacy isn’t over. Since you are reading this, you are still incarnate, and therefore, you are still imprinting this reality in all sorts of ways. Every day, you leave all sorts of imprints — cognitive, moral, interpersonal, economic, ecological, bioenergetic, etc. Consider how many actions you take daily that leave an imprint on the economy and a carbon footprint. Putting coins in a vending machine, turning the key in the ignition, using electricity, making any online transaction, and the most minute actions you can think of leave imprints. Every breath you take alters the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Every day, the average human who indulges in breathing is outputting an imprint of 123,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000 molecules of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.
You are also continuously outputting a bioenergetic signature which affects the bioenergetic field of the species. Orgasms (interpersonal or autoerotic) are highly energetic events where personal energy potently interpenetrates the collective bioenergetic field, leaving an imprint (for better or for worse). Wilhelm Reich essentially believed the world was being destroyed by bad orgasms (see The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Reich). A loving relationship makes one kind of imprint and an abusive one another. A boundary-dissolving erotic orgasm where there is a loving oceanic merger makes one kind of imprint, and a sex-as-a-metaphor-for-power exploiting-the-other-person-as-an-object orgasm leaves quite a different imprint. To paraphrase Martin Buber, there are I-thou imprints and I-it imprints.
Think of yourself as a 180-pound (insert your current body weight) butterfly, creating huge butterfly effects on many layers of the unfolding actuality. If your point of view is metric, then think of yourself as an 86-kilo (insert current metric body weight) butterfly. What magnifies your butterfly effect exponentially is uniqueness. Unique thoughts alter (for better or worse) the collective unconscious far more than a few hundred million people repetitiously chanting Allah Akbar, Hare Krishna, etc., which are already well-worn grooves in the collective field.
Computer analogies to psyches are disreputable, but if metaphorically we think of the human consciousness as a database formed by eight billion networked computers, we can delete (data compress) common repetitious thoughts from most computers without changing the database. But even a single person having a unique thought once alters the database and deleting it would create an absolute data loss.
As is pointed out in the ancient commentaries of the I Ching — the right person thinking the right thoughts alone in their room affects things thousands of miles away. When it comes to shifting the collective psyche, it is not one person, one psychic vote. The more uniqueness and vitality you have, the more votes you cast.
Consider the example of a unique and high-energy person like Bob Marley. He was not born to a rich and influential family, but his uniqueness and creativity were such that his music has never stopped reverberating around the planet for a single second since his death. If you’re an artist/creator and imprint yourself onto a medium — such as a book, recorded audio/video, or even onto a single canvas or block of stone, then it’s possible for your imprint to be magnified via the telepathic technologies of language, art media, etc. For example, right now, I am creating imprints by adding words to this card. Thanks to the World Wide Web, the imprint of this card is available to nearly anyone on the planet. As you read this card through the telepathic medium of language, thoughts I had in the past are happening in your mind right now. I may not even be alive when you read these words, but the imprint persists and is transmitting to your mind word-by-word.
The imprints you create can, of course, be hijacked, exploited, or distorted — in the photo, Bob Marley seems to be reflecting on blunt wrappers for sale in a head shop — but that’s a risk you take when you choose to imprint yourself on an interactive matrix — you never know for sure what is going to happen to the information you upload.
The aggregate of all the active imprints in the field of a large group of humans incarnating together, an entire nation-state, for example, is called a “zeitgeist.” From German, this literally means “ghost” or “spirit” of a time. The Sixties, for example, had a different zeitgeist than the Fifties, a different style, a different look, and a different legacy, and all of these differences amounted to a vast aggregation of imprints that continue to resonate in time and eternity. We call the aggregation of your imprints on others “character.” But your character, the global aggregation of your imprints, is not reducible to your visible actions toward others — it is also the aggregation of your every private thought and feeling since those inevitably, as an aggregate, are acted out with others and may also ripple outward telepathically.
Reflect on your legacy, your character, plus any imprint-magnifying artifacts you have created or intend to create (this website is the main artifact of my legacy, for example), and remember that even your backward gazing reflection is happening in the now where the lathe of actuality is spinning, and you are cutting out of the infinite potential of the unmanifest, moment-by-moment, a legacy of imprints.
