37. Notes. humbled beyond words

19 January 2019

      Evening. You all had a good time at supper at Kim and Paul's. Paul fried a salmon (Kim made two veggies also) for each with the boys each getting a half. It was a good a meal as it is at Madeira Beach. For a surprise you had ice cream and a chocolate birthday cake for dessert. Carol's birthday is next Wednesday. You drove home as the ice formed on the car and roads. It was supposed to be up to eight inches by tomorrow, but now it is possibly up to three inches instead as it has been raining most of the day not snowing. You bought a battery powered led lantern earlier today to go along with the small led flashlight you bought a couple of days ago. Earlier today you also glanced at what people have been viewing on the old blog and saw one of interest, one rarely viewed. This blog focuses on the crux of your adult spiritual life and is thus important enough to be entered here also. No further comment needed. Post when this is copied and ready. - Amorella

** **

Encounters In Mind

This notebook blog was created on 15 August 2009. It's conclusion is today, 20 April 2018. Amorella my inner writer, imaginary or not, is, as I see her, my spiritual essence within. I have learned much. Thank you for reading this blog. Sincerely, Richard H. Orndorff Since I still have a few readers, I'll leave the blog up. Eight plus years of my heartansoulanmind for what it's worth. Be pretend angels if you like. You are welcome to read related new blog at: encountersinspirit.blogspot.com

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GMS Disclaimer

Orndorff’s experimental writing began when he discovered a way to take his reading automaticity (effectively used for over thirty years of grading senior students’ many expository essays and research papers) and use the automaticity in his writing. The errors produced add to his sense of humility that I find refreshing. He preached the rules of General Manuscript Specifications his whole career and now finds he can’t live up to them himself. He may not see the humor in this, but his many former students and colleagues might sense a secret delight in his lightly buried misery of my conditional. I would not be here but for his determination and humility to see this experimental and self-imposed writing project through. Humanity is my standard in orndorff's writing, not GMS perfection. – Amorella

An Old Man with a Storybook Dream

RICHARD H. ORNDORFF

I am a retired teacher of English and blog editor of Encounters in Mind and Encounters in Spirit. I taught English in Ohio at Wm. Mason High School, Mason; Indian Hill High School, Cincinnati; Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Whitehall-Yearling High School, Columbus, Ohio and first at Magnetic Springs [Junior High] School, Magnetic Springs, Ohio. I love literature, philosophy, science and my many former students and colleagues all. I wish everyone wellness and a good full life for themselves, their children and their children's children.

****

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·    

****

30 JULY 2017

Notes - in the car office /

          Afternoon. You stopped at McD' and brought your lunch to Rose Hill. You are sitting in the shade to the right of Whitaker's mausoleum. Carol is reading a special 2017 Money investment magazine. You are enjoying the quiet, very light breeze with a temperature of eighty degrees. Last night you watch an early "Midsomer Murders" on Netflix then read spiral notebook three and found a couple of pages to mark. Once to bed some soul searching, as it is commonly called. You found a notebook passage where you had talked to your sister-in-law, Mary Lou, about Romela and she came to the conclusion that Romela was a "writing persona". You had forgot that very simple explanation but find that is the best description. Sometimes Romela signed herself 'Romela and Rex', her male friend/counterpart. Both were concerned for your well-being and helped you write Spice with encouragements and suggestions. Other than that there were a couple of reminders on how you had misunderstood an earlier sharing goal with a rabbi you did not know personally. You were perplexed earlier in 1987 when you came to believe that what you were writing at the time was for a religious person you did not know. You sent him documents without leaving your name or address. Finally, after seven months you left your name and address and were sent a letter telling you to stop sending the material which you did. You told Fritz and he suggested you send an apology which you did. No more from the rabbi and there were no repercussions. Before you sent the material you were unsure who did the writing. You didn't feel possessed by either a good or a bad angel (this was always a concern) and you were as honest as you are in this encounters-in-mind blog. You sent the material to the rabbi because you were unsure who was doing this 'secret' writing and felt it was better to err on the side of a good angel and send it feeling that the rabbi, a religious man, would know. -- The point is that he felt you were sincere and there was nothing in your public file to suggest you were a 'crackpot' of sorts. -- You came to this conclusion because he never followed up personally and decided to let it be. Your personal lesson was that you followed your heart at the time -- it was an existential decision to share the material with someone else because you, your personality, character, you heartansoulanmind had no choice but to send the material that was, you felt, written by 'another spirit within your own'. With these spiral notebooks in 1988 you immediately shared with Fritz M. and then with Bob P. and felt the better for it. You trusted them to tell you if you were going 'over the edge' so to speak. This was all going on as you carried on your everyday life with Carol, Kim as well as with the rest of family and friends. You considered your writing to still be experimental no matter who the writing persona character in your head was. Take a break. Carol is waking from a short nap. - Amorella

** **

Literary Devices

Definition and Examples of Literary Terms - Persona

Definition of Persona

The term persona has been derived from a Latin word “persona” that means the mask of an actor, and is therefore etymologically linked to the dramatis personae which refers to the list of characters and cast in a play or a drama.  It is also known as a theatrical mask. It can be defined in a literary work as a voice or an assumed role of a character that represents the thoughts of a writer or a specific person the writer wants to present as his mouthpiece. Most of the time, the dramatis personae are identified with the writers though sometimes a persona can be a character or an unknown narrator. Examples of persona are found not only in dramas but in poems and novels, too. Examples of persona in Literature

Example #1

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument  
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot)

These are the initial fifteen lines of the poem Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The speaker is a persona of T. S. Eliot that he wants to present before the world though the poet himself is not suffering from the same mental conflict. 

Example #2

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands….
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read……
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

(My Last Duchess by Robert Browning)

This poem is a dramatic monologue  (uses persona). The poet mainly communicates about the shocking appearance of the “duke” character. In this stanza the persona is discussing the painting as the monologue opens. Through simple technique the poet describes the superficiality of the duke’s character though it seems to be the voice of the poet put into the mouth of the duke.

Example #3

An excerpt from “The Old Man and Sea”

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone
eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky…….
The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat…..”

The first paragraph of this book sounds as if Hemingway himself is Santiago. Through the characterization of Santiago, Hemingway is expressing his belief in the struggle against unconquerable natural forces of the world. However, it is up to the persona (Santiago) to determine whether he wants to change his luck or not.

Example #4

An excerpt from “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad

“Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration…., and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there…… Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour’s off…. well, we won’t talk about that.…..”

Marlow is probably one of the most famous persona examples in novels. In this novel, Marlow is used as Conrad’s mouthpiece. In this extract, Conrad is telling us through Marlow about his own visit to the Congo and his experiences of sailing to distant places and his boyhood ambition of sailing. Hence, Marlow is used as a persona in this novel.

Function of Persona

The speaker of a dramatic monologue is also known as a persona. Such a monologue is presented without commentary or analysis. However, emphasis is laid on subjective qualities and finally left up to the audience to interpret it. In literature, authors use persona to express their ideas, beliefs and voices they are not able to express freely due to some restrictions or that they cannot put into words otherwise. Persona is also sometimes a role a person or a character assumes in public or in the society he lives in.

Selected and edited from https:// literary devices dot net

** **

       1419 hours. I remember James Bond was supposedly Ian Fleming's persona because he could not 'kill' someone sleeping in a bunk in a practice military exercise outside of Toronto while working as the aide to William Stephenson head of the SIS or M-6 during W.W. II. Bond was someone Fleming was not; a 007. I suppose I was like Fleming in that as an agnostic by nature I could not write (sincerely/honestly) about one of my favorite subjects (strangely): angels. At the time I had not developed my personal concept of a 'heartansoulanmind'. Today, she is my spiritual persona. (1428) 

       I agree with your above paragraph. You provide a reasonable explanation in context. This fits within your struggle to deal with spiritual matters in your life. It is a core of your conflict with having had (in your heartansoulanmind) the actual metaphysical experience which is this exercise for this research assignment you have taken on. This background is relevant. - Amorella

       1444 hours. What this shows me is that so far is that my chances were most negligible for actually being confronted by a real Angel of G-D. I easily accept this as fact.

       You stopped writing and took a break to walk off 14 calories according to your watch, two minutes or so to walk one cemetery block twice. Before lunch you gave in and took a pain pill, not half. Sharp unannounced pains in hip and lower back region all morning. You lay flat most of that time. Thankfully that after twenty minutes the pill worked. I am angry at myself for throwing out about sixty outdated pills (as Dr. M. told me to do) after he gave me twelve new ones. They might have still helped if I had doubled the dosage. At least Dr. M. gave me a few more a couple of weeks ago. This is the first of that batch I have taken and I have a few from the first batch a couple months ago. Carol is taking a short ten minute walk because she forgot her walking shoes. 

       Later, you had Papa John's pizza for supper, watched NBC and ABC news and a couple of 'buy property' programs on "HGTV". The pain pill has worn off and the sharper pains have returned. The trash goes out tonight. You are ready to sleep into Monday morning daylight. Post. - Amorella

       2057 hours. I think there are not going to be many phototexts of the spiral notebooks to place in postings. Even the two I already placed may not be relative enough for this "angel in the room" focus. It only lasted two or three minutes. I need to read what I wrote about it the first time and a couple of later times. The metaphysics was a lifetime but the actual physics not so much. Tomorrow I will add the couple of pages of related phototext.

at 21:09  

2 comments:

1.   

achilles3August 8, 2017 at 9:27 PM

This was such a quality read for me in many different ways. Walking in your shoes and your persona's shoes. Reading back on persona with examples from books I haven't thought about in a long long time. And then the ending which brought the reader to a state of rest...which is where I personally am about to do.

Thank you for sharing:)

Replies

1.   

Richard H. OrndorffAugust 27, 2017 at 11:41 AM

Thank you for reading, Achilles. :-) My best!

[Encounters in Mind blog - 

** **

       You don't know what to say having read over this one more time. Reason enough to just post as is. - Amorella

       2209 hours. I thank the reader who read this blog today and thus brought it up on the blog  stats. I have not read this for a long time. I am humbled beyond words in the depths of my heartansoulanmind. 

36. Notes - more real

16 January 2019

       You have been out of sorts today, uncomfortable hemorrhoids-like symptoms since mid-morning. Carol and Linda had their hair done at Kenneth's near Polaris this morning, had lunch and walked the mall. You watched the first episode of "Project Bluebook" on the History Channel and had cereal for lunch. - Amorella

       2127 hours. I still have my interest in UFO's and Project Bluebook. I will continue watching the series, but this is not the blog for it. I am more interested in 'collective souls' and wonder why my heart and mind do not pay more attention to the soul?

       My heart says, "Your earthly passion."

       My mind says, "Your earthly curiosity."

       You do not see the soul as your own. - Amorella

       2143 hours. I do not see the soul as my own because once a couple or three decades ago, in a flash of vision I saw my soul (in the icon of a white pigeon or a dove fly up and away from my body and felt another 'older, more experienced soul' take its place. It felt real enough in my mind and heart and it was a readily accepted fate by my original soul at the time. That is the sense of it. More on that specific subjective experience is in the older Encounters in Mind blog.

       2200 hours. In either case I do not claim any soul as my own. I see it as a gift of a Higher Spiritual Nature. It is a gift we all have. We could not plausibly survive physical death without it and our hearts and our minds. This is my sense of such things, but I cannot know such as an objective scientific fact. Perhaps any soul is a collection of loved ones.

       A soul is a collection of loved ones? Driven or held by love or compassion? - Amorella

       2212 hours. I have never thought such a thing before. You spring such questions by something just now considered (at least just now consciously considered)? It is a thought, that is all. 

       And, boy, what if you are just a thought also? - Amorella

       2217 hours. I am real, Amorella, and in a just sense, more real than you are. 

                               Post. - Amorella

35. Notes -- on a collective

15 January 2019

       Earlier today, you sent Laney a copy of yesterday's blog. Tonight she sent you a short reply -- "Threaded friendship - I like that." - Amorella

       2107 hours. Nice and short, typical Laney. I like it too, and told her so. We appear to have a threaded friendship sleeved in the soul rather than the heart. 

       What do you mean by "a threaded friendship sleeved in the soul"? - Amorella

       2114 hours. The single letters one at a time flew from a fingertip via automaticity. Metaphysics. There is no emotion stated but it is understood. The friendship is stronger without stating a word many would associate with a friendship, a human relationship.

       This is where you and Laney are in your shared friendship, beyond words, and you are both the stronger for it. - Amorella

       2125 hours. I am silent and humble with your thought, Amorella -- a line from Shakespeare comes to mind -- 

       "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

        Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

       

       2135 hours. Is this showing a way to describe the soul without words?

       You turn the thought about, boy. It is showing you a way to describe your friendship without words. - Amorella

       2138 hours. I sense a purity of Form, a purity of spirit without intent. The heart cannot move beyond words. Without the body the words cannot be heard. A threaded friendship is encased in the human soul, a collective of two souls. 

       A collective of two souls allows for a collective of many, my friend. And, as within the human heart, time and space do not exist. Post. - Amorella

34. Notes - profound and complicated / no secrets

14 January 2019

       Mid-afternoon. You lunched at Potbelly's and are having a birthday supper at the House of Japan near Polaris Shopping at Owen's request. You received a quick note from Laney after you sent her a note "to have the best of good weeks". She replied that the new semester (Xavier) begins today - for Laney, new classes; thus, your comment is quite appropriate. You immediately wonder, "Is Laney in my heart or soul or mind? Or, does each see her differently or all the same?

       1546 hours. Indeed, my immediate thinking. I really have no way to 'measure' friendship and that is not my intent here. What I am curious about is the response of each to her being in a friendship with me to her and her to me. 

       You want to erase the "and her to me" because this can only be known by Laney. - Amorella

       1551 hours. It was a slip of thought. We feel we have a 'connection' -- I'm sure all friends feel this way about other close friends. This commentary is becoming rather awkward because I did not think it out beforehand.

       That is the reason I'm allowing it -- your immediate response was in the captured 'innocence of the moment'. - Amorella

       1558 hours. This makes me anxious because I really don't want to know what my heart and soul and mind think about the wholeness of Laney's spirit, her own heart and soul and mind. It suddenly doesn't seem morally right to know such intimacy within myself. 

       Why? - Amorella

       1601 hours. People cannot have a conscious dialogue with the intimate workings of one's heart and soul; mind, perhaps but not heart and soul.

       This is not true, boy. You knew your heart when you asked Carol to marry you. - Amorella

       1605 hours. Why do you bring up such a matter? That's different. That conversation was indirect. I answered by how I thought my heart felt, but I could not 'know' this directly. I tried to attack the question reasonably as well as emotionally. Being in love with someone does not automatically make her compatible for a lifetime partnership. 

       A long-term friendship with a member of the opposite sex does not have a legal binding, i.e. you are thinking practically with your mind. In your case you have known Laney twenty-five years; that is you have been conscious of her for twenty-five years. - Amorella

       1630 hours. Early on, we made a pledge to be friends-opposite-sex of-the-even though we were both married. We both feel it is possible. 

       Is it possible? - Amorella

       1633 hours. It has been possible for twenty-five years. 

       Yes, it has. - Amorella

       1634 hours. You know more than I, Amorella. 

       Human beings are sometimes more innocent than they think they are. - Amorella

       1636 hours. In context your comment is a profound and complicated statement.  

       We will resume this later. Post. - Amorella

       1942 hours. We had a good birthday supper. Carol is finishing a shower. I don't think I'll have time to add anything tonight. We'll no doubt relax and watch a couple of DVRed shows besides tonight's news. 

       You are apprehensive about continuing. You are rationalizing that it is improper and perhaps immoral to know what secrets your heart and soul and mind might have. - Amorella

       1949 hours. This bothers me because I think this might be how it plays out after physical death. All the secrets are out for one to see and you pray no one else will know. I think I already know some secrets already. It is not easy sitting on the limb of consciousness with the trunk of personal unknown secrets holding your very being by the roots of what you once were, human with a physical body. It is as a self-raping of one's very being. Terrifying, and one can do nothing about it except, ironically, hope to continue in an existence one way or another. I think if I were living during the process I would be vomiting my lungs out. (1959)

       You know better because an Angel will be aware -- no secrets held back. In the here and now I'll be that pretend Angel. Do you not find it strange, boy, that you don't know what all these unknown but not unknowable personal secrets are? - Amorella

       2005 hours. I think we cannot be fully spiritually knowable to ourselves until we are physically dead. 

       You are arrogant. Post. - Amorella

       2220 hours. Whom should I hear from first about my old former colleague and friend, Laney -- my heart or my soul?

       Your heart. - Amorella

       2224 hours. What does my heart have to say? 

       [My heart] says: "Joint friendship."

       [My soul] says: "Threaded friendship."

       2228 hours. These words seem without much description or emotion and therefore, to me, a letdown.

       This friendship is beyond drama. - Amorella

       2234 hours. I must have definitions. 

** **

joint -noun - 1 juncture, junction, join, intersection, confluence, nexus, link, linkage, con-nection; weld, seam

thread - noun-2 a theme or characteristic, typically forming one of several, running throughout a situation or piece of writing: a common thread 

verb[with object] • interweave or intersperse [interwoven or interspersed]

friendship- noun- the emotions or conduct of friends; the state of being friends. • a relationship

Selected and edited from the Oxford/American software

** **

       2251 hours. The above definitions appear to show a broad outline of description.

       The above words from your heart and soul are solidified and complete. - Amorella

       2257 hours. Where are the secrets?

       There are none. Post. - Amorella

33. Notes - a series of short reflections

13 January 2019

       Earlier today, Karen and Cathy came over to help choose locations and hang most of the rest of your major works of art for walls. You and Carol are well satisfied with all of Karen's placements. Tonight, you met Kim and the boys for a DQ (their choice). Friday afternoon Brennan was admitted to Nationwide Children's downtown for a ten o'clock evening operation for an unusually large abscess built on the back of his throat near the corotated artery. He came home yesterday afternoon and will be in school tomorrow, which is also Owen's nineth birthday. Linda is up in Tiffin visiting her friend Patti but will not return until Tuesday because Kim and Paul cancelled their trip with friends to a Mexico resort this next week because of Brennan's weeklong sickness. It has been a busy time but thankfully Brennan is well on his way to a full recovery. Carol is reading in bed with Jadah on her lap and Spooky most likely under the bed. - Amorella

       2240 hours. Friday night and Saturday morning, we stayed with Owen at his house and saw him off to his first basketball game in the AM. His team won 21 to 18 for which he was duly excited. Then you took him down to Children's to be with Kim, Paul and Brennan around noon. They all left the hospital with Brennan's release mid-afternoon. 

       You are tired but are thinking about how your heart and soul and mind can speak for themselves as separate parts of the 'spiritual unit', the human spirit. Your cynical self feels you make up the separate dialogues with Amorella's blessing, so to speak. - Amorella

       2251 hours. I have no choice but to conclude this. Amorella is a part of who I am. This is personal observation but not scientifically notable. 

       In this context the soul is first and best as spokesman for your dialogues. The heart second, the mind third. You are already having a conflict with the word 'spokesman' being used. - Amorella

       2258 hours. 'Spokesperson' is no better. 

** **

spokesman, spokeswoman - noun -

spokesperson, representative, agent, mouthpiece, voice, official; informal

spin doctor, PR person.

voice - noun -

spokesperson, speaker, representative, mouthpiece, intermediary; vehicle, instrument, channel, organ, agent.

Selected and edited from the Oxford/American

** **

       2309 hours. I don't like 'channel' or 'agent', and I don't like using 'voice' either. 

       I, the Amorella, am the 'agent' by which your representative heartansoulanmind speak. Post. - Amorella

32. Notes - "Being," says my Soul.

8 January 2019

You left for Florida on the twenty-sixth and returned the sixth. You, Carol, Kim, Paul, Owen and Brennan had a very good time at Meiber's Condo at Madeira Beach and at Linda and Bill's in South Tampa about a mile from MacDill Air Force Base and two miles from the east side of Gandy Bridge. It took you fourteen hours to arrive at south Atlanta and another eight the next day. Coming home you left Linda and Bill's at five-forty and arrived home at Westerville at ten-twenty-five, a new record. - Amorella

2148 hours. Trump gave his ten some minute speech from the Oval Office. The Democrats gave their shorter rebuttal. So it goes. 

          A few days ago, you copied this article from 'Science Alert' because at eleven or twelve you   began to question what existed before the Big Bang -- the earlier response in the 1950's was either G-D existed or nothing existed. Added theories are popular today. This one is about 'time' existed before the Big Bang. Your earlier metaphysical thoughts on the subject suggest that at least to you, Angels (if indeed real) existed before both matter and a sense of time (as a movement within physics). To you, spiritual 'matters' existed first from a 'Spiritual First Cause' as it were. Here is the article from: [https://www.sciencealert.com/mind-bending-study-suggests-time-did-actually-exist-before-the-big-bang].

** **

(koto_feja/istock) 

SPACE

Mind-Bending Study Suggests Time Did Actually Exist Before The Big Bang 

MIKE MCRAE 

25 DEC 2018 

According to a straightforward interpretation of general relativity, the Big Bang wasn't the start of 'everything'.

Taking Einstein's famous equations at face value and making as few assumptions as possible, a team of researchers has rewound the clock on our Universe to find it wouldn't lead to a stopping point at all, but would take us through a different kind of beginning into a flipped space.

To understand what all the fuss over the Big Bang is, we need to rewind a bit to understand why physicists think it may not have been the start of everything.

Around 90 years ago, a Belgian astronomer named Georges Lemaître proposed that observed changes in the shifting of light from distant galaxies implied the Universe is expanding. If it's getting bigger, it stands that it used to be smaller.

Keep rewinding the clock – by around 13.8 billion years – and we get to a point where space has to be confined to an incredibly tiny volume, also known as a singularity.

"At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite," Stephen Hawking once explained in his lecture on The Beginning of Time.

There are a number of models physicists use to describe the nothingness of empty space. Einstein's general relativity is one - it describes gravity as it relates to the geometry of the Universe's underlying fabric.

Theorems proposed by Hawking and mathematician Roger Penrose claim that solutions to general relativity's equations on an infinitely constrained scale – like the one inside a singularity – are incomplete.

In everyday terms, it's often said physics breaks down at the singularity, leading to a mix of speculations on what little we can tease out of the physics that still makes sense.

Hawking only recently gave his own take in an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, where he likened the space-time dimensions of the Big Bang to the South Pole. "There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang," he said.

But other physicists have argued there's something beyond the Big Bang. Some propose that there is a mirror Universe on the other side, where time moves backwards. Others argue in favour of a rebounding Universe.

Taking a slightly different approach, physicists Tim A. Koslowski, Flavio Mercati, and David Sloan have come up with a new model, pointing out that the breakdown arises from a contradiction in properties at a particular point in time as defined by general relativity.

What the theorem doesn't imply is how the Universe as we observe it necessarily gets to that point in the first place.

Stepping back from the whole singularity issue, the researchers reinterpreted the existing model of shrinking space by distinguishing the map of space-time itself from the 'stuff' in it.

"All the terms that are problematic turn out to be irrelevant when working out the behaviour of quantities that determine how the Universe appears from the inside," said Sloan, a physicist from the University of Oxford.

What this essentially adds up to is a description of the Big Bang where physics remains intact as the stage it acts upon reorientates.

Rather than a singularity, the team call this a Janus Point, named after the Roman god with two faces.

The relative positions and scales of the stuff that makes up the Universe effectively flatten into a two-dimensional pancake as we rewind time. Passing through the Janus Point, that pancake turns 3D again, only back-to-front.

What that means in physical terms is hard to say, but the researchers believe it could have profound implications on symmetry in particle physics, maybe even producing a Universe based primarily on antimatter.

While the idea of a flipped Universe is old news, the approach of working around the singularity problem in this particular way is novel.

"We introduce no new principles, and make no modifications to Einstein's theory of general relativity – only of the interpretation that is put upon objects," said Sloan.

No doubt this debate will rage on well into the future. Who knows? Maybe there's a similar argument happening in the mirror Universe sometime on the other side of the Janus Point.

This research was published in Physics Letters B.

A version of this story was first published in March 2018.

Selected and edited from - https://www.sciencealert.com/mind-bending-study-suggests-time-did-actually-exist-before-the-big-bang

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       2209 hours. What is stumping me at the moment is a definition of 'immortal' and 'timeless'. 

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immortal -  adjective living forever; never dying or decaying: our mortal bodies are inhabited by immortal souls.

selected and edited from the Oxford/American

timeless - adjective not affected by the passage of time 

selected and edited from the Oxford/American

And, selected and edited from the Oxford/American Thesaurus

immortal - adjective 1 our souls are immortal: undying, deathless, eternal, everlasting, never-ending, endless, lasting, enduring, ceaseless; imperishable, indestructible, 

inextinguishable, immutable, perpetual, permanent, unfading.

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       You want to ask your soul what English word best describes 'immortal', that is, what word would your soul use? - Amorella

       2223 hours. It embarrasses me when you show such private thoughts, but yes, it did come to mind. 

       Here is your soul's response to your question, "Soul, what English word best describes 'immortal'?" "Being."

       2227 hours. This is a surprise. Why 'being' and not 'existing'?

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being - 

1 she is warmed by his very being: existence, living, life, reality, actuality.

2 those words echoed in my being: soul, spirit, nature, essence, inner being, inner self, psyche; heart, bosom, breast; Philosophy quiddity, pneuma.

3 an enlightened being: creature, life form, living entity, living thing, soul, living soul, individual, person, human being, human.

exist- 

1 animals existing in the distant past: live, be alive, be living; be; happen.

2 the liberal climate that existed during his presidency: prevail, occur, be found, be in existence; be the case.

3 she had to exist on a low income: survive, subsist, live, support oneself; manage, make do, get by, scrape by, make ends meet.

Selected and edited from the Oxford/American

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       2234 hours. What this shows me is my lack of insight. Given the two definitions ahead of time I would say 'being' also. Amorella has used this devise before in Encounters in Mind. It is strange to once again encounter the concept that my soul, my heart and my mind can speak separately when called to by Amorella. I cannot recall a logical inconsistency within their separate speaking voices. I should ask the heart and mind the same question, perhaps I will tomorrow or another day. 

       Tomorrow you have an appointment with Dr. Scott in the morning. Post. - Amorella