1) Feel our fire 馃敟
2) Breathe their air 馃尡
3) See through water 馃敭
4) Fall to Earth 馃實
Who are you? What is the self? We usually consider this:
____
,-'' `'-._ outer world
,-' `. of others
/ \
/ \
| |
| me |
| |
\ ,'
`. ,'
`._ _,'
`'----''
But this is quite an oversimplification. I would propose this alternative model:
__.....__
,-' me___ `-.
,' ,-'' `'-._`- outer
,' ,-' `.me world
/ / \ \
/ / \ \
|me| inner ||
| | world ||
| | | |
`. \ ,'.'
| `. ,'me|
`.me `._ _,' ,'
`. `'----'' me,'
`-.._ me _,.-'
`''''
There is a deeper world hidden beneath your ego, but it is usually shielded by the inhabitants of the me-layer. These inhabitants are usually focused toward the outer world and toward themselves. As a consequence, our inner world is usually way more unknown than the outer one.
When you communicate with another being, if using the over-simplistic model, we have:
____ _,...._
,-'' `'-._ ,,'' ``..
,-' `. ,' `.
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
| | | |
| me | | you |
| | | |
\ ,' \ /
`. ,' `. ,'
`._ _,' `. ,'
`'----'' ``-....,-''
I am me and you are you. We both are different since I have my own consciousness and you have yours. I only experience me and you only experience you. We are different islands.
In the more sophisticated model we have:
____ outer _,...._
,-'' me`'-._ world ,,'' __you ``..
,-' ,--''''-.. `. ,' _,-' ``-.you.
/me,' `.me\ / / `. \
/ ,' \ \ you' \ \
|.' inner \ | | | inner 'you
|| world | | | | world | |
me\ /me | \ / |
\ \ / ,' \ \ ,you
`.`. _,',' you. ,' ,'
`me--...me'_,' `.`-..___,,' ,'
`'----'' ``-.you,-''
The main message here is both simple and shocking: me and you not only have the outer world in common. Our inner world is shared as well. I carry one copy of the inner world and you carry another. But they are identical, in principle.
When we are born, our self shell is extremely thin: there are no me's and you's:
outer world
____ _,...._
,-'' `'-._ ,,'' ``..
,-' `. ,' `.
/ \ / \
/ inner \ / \
| | | inner |
| world | | |
| | | world |
\ ,' \ /
`. ,' `. ,'
`._ _,' `. ,'
`'----'' ``-....,-''
We immediately start to accumulate memories, experiences and conditioning, so our self-shell grows:
____ outer _,...._
,.--''''-:.._ world ,, ;.----.. `..
,,' `-`. ,you `._`.
// `.\ /,' \ \
// \\ // \ \
| inner | | .' inner ||
| world me| | world ||
|\ /| |\ /|
\\ /,' `. //
`:. ,;' `\ ,;'
`:.._ _,,;' `.. _.-'
`'`''''' ``'----;'''
As we become adults, our shells have grown so much that we forget the core they cover. These would be two adults kissing:
outer world
_,.-----... _.--'''''--._
,-' ME ME `-._ ,-' YOU `-.
,' ME ____ ME `. ,' _,...._ YOU `.
/ ,-'' `'-._ \ /YOU ,,'' ``.. \
,'ME ,-' `.ME \ / ,' `.YOU\
/ / \ \ / / \ \
| / \ | / inner \ |
|ME | inner |ME|YOU| |YOU|
| | world | | | world | |
| | | | | | |
`.ME \ ,' | | \ / |
| `. ,'ME ,' '.YOU`. ,' ,'
`.ME `._ _,' / `. `. ,' YOU,'
\ `'----'' ME ,' \ YOU ``-....,-'' /
`-.ME ME _,' `-. YOU YOU ,-'
`-...___,,.-' `-.__ __.-'
`''''
The inhabitants of the shell, the ME's, could also be written as SE's, in other words, as shell emotions:
,.----------._ outer world
_,-' SE `-.
,' ____ `.
/ SE ,--- `'-._ SE `.
/ ,-' `. \
/ / \ SE \
| SE / \ '.
| | | |
| | inner | SE |
| | world | /
| \ ,'SE |
\ `. ,' /
\ SE `._ _,' ,'
`. `------- SE /
`. SE SE ,'
`-._ SE _.-'
`--.....,--'
Shell emotions are what make you feel yourself as yourself, and what make you forget about your inner world. They make you think that there is nothing deeper than them.
But they are tricky little things! Mostly, they are chemical compounds, like hormones, that dictate your emotional state.
You can live the most horrible events and still keep your serotonin levels high, and feel reasonably happy. You can also enjoy the easiest and most comfortable existence and yet show very low serotonin levels, and feel miserable. They are not faithful describers of reality.
You can wake up at 4:00 and start overthinking and worrying. You can become asleep again, wake up at 9:00 and laugh at those worries. They are not faithful even to themselves!
And worst of all: they love to have prisoners. Deep emotions (DE) live in the inner world:
,.--'''''`--._ outer world
_,-' SE `-.
,' ____ `.
/ SE ,-'' `'-._ SE `.
/ ,-' `. \
/ / DE DE \ SE \
| SE / DE \ '.
| | | |
| | inner | SE |
| | world | /
| \ DE ,'SE |
\ `. DE ,' /
\ SE `._ _,' ,'
`. `'----'' SE /
`. SE SE ,'
`-._ SE _.-'
`--.....,--'
Deep emotions are usually ignored because *they are universal*. If person 1 interacts with person 2, we usually have:
outer world
_,.-----... _.--'''''--._
,-' SE1 SE1`-._ ,-' SE2 `-.
,' SE1 ____ SE1`. ,' _,...._ SE2 `.
/ ,-'' `'-._ \ /SE2 ,,'' ``.. \
,'SE1,-' DE `.SE1\ / ,' DE `.SE2\
/ / \ \ | / DE \ \
| / DE DE \ +--+ / inner \ |
|SE1| inner SE1|SE2| |SE2|
| | world | ---+ | DE world | |
| | | | | | DE | |
`.SE1\ DE ,' | | \ / |
| `. DE ,'SE1,' |SE2`. DE DE ,' ,'
`.SE1 `._ _,' / `. `. ,' SE2,'
\ `'----'' SE1,' \ SE2 ``-....,-'' /
`-.SE1 SE1 _,' `-. SE2 SE2 ,-'
`-...___,,.-' `-.__ __.-'
`''''
See how these two persons exchange shell emotions through a channel.
If emotions are the sea, DE's are most of the sea, while SE's are just the waves on the surface, and also its coast lines. The sea at large is deep and stationary, while waves are extremely fluctuating and coast lines are historical accidents.
Who would try to characterise a sea from its waves and from the shape of its limits? Almost every one of us.
The first level of meditation consists in acknowledging deep emotions as well, and their universality.
It is not about, as many schools of meditation seem to suggest, detaching from shell emotions. This is, in fact, impossible.
But their relative importance is greatly modified when we open a channel to the inner world
,.--'''''`--._ outer world
_,-' DE DE `-.
,' ____ `.
/ SE ,DE' DE._ SE `.
/ -' `. \
/ DE DE DE \
| / SE '.
|DE | DE DE | |
| inner | |
| SE | DE DE /
| \ DE world , |
\ ,' SE /
\ `. DE ,'
`. SE ----'' /
`. DE DE ,'
`-._ DE _.-'
`--.....,--'
and we allow DE's to permeate our whole being.
When interacting with others, we can also exchange DE's, and recognise how identical are to ours:
,.--'''''`--._
_,-' DE `-.
,' SE1 _ DE `. _____
/ -'' `'- SE1 `. ,,-'' `'-..
/ DE . \ ,-' SE2 `-.
/ DE \ \ ,' SE2 -''' ._ `.
| / DE SE1 '. / DE ,' DE DE \
|SE1 DE +-------+ / DE DE \ SE2 |
| DE DE | SE2 DE DE |
| | DE SE1 DE DE DE DE |
|SE1 \ DE SE1 +-------+ | DE | |
\ DE ,' / |SE2 \ DE / |
\ DE ._ ' DE ,' \ SE2 DE SE2 |
`. `' -'' DE / \ DE `. ,' DE |
`. DE SE1 ,' `. DE -.. -' ,'
`-._ DE _.-' ._ SE2 SE2 _,
`--.....,--' `. SE2 ,'
``-.._____..-''
The universality of DE's applies to all living beings. We are all very different and at the same time we share a common core.
Shell emotions are small flames that can dominate the consciousness of a person who has not worked out the first step of meditation. But once this element is properly developed, an incandescent nucleus is discovered pulsating at our very centre, which is shared among all beings.
To master this first step:
1) Bring down your SE's from absolute power, but acknowledging their proper importance.
2) Open your inner shell to allow your inner world with its DE's to permeate your whole being.
3) Interact with others to acknowledge the individuality of SE's and the universality of DE's. Both have their own importance.
So, of course, feel *your* fire, without being commanded by it, but most of all, feel and share THE universal fire burning inside all of us.
This is the first victory against the narrow and poor shell of the ego.
In this step we have broken our inner surface of the shell, but there is still another shell: the external one. What would happen if we would dissolve it into the outer world? What if there are no real boundaries and everything is just "the world"?
The second step is about the boundaries we have with the outer world.
In the previous step, we oversimplified these boundaries. For our consciousness, the outer world can be our body, our ecosystem, our solar system, etc.
beyond
_,,.......__
,.-'' `'-.._
_.-' known universe`..
,' _,.-------.._ `.
,' ,-'' ``-. `.
,' ,-' atmosphere `-. `.
/ ,' _,,--''''`--._ `. \
/ / _,' `-. \ \
/ / / body `. \ \
/ / ,' ,-'' `'-. \ \ \
| / / ,' `. \ \ |
| | / / \ \ | |
| | / | | '. | |
| | | | me | | | |
------------------------------------------------------------
The second element is mostly about breaking the barrier that our self has with its body and with its atmosphere. Our body, our atmosphere and our self are interrelated by a single process: breathing.
Try to stop breathing for some seconds, until you start to feel uncomfortable. Don't just imagine it: do the actual experiment right now. Stop breathing... now! See how close is death if you don't resume your breathing. Then... wait until you cannot hold it any more and... allow yourself to breath again and experience how life continues along its delicate path.
When breathing, it is crucial to acknowledge such fragility and the fine line that separates us from rapid death. This is a first fracture in our outer boundary. We are temporary and fragile beings. Each conscious breath must remind this to us.
Stop breathing again. 3, 2, 1... now! While you are not breathing, think about who is providing this precious air, oxygen in particular. Terrestrial plants produce about 30% of this oxygen, while marine cyanobacteria and green algae produce about the remaining 70%. Shouldn't we feel grateful? Shouldn't we say thanks? If you don't fully agree with this, hold the breathing for longer... Once you are convinced, allow yourself to breathe again while you express your gratitude to our green friends.
The act of breathing *their* air is a lesson of humility. Each breath is a reminder of our dependence on them. Our boundary with our atmosphere must be open, not only physically for air to flow across it, but also symbolically, to let gratitude flow as well.
If you are into meditation and performing breathing exercises to relax, to become focused, to enhance yourself but forgetting about your fragility and your gratitude towards air givers, you are far from the true path of meditation. Air can be used to inflate your ego or to ventilate your selfish preconceptions. You decide.
First, breathe to acknowledge that you are small and fragile. Dissolve the shell that separates you from the reality of time.
Second, breathe to say thank you to those who give you air. Dissolve the shell that separates you from our shared atmosphere.
Third, breathe to start connecting with the shell that separates you from your body.
Here you are probably thinking that it is time to breathe for relaxation, in the traditional sense of meditation as controlled breathing. Wrong.
Before that, breathe exercising your body to *exhausting* levels. Don't fall into the trap of practising calmed breathing when your body is full of energy. This is by far the most common mistake when beginning meditation training.
Your body is full of energy. Develop this energy first. Unleash it. Anxiety, the #1 cause for people to start meditating, is nothing more than restrained energy that bites on the inside. An anxious person trying to do controlled breathing and trying to relax *before* allowing its energy to flow in a physical way is only accumulating more steam into its inner and anxious pistons.
Your body is not a taxi that translates you from one place to another. Until you stop separating your self from your body, don't even try to practise traditional relaxation exercises: they may calm you for some minutes, but it will be a futile effort.
Fourth, breathe to sing! Your body is again too complex to be considered as a single entity. Our body is composed of many layers of complexity, and one of its main separations is that of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
Talking is a very restricted and unimaginative form of singing. Practise vocalisation to strengthen your diaphragm, stretch your vocal cords and your face/neck muscles. And sing as many music as you like. Sing more as you age, to prevent your stomach to be strangled (and thus herniated) in the little hole of the diaphragm called the hiatus. Of course, you can develop an hiatus hernia even with a strong diaphragm, but a weak diaphragm is one of its main causes.
Singing is the best exercise you can do for your diaphragm, the best way to have a deep and sustained breathing capacity. Singing is about resonating with the outer world. In other words, it is about having a flexible and vibrating boundary with the atmosphere. Not everything must be about breaking boundaries. In this case, we just break its rigidity!
Fifth, breathe to laugh. And don't wait to feel happy or in a laughing mood to practise that. Laughing is in fact a cousin of singing. You can perform many vocalisation exercises with laughing instead of singing, or even with singing laughter! You not only laugh when you are happy: you also become happier when you laugh. The cycle can start at any of its two sides.
Laughing is about breaking another type of rigidity of your boundaries. Laughing opens your channels with others and also allows your self-boundary to be more resistant to fractures. Laugh at yourself as a way of overthrowing the tyranny of your shell emotions.
And sixth, yes, practise controlled and calmed breathing. This is the "classical" meditation method and it is of crucial importance.
The chronic release of stress hormones inflicts a huge damage on your body. Breathing in a calmed, relaxed and peaceful way is a great way to reduce and manage stress.
But *never* leave all the burden to this sixth step. That would be an enormous and very frequent mistake. Important as this step is, it cannot be successful without the five previous ones.
Nerves have tone, as muscles. The concept of tone means baseline activity. For example, the tone of the vagus nerve, one of the most important nerves in our nervous system (also the longest) is closely associated with our heart function and emotional regulation.
This nerve regulates our heart rate and our *heart rate variability*, which is the variation of the time interval between heartbeats. An increased tone is associated to a lower heart rate and to a higher heart rate variability, both signs of good health.
The vagus nerve connects heart, lungs and the gut (stomach + intestines).
The more tone your vagus nerve has, the quicker and easier you can relax and process stress. The more you keep yourself stressed, the more tone this nerve loses.
So the last thing you want is to have a low vagal tone!
How can you stimulate this nerve (actually there are two vagus nerves) to improve its (their) tone?
Physical exercise, cold showers, deep & slow breathing, singing, keeping a healthy gut flora, having proper omega-3 levels, laughing...
Those who practise sports with high intensity maintain a very high vagal tone.
Don't even try to become a meditator while being a sedentary person. It is also meaningless to try to use meditation as a way to be less sedentary. First you need to put yourself into motion.
Deep breathing is about opening your boundary to the serenity and peace of the outer world. You need this to access to the third step.
Breathe this gift that we call air in all its forms. Allow it to flow across your open and flexible boundaries and let resonate it within you.
We continue our annihilation/expansion of the self by encountering one of the most important and difficult shells that we can find. We can give it many names: ignorance, darkness, fog, clouds, noise...
light
_,..------..._
,,-'路路路路路路路路路路路路路路``-._
,-'路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路`.
,'路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路`.
,'路路路路路路路路路路路darkness路路路路路路路路路路路路路`.
/路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路`.
.'路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路
.'路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路___路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路\
|路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路,-'' `'-.路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路`.
|路路路路路路路路路路路路路路路,' `.路路路路路路路路路路路路路路|
|路路路路路路路路路路路路路路/ \路路路路路路路路路路路路路路|
|路路路路路路路路路路路路路路| |路路路路路路路路路路路路路|
|路路路路路路路路路路路路路路| me |路路路路路路路路路路路路路|
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meditation is not only about feelings and breathing. From a therapeutical point of view, the two first elements can be enough, but it is the third point what unleashes all meditative powers, leading us to more luminous perspectives.
Many times, I can be stuck in a problem for weeks, months or even years. Not even a continuous effort is enough to crack it. However, there are moments in which you suddenly reach the solution, in an almost instantaneous way.
I am not naive enough to think that sudden revelations can be a substitute for long and tedious efforts. In fact, many times, epiphanies occur as a final result of such efforts.
However, it is also naive to think that by wandering the forest you will necessarily obtain its aerial view.
Many times, a very deep thinking for half an hour can be more productive than years of laborious but blind effort.
Imagine a small pond of water. The solutions are written at the bottom, but the waters are muddy and you cannot see through.
Then, with all your good will, you spend days, months and years trying to reach the bottom. And, with your effort, the waters are every time more unclear. You are actually mixing water and sand in a very active way.
Suddenly, you stop swimming. You just go out of the pond and stand still, waiting for the water to become quieter and transparent.
Until you can perfectly read the solution at the bottom.
Thus, the third level of meditation is about seeing through, which does not exclude but complements effort.
But while effort is about doing something, seeing through seems to be about doing nothing. How can we do this type of nothing?
The answer cannot be less surprising: only a very strong mind, when calmed, can see through.
In this metaphor, strength of mind is depth of sight, or visual acuity. A weak and calmed mind can manage to keep the waters still, but its eyes cannot penetrate through the depth of the pond.
On the other hand, a strong but restless mind cannot see through water either, because the pond is agitated and clouded, both by itself and by external noise sources.
Once we know this, the question is clear: what is the path to a strong mind? The answer is partially obvious and partially surprising.
The obvious part is that a mind grows strong when exercised. Which means undergoing a lot of effort and pain. The powers obtained from neither element arefor free, but element three is particularly expensive.
The not-obvious part is how is a mind exercised. Of course, there are many ways of doing that, but the best ones all orbit around a fundamental concept: memory. Or even better: *working memory*.
You can read all philosophy you want, and accumulate as many books as you wish, but this does not make you a true philosopher.
You can read all music scores you want, and have all the instrument technique you wish, but this does not make you a true musician.
You can read all science you want, and have all the notes you wish, but this does not make you a true scientist.
The list goes on.
To be a truly first-class mind you need to have everything in your mind: in your memory.
Memory is almost a taboo concept in school. Modern teachers want their students to understand instead of memorise. What an unfortunate mistake! Understanding and memorising are two fundamental and intertwined pillars and neither of them must be downplayed.
In order to memorise, you need to have full attention and relaxation. If you have not mastered the element 2 of meditation you can never practise memorisation.
Attention and memory are so closely related that it is very difficult to make a distinction between them. Lack of attention makes memorisation impossible, and the depth of attention is proportional to the strength of memorisation.
Many people are attracted to meditation because it offers and promises "super-powers", but those powers require such a level of effort that meditation has almost become synonymous to elements 1 and 2, simply because level 3 has an impossibly steep slope.
This is the point where meditation becomes hard. Extremely hard. Nothing, not even extreme physical effort, is harder than the mind effort of working memory.
Memory is, in simple words, to be able to remember something.
Working memory is the ability to use and process elements that are already in your mind.
For example, you may remember the multiplications table. This is pure memory. But now see these two numbers: 357 and 869 and try to close your eyes and multiply them. You will have to use pure memory to recall these numbers, to recall multiplication tables and also to store partial results.
Electronic devices, like school teachers, are trying to make our memory disappear.
But to see through water, you need strength of mind, and to have strength of mind, you need to develop your working memory.
The efforts required to achieve this are beyond Olympic.
The powers that you obtain are also beyond Olympic.
Jazz players are true musicians, while most modern classical players are not. The latter just play fossil scores, without considering that when those scores were born, improvisation was key. Beethoven or Bach could have never composed such music without an astonishing working memory that allowed them to dive into their music with an unparalleled depth. In the mind of the improviser, music is alive, because improvisation is pure working memory.
In the training of working memory, the mind comes to life. If you have never trained it, you have lived half-dead, and that's being generous.
There are infinitely many things that you can remember and process, so whether you use it for music, mathematics or computers is does not matter. What matters is to use your bare mind to do a lot of memorising and processing without any help, and in real time.
Although working memory is way more important than pure memory, never underestimate the power of sheer memorisation. It already requires enormous amounts of concentration and serenity.
And be prepared to meet the greatest resistance you have ever found: your currently weak mind.
Element 3 is all about defeating your *incredibly powerful mind weakness*. In other words, it is about breaking the strongest, darkest, foggiest and most noisy shell that there is.
Once you start to improve in this direction, and if you also work element 2, waters will become less and less clouded.
While elements 1 and 2 are not for everyone, element 3 is only for the bravest. You will not achieve this by just lying on your mat.
Element 1 is about the ego: its superficial wishes and its universal feelings.
Element 2 is about the body and the soul: the breathing foundations of life.
Element 3 is about the mind: an organ more complex than the known universe.
Element 4 is about the spirit: the transcendent, god-like arena.
I could have titled this section "Lift from Earth", while trying to introduce a cheap mysticism into the discussion. Instead, I have titled it "Fall to Earth", summoning the very physical gravity that binds us to our planet.
The most obvious and common mistake is to attempt working on element 4 while not having seriously worked element 3. A weak mind entering the transcendent easily falls into the trap of thinking that the transcendent is opposed to the rational, or at least an independent realm. That is why I call this cheap mysticism, because it tries to seek the transcendent without the natural.
This is one of the two possible extreme approaches here: the cheap mystic. But be aware of the second extreme type: the cheap rationalist who has only worked its mind without going through states 1 and 2. While cheap mystics seek the transcendent forgetting the mind, cheap rationalists think that there is nothing but the mind, and usually mock everyone else. To me, while cheap mystics are usually misguided and sometimes clouded, cheap rationalists are completely blind.
There is transcendence in this Universe, but it is not a separated domain from what the natural sciences study. Instead, it is something that expands the concept of natural reality. It enriches the natural without splitting it.
This universe does not allow magic, and it is wonderful as it is. That there are laws is a signature of a transcendent order that we cannot fully grasp yet.
But one has to be completely blind to think that this universe is just empirical data. Without the feeling of transcendence, science would have never advanced to such heights.
Element 4 is also about:
In short, I consider element 4 to be largely uncharted and rarely explored. There are many incursions in it, from cheap rationalists and from cheap mystics, but I am not aware of full and honest explorations in which the fascination for transcendence goes hand in hand with a strong mind.
If we freely throw an apple upwards, it will undergo a *free fall*. Free from forces but not free from the laws of Nature. Similarly, we freely thrown it but at the same time we had no other choice but to throw it. The apple falls *even while it is lifting*, because falling means just to be free of constraints except the unavoidable law. Lifting from the ground in a magical sense is a ridiculous advertising for meditation. Only by falling we get free from forces.
How does one practise element-4 meditation? I have no idea. I have not been able to explore it, only glimpsed it, occasionally.
I think that, as time goes by and our science expands more and more, the frontier between elements 3 and 4 will move as well.
In particular, I have the intuition that pure mathematics is one of the keys to transcendence. While natural sciences are bounded by empirical phenomena, mathematics is not. You could argue that mathematics is the domain of reason, but I shall disagree. I see reason as a part of mathematics: in particular, as a classical way of relating things. But by no means we can discard other ways of relating things.
Mathematics has already acknowledged the use of numbers that are not purely "real": the complex numbers. We have different mathematical operations, like extraction of a square root, an inverse trigonometric function of a number with magnitude greater than 2, logarithms of negative numbers... They all go against reason, yet complex numbers expand our concepts beyond what seems intuitive. And moreover they connect these frontiers together. You try to calculate the square root of minus one, the logarithm of minus one or the arccos of 2 and you find that the results are all connected.
We invent "imaginary" numbers, as a fiction, but once we accept this fiction, *we follow its rules*. If we would accept fictions without rules, then we could invent a solution for square roots, another for negative logarithms, etc. But no: we invent a fiction for the square root of minus 1 and then we assume this fiction follows the same or similar rules as real numbers. And then we discover that this fiction is the same fiction that solves the other problems.
A cheap mystic invents a fiction for each problem it encounters. A good mathematician tries to come up with a fiction that explains all problems together, with a sense of *elegance and beauty*, two concepts very close to transcendence.
So we cannot discard that there is an "imaginary" part of the universe that expands our natural perception. But what we cannot accept are cheap and fragmented attempts. If there is a "complex" universe, it will surely follow rules as well, even if empirical data cannot provide clues about it.
A very rationalistic person will try to see "God" as the ultimate mathematician. A very emotional person will try to see "God" as the ultimate expression of love. But element 4 is not about a compartmentalised vision. The one seeking the ultimate love will be inconsistent and the one seeking the ultimate theorem will be short-sighted.
In this fourth step we try to dissolve our boundaries from what seems to be boundless. We try to break boundaries that we barely know, which separates us from regions that we don't even know that we ignore them.
Falling to Earth means, among other things, following the path of acknowledged ignorance, free from the apparent forces of the self.