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Chapter Two emotions, their desires, and the lures of physicality. It is the work of making the physical vehicle “down here” receptive to what one chooses to align with “up there”, as opposed to trying to forcibly change something “up there” in order to have it “down here”. This process is very much involved with what is called “discernment.” The great Sufi Shaykh Ibn al-’Arabi explains that “imperfection” exists in Creation because “were there no imperfection, the perfection of existence would be imperfect”. From the point of view of Sheer Being, there is nothing but good. But Infinite Potential to Be includes - by definition of the word “infinite” - the potential to not be. And so, Infinite Potential “splits” into Thought Centers of Creation and Thought Centers of Non-Being. It can be said that Infinite Potential is fundamentally Binary - on or off - to be or not to be. That is the first “division”. Since absolute Non-Being is an impossible paradox in terms of the source of Infinite Potential to Be, the half of the consciousness of Infinite Potential that constitute the ideas of Non-Being - for every idea of manifestation, there is a corresponding idea for that item of creation to not manifest - “falls asleep” for lack of a better term. Its “self observation” is predicated upon consciousness that can only “mimic” death. Consciousness that mimics death then “falls” and becomes Primal Matter. What this means is that the “self observing self” at the level of the Master of the Universe is constituted of this initial division between Being and Non-Being which is, again, only the initial division - the on/off, the yes/no - of creation. You could picture this as an open eye observing a closed eye. It has been represented for millennia in the yin-yang symbol, which, even on the black half that represents “sleeping consciousness that is matter’, you can see the small white dot of “being” that represents to us that absolute non-existence is not possible. There is only “relative” non-existence. These “thoughts of being and non-being” interact with one another - the observer and the observed - like a viewer looking into a mirror. Creation manifests between the viewer and the mirror. It is at once real - because it consists of matter informed by consciousness - and unreal - because it is ultimately composed of only consciousness acting on At our level of reality, the understanding that “nothing is real” as has been promulgated by gurus and teachers down through history is as useless as saying “gravity isn’t real”. Such considerations are useful only for expansion of perception. They are not useful for practical application since the energies of creation apparently transduce through 404 consciousness.