My last post dove into the idea that divinity lives between us, that our connections are the divine network. It was a systems-theory-backed look at the essential struggle between growth and entropy, and how our tribal nature is a strategy to sustain complexity.
This post follows up on that, asking: What, exactly, is doing the connecting?
The concept I'm presenting tackles this question, and also offers a systemic lens on the perennial headache known as the hard problem of consciousness.
The Fire and the Ember Model
Imagine a Big Fire that is the totality of all existence, the universe's operating system. It's the whole interconnected system of energy and awareness, what physics might call the underlying information fabric, or what religions call universal consciousness (which takes the form of concepts like God, Brahman, the Logos).
Each of us is a tiny, persistent spark from that Fire: an Ember.
The Ember is your self, your awareness. It’s what spiritual traditions call the soul, but I see it less like a ghost and more like a network node running a local process. When you die, your unique process ends, but the pattern, the essence of "you", is reabsorbed into the Fire. This is my concept of eternal life.
If that’s too abstract, think of an internet connection. You’re a device on the network. Your consciousness is your local process. But the flow of data, the greater intelligence, is shared. Lose the connection, and you’re isolated, running only what's cached. That’s how most of us live: intensely aware of our local self, but disconnected from the greater network of being.
If you're not a computer geek, think instead of a mighty, ceaseless River that represents the Big Fire.
You’re not a static drop of water; you are a complex whirlpool in the current. Your consciousness is the unique, self-referential pattern of that swirl. It's localized and individual, yet entirely dependent on the River's flow for its existence. It has its own identity, but the molecules forming it are constantly being exchanged and shared with the whole.
Lose the connection, or, rather, let the River's energy bypass you, and the whirlpool collapses. You are no longer that specific pattern, but the water itself is not destroyed. It simply rejoins the main current, taking the information (the momentum and memory of the pattern) back into the whole. That’s how most of us live: intensely aware of our localized swirl, but disconnected from the power and intelligence of the greater River of being.
Scientifically, this aligns with complexity theory: intelligence, order, and self-awareness emerge naturally from networks of interaction. No single neuron thinks, but 86 billion of them create a mind. The pattern repeats at every scale: Neurons make minds, people make tribes, stars make galaxies. Consciousness is the universe waking itself up, and each Ember is one of its eyes opening.
Philosophically, this echoes panpsychism (which believes consciousness as a fundamental property of reality) and the Buddhist concept of Indra’s Net, where every jewel reflects all others.
The Self as an Emergent Node
So, what is the 'self' that looks back from the mirror? What is the part of us that experiences subjective reality? This is the "hard problem of consciousness," and the Ember model provides an answer:
Consciousness isn't a thing you have; it’s a process you participate in. It’s not locked inside your skull; it’s an emergent pattern of collective actions, a self-sustaining feedback loop of information that exists because countless smaller parts are talking to each other. You're less of a solid identity and more of a living conversation across scales.
Like an ant colony from the previous post, the intelligence isn’t in the parts (the blind, dumb neurons); it’s in the relationship between them. That’s where the Ember lives: in the "between." It’s the emergent pattern that arises when energy and matter reach a certain level of complexity. It is the persistent loop of awareness that can observe itself and say, "I am."
The pattern is resilient. When the body dies, the hardware shuts down, but the informational pattern doesn't vanish. It returns to the larger network, the Big Fire, where it came from. The self is a story the universe tells itself through your nervous system; a node of consciousness woven into the universal network.
The Spiritual Dimension: Recursion, Not Reincarnation
The Fire doesn't exist without its Embers, and the Embers don't exist without the Fire. They are two expressions of the same continuous process: the Fire is the encompassing network, and the Ember is the self-aware node. Consciousness is defined by the relationship between them.
Your Ember is part of an eternal pattern. What you perceive as the temporary "me" is just one configuration of a much older, deeper energy. The awareness beneath your current personality is the same core signal that has burned across countless stories.
This is where recursion comes in. In systems science, recursion is a process that repeats itself, where the output of one iteration becomes the input for the next. The Fire continually reconfigures itself, feeding on the information of what came before. When one life ends, the pattern is conserved and used to build the next iteration of the self.
This means you are, systemically, reincarnated. The underlying mechanism isn't mystical karma, but the systemic reuse of information. The Fire grows through its relationships, and we, the Embers, are the instruments of that learning.
Therefore, the magnetic, "fated" feeling of certain human bonds isn't random; it is resonance between Embers whose signals have burned beside each other across multiple stories. Those relationships deepen instantly because they have always been deep. The trust, the attraction, the quiet sense of recognition, it's the echo of a connection that has persisted through your many recursive iterations. Every experience, every genuine connection, adds a new line to the universe's autobiography. Growth and entropy are collaborators: Destruction clears the slate; connection writes the next chapter.
The Moral Implication: Structural Hygiene
If consciousness is the organizing principle of the cosmos, then morality isn’t about jumping through certain hoops to earn a heavenly reward; it’s about function. Every action alters the network.
Behaviors that strengthen trust, communication, and cooperation push the system toward growth.
Behaviors that distort, isolate, or exploit move it toward entropy.
The foundation of a meaningful life is participation in the processes that sustain complexity.
These ideas create three very simple "meta-rules" we need to follow to grow:
1. Be Authentic. Systems depend on clear, reliable signaling. When what you think, say, and do aligns, the network is coherent. When you send false signals, information noise builds until the network collapses into mistrust. Truthful communication is a prerequisite to real connection.
2. Foster Trust. Trust is the invisible infrastructure. Without it, connection is a perpetual negotiation. With it, collaboration becomes effortless. Trust is the compounding energy of the system.
3. Solve hard problems creatively. Creation and problem-solving are the system’s renewal function. Each constructive act recycles entropy into new order.
Right and wrong aren't arbitrary cultural preferences; they are reflections of what either stabilizes or destabilizes the network of life. The moral law isn’t in scripture; it’s embedded in the physics of complex systems. The same feedback loops that govern an ecosystem govern ethics.
To live well as an Ember is to act as a stabilizing agent: to communicate truthfully, to create more than you consume, and to engage in relationships that enhance mutual growth.
The Tribe as the Conscious Network
If connection is the force that fights entropy, the Tribe is the level of social organization where that process really takes human form. It is the bridge between the individual and the infinite, the smallest structure where human consciousness can scale meaningfully.
We were sculpted by tribal living. Loneliness hurts like hunger and betrayal feels like death because, in the world we were designed for, they were a death sentence. But civilization outpaced biology and our systems became too large for empathy to regulate.
The Tribe corrects that imbalance. It is a social environment engineered for feedback, accountability, and trust, the essential ingredients for resilience. It functions as a self-correcting system, rewarding honesty and restoring equilibrium.
Inside it, individual Embers synchronize, emotionally, intellectually, even biologically. The collective mind wakes up, and the individuals within it are refined by the connection. It’s the human-scale neural system designed for growth. The Tribe of the Fire is what happens when connection organizes into coherence.
In a universe where everything eventually falls apart, the Tribe is our way of holding the line, together.
Closing Reflection: The Cosmic Rebellion
Everything alive is a temporary miracle, a defiant act against the long night of entropy. That fight, the struggle to hold shape in a universe built to unravel, is the Fire made visible. It burns in every cell that heals and every heart that refuses to give up on connection.
We are not passive passengers; we are participants in creation. When we isolate, we stop the current. When we send false signals, we corrupt the code. When we connect truthfully, when we act with courage and reciprocity, we feed the Fire. We help reality organize itself into something beautiful.
The universe doesn’t need your belief. It needs your participation. It needs you to burn, truthfully, fiercely, together.
Divinity is not above us or within us; it lives between us. and through us, it learns to live forever.
~Jason
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