Considerations about The Midnight Gospel

[meadow-foreigner]

Harvesting, spirituality, insanity, escapism, enlightenment, meditation, and self-development. If you’re interested in any of these topics, I suggest you read further. It’s gonna be a ride.

Episode 6 – Vulture With Honor

This episode in particular displays the consequences of not listening, unbalancing oneself, and the glorification of the part in detriment of the whole.

The episode begins with a plane with the words “SIMULATOR REPAIR # 123-4567”. This can be perceived as a preview of what is prone to happen, and an indication that certain things that appear to be sudden – like the Clancy simulator that presents malfunctioning – actually give signals over time.

On top of that, the plane loops. People tend to incur in loops when not fully processing a given catalyst: the tendency is the individual to repeat the response behavior; the experience that activates the trauma trigger to be repeated loops until the individual overcomes it. In the ultimate sense, reincarnation occurs when the individual hasn't really fully processed the ultimate 3d matrix catalyst:

• The individual in a 3d matrix has to deal with epithumía, the longing/striving for a fulfilling connection, which may take various distortions, such as pride, anger, escapism, clinging, etc.
  

Clancy is entertained by a snail race. Clancy yells at snails, like the typical American football coach stereotype, in a mix of encouragement and provocation. This scene is analogous to the discrepancy between the individual's rational and emotional rhythms.

Clancy getting a call from someone, who said things he wasn't ready to hear at that particular moment, like Gandhi's quote "things will always be the same if you don’t change". He evaded the "confrontation" with her by pretending to be a recording and then ran away by hanging up the phone. Then, Clancy seeks comfort for his pain through any escapism (work, simulation, or anything that directs Clancy's attention away from the source of his dissatisfaction).

Clancy was unsettled as soon as he heard that he was loved. When he heard the word “change”, he was triggered. The realization of the dialectic between the ephemerality of the matrix and the impermanence of the incarnated being can bring discomfort to those who are mostly centered on a specific 'vibe': in this context, the expression of love reveals a latent vulnerability: “I exist not only in me, but also in the other” (the Logos is not only manifested in me, but also in the other). Realizing this when you are too self-centered is the equivalent of realizing the Yin potential in Yang, or the electric potential in what is magnetic and vice versa. It may be daunting.

The largest of all of the galaxies in the 3d Universe is still infinitesimal compared to the whole; which doesn’t mean it isn’t infinite within – it means that there is always a ‘beyond reference’, or if it suits you more, an ‘above’ reference.

The contrast of the individual who was submitted to epipothēsis (the ‘shattering’ process that the Veil of Oblivion brings) with its consequent epithumía (latent condition of the individual in search of completeness) gives rise to the whole myriad of behavioral biases in the individual, such as anger, fear, loneliness, and hope. Exposure to these biases can cause distress to the individual who doesn't really process them well enough.

“Due to operator error there are no living things on this planet.”

Well, this seems a probable outcome for humanity.

All worlds have a big red X on top of them, with an apparent single exception. In the scene where Clancy chooses one of the worlds, an interesting concept is revealed in the FAQ, which seems to be bugged:

1 - The way the question is asked directly influences the quality of the answer. In other words, clarity in a request’s articulation is fundamental to have an equivalent clarity in the answer.

2 - The quotation marks are combined in different ways together with the articles and conjunctions. Although it is just an illustration of the simulator bug, notice that when you have a question and are not really focused on its effective solution, you begin to analyze it from all possible angles – such as the different quotation marks placement, or the different phonetic-typographic combinations – in order to detail the issue as much as possible. However, just as a coastline can be infinitely detailed – but doesn’t have to in order to map it – it is perfectly possible to delineate an issue with satisfactory precision from a macro perspective.

The world chosen by Clancy is called 2-WAY MIRROR BUBBLE PLANET.

This name can be used to characterize the reflexive relationships between an individual and a given world in which such individual lives – as a mirror whose action of individuals directly influences its image, which in turn gives feedback to the individuals, who influence it back. This process is the equivalent of one full cycle of a sine wave.

“Unfortunately, due to operator error, all sentient bubbles on this planet have popped… from loneliness.”

Definitions of sentient
1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2: AWARE
3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling
4: the state or quality of being sentient; awareness
5: sense-perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling

I’m gonna use the aforementioned definitions to express the following idea:

Sentience precedes consciousness. Awareness is not equal to consciousness unless worked upon; transmuted. Here ‘sentient beings’ refer to beings in somewhat of a zombified state, somewhat asleep; not truly awake, not truly conscious. This lack of consciousness – as they’re merely sentient – has led them to a loneliness pop, or implosion. The sight and the image of the self within produced a tension that was unbearable for the individual bubble to cope with, so it imploded.

A bubble sings a melancholic song about its loneliness. “Who reflects who?” “Doesn’t it make you cry?” and “This is goodbye” are some of the phrases.

The song itself is an expression of the dissonance/stress felt by the individual bubble. This on itself is meaningful and important, because expressing one’s feelings is useful to the healing process. Evasion of one’s feelings will ultimately lead to misdirected, misprocessed energy on the form of behavioral (tangible) or mental (intangible) loops that will eventually culminate on the coming across one’s suppressed fears, sooner or later.

However, expressing one’s feelings is useful to a certain extent. Over-dwell in it and one might incur on the effects produced by sorrow added to the non-resolution of a dissonant state.

In other words, while it is healthy to face one’s flaws and limitations, how inefficient is it to limit yourself to gaze at your own reflection in a mirror? How far can one progress with a mirror as the sole and exclusive reference?

This is a latent issue in the approach that always prioritizes the ‘external’, or the outside, in detriment of the ‘internal’, or the inside. This is because the external has a much bigger impact on a 3d operating system – you notice the decoding of the brain of the images that reaches your senses, though not the world’s intangibility. In this sense, the drama experienced by the bubble that appears to be stuck in this loop of superficial reflections causes it to implode: the interior could only be neglected for so long.

It also states the maintenance procedure of a bio-machine. Although it is “bio”, it is a simulator, a matrix. It requires a substance that is harvested from a lantern head. This lantern head is used so its green oil can feed other beings. How about that?

If proper care isn’t provided to the bio-machine, it will malfunction.

About [in]sanity:

The word comes from Latin sanus: that of which displays health, or the quality of whole.

• From a purely spiritual perspective, one might consider every aspect of the Universe to be a whole, or sane, in this regard. From a biological and social approach, however, one can see how this falls short.

If one considers the electromagnetic duality of this particular 3d Universe, one soon realizes that it is precisely a very specific coalescence and organization that gives life a fertile ground to blossom. This can be perceived on Earth: were it a couple of AU’s further to the Sun and the “negative entropic arrangement” wouldn’t be feasible to host human life as we know it.

In this particular approach, that which doesn’t display health or the quality of the whole still has wholeness as its reference. However, it appears as disconnected and pulverized, therefore considered not whole.

On to the social approach, the principle is the same – what changes is the reference of what is the “whole” – which, in this case, is a certain social cell.

How about a more psychological approach? In this sense, the modern-world individual is comprised of minimally functional strati: we have the instinctual, the emotional, the concentric social circles in which the individual is inserted in, the mental – more closely related to concreteness – and the intellectual – more closely related to abstractions.

Nowadays’ the societal system doesn’t really use much of its intellectual potential. One’s mental capacity is ever so increasingly being emulated by AI, so as long as the individual has a minimally functional instinctual, emotional, and, most importantly, social circles, society will reap benefits from it.

What happens when these minimally functional strati aren’t really consonant to the social structures’ references? The individual is considered non-functional or unhealthy. The same principle applies to one’s organism.

“Do you ever wonder if you can see your own eyes?”

This is but a follow-up philosophical question which might give some orientation to the question above, in this show’s perspective.

Were you able to see your inner conflicts, desires, imperfections, and everything else about you that goes on inside of you in a third-person perspective – that is, occurring outside of you – what would this do to you?

The following e-mails illustrate much of what is felt when a bio-machine isn’t given proper maintenance. The machine “needs green”.

Clancy ignores the bio-machine messages and instead engages in a distracting activity. A direction of one’s awareness to the outside – and thus the bio-machine requests are ignored. The individual seeks a Messiah; because a Messiah will surely heal the individual.

“Since then, I’ve been free – alon' with my emotional pain.”

Here it is shown to us what we don’t really like to admit to ourselves because of the discomfort that is attached to such a realization: in this specific case, eating won’t really solve the underlying issue that is making the person sad beneath their social mask.

[meadow-foreigner]

“The ply is ready, master.”

Ply: in game theory, the number of levels at which branching occurs in a tree of possible outcomes, typically corresponding to the number of moves ahead (in chess strictly half-moves ahead) considered by a computer program.

It levitates.

Clancy then goes to meet his neighbors, with his wizard hat on. There are the lanterns that produce the green oil required for bio-machine maintenance.

The bio-machine farm. Those are harvested by this farmer who wears a wizard hat and a staff, with its right leg being held by a little being who wears little shoes.

This farmer acts in an aggressive, controlling manner with his children.

— It’s time to harvest!

The farmer, now with a different body due to being connected to the bio-machine simulator, lands on a skull-shaped spaceship. After ordering a few commands to the simulator which is a disk-shaped craft, he goes to the control room. The farmer scans a planet in flames, and can’t see anything of worth there.

After zooming out a couple of times more, the farmer sees a Golden Horn of Hidden Innocence, really valuable in the space marketplace. His daughter even proposes to “put it in the zoo”, but she’s reprimanded:

— And to waste such treasure?

Suddenly, the simulator alerts the farmer that an intruder is nearby. The farmer suddenly blows his whistle, which makes him exit the simulator. After a brief dialogue in where Clancy tries to hand him his ‘still ovenable’ pie, the farmer’s two children come back from the now failed mission – they didn’t get the horn after all.

The simulator that was just used by the farmer and his two children now begins to malfunction. The farmer states that it needs to be rubbed twice a day, in comparison to the big machine's FAQ-manual, where it is stated that the requirement is thrice a day. Work exploration + due consequences in a nutshell.

Clancy returns and is mad about why things happen like that for him.

After getting to his place, Clancy’s bio-machine simulator spits out an “Eye-Messiah”.

Have a slice!

Clancy gets out of his house somewhat disturbed. He sees a plane with the words “SIMULATOR REPAIR # 123-4567”, so he decides to make contact and see what happens. Then Captain Brice arrives.

— Do you even know – what is going on with your simulator? When was the last time you rubbed green oil on it? And where’s your lantern head?

Clancy is clueless about these things. He’s just moved in from Earth and bought things without much knowledge of the mechanics of it.

— Are we in danger?
— Not if you follow my simple rules, which I will sing for you!
Then Captain Brice proceeds in singing his memento rules of avoidance – having the thing to be avoided as a reference. Later on, he is caught by one of the things he didn’t take into account when making his simple rules.

A come along with me time.

[meadow-foreigner]

— This unlucky dude broke in and found himself inside a patch of purple wobble! That’s a kind that locks you in time.

Captain Brice is then roasted and Clancy decides to get some green oil from his neighbor.

— Mast-t-ter, I can see my eyes…! I can see yo-yo-your eyes…! This is o-o-our eyes! — the bio-machine tells Clancy.
Clancy finally rubs the lantern oil in the Bio-machine so it returns to normal functionality.

— Master, it’s become clear to me that you’ve been avoiding dealing with the real-world by going into my mini universes. May I suggest meeting my good friend David?

In a fancy octopus avatar, Clancy meets David inside the universe within the bio-machine simulator.

David tells and shows Clancy that the path is within him. What Clancy had been doing with his simulations was equivalent: entertaining yourself with the perks of perceptions directed outward at the expense of perceptual self-neglect.

Then David invites Clancy to meditate.

Silence, giving you room to listen;
Stillness, giving you room to feel;
Spaciousness, just giving you room.

The viewer is shown the digression of this process on Clancy: he feels various emotions during the initial time he meditates. These emotions are idiosyncratic of the individual experience in a given incarnation, and their effects are unique in each individual.

After being exposed to these emotions for a while, Clancy realizes a little monkey with a cape that was playing with very advanced equipment, connecting and disconnecting wires.

This little monkey is analogous to the human brain trying to figure out much more advanced machinery. This process of ‘trying to figure out’ is analogous to the attempt of processing the complex myriad of inputs that incarnated beings are subject to.

So is the reflexive relationship between the human brain and mind.

Clancy looks towards the monkey-mind and decides to chase it. The chase goes badly and Clancy is unsuccessful.

The best way to attract a little monkey and work together with him is to tune in to its language.

— Do you think you can help me untangle myself? — Clancy asks David.
— If you’re caught up in your story, it’s like living in a tiny apartment with just room for you and your little mattress. The moment you get a little space in between yourself and your thoughts, it’s like moving into a much bigger house. Then there’s room to invite people in.
There’s space for you,
And there’s space for them.
That is spaciousness.

In the end, Clancy gets a gift – what Clancy thought was "nothing", in fact, was something: an awesome pair of tiny hype shoes.

Clancy thinks he is enlightened and wants to help the rest of the world to be enlightened as well – such is the feeling of euphoria that may fill the one who seeks, who ‘expands’ the Self to the Universe: spaciousness.

David asks Clancy how he can tell that this feeling of ‘being enlightened’ and ‘wanting to save the world’ . . . ?
And there is no answer.
Clancy then goes back to his home, activating his third eye.
Clancy turns his attention to roasted Captain when being called, and Clancy gives him what he asked for.

An apple, with Shelby in it.

Finally, Clancy keeps his new cool shoes in his collection. Will he muster enough courage to untangle himself?

[meadow-foreigner]

What are your opinions on this?

[Glow]

I loved the series. So much depth packed into each episode.
Hopefully he will make more.