==Introduction==
A Book of Days is a book which lists a different version of the same activity for each day. This creates both variety and sameness of practice in your life which brings you a deeper connection and stronger practice to your religious experience. This Book of Days draws upon the SolSeed symbolic year and the SolSeed practice of daily meditation to give a practitioner a deeper understanding of the SolSeed religion. Feel free to use it book for whatever period you find useful, pick a day here and there to follow or follow it for multiple years. This is a wiki so feel free to add new options to existing days and to make additions to existing meditations. Each day will include a quote from a text that SolSeed members have found meaningful and then a discussion of that quote. Following this there will be a suggestion for a meditative practice. The calendar will start just after the Winter Solstice which is the beginning of the SolSeed symbolic year.
=== December 23rd : The Beginning of Time ===
==== Quote of the Day ====
--Nothing ... Nothing ... <gasp> ... Something
-From the opening words of the SolSeed Service
==== Thoughts for the Day ====
Our symbolic year begins on the first day after the winter Solstice. This day symbolizes the beginning of time as do the first words of our service. So let us begin the year by considering one of the Big Questions of metaphysics. What came before the Big Bang? What caused the Big Bang? How did time start?
The first words of our service are somewhat misleading. It is believed by some leading physicists that the Big Bang was the beginning of time. Before that moment, there was no time. Just as the phrase, 1 Kelvin less than absolute zero, has no meaning because you cannot have less heat than no heat, and just as the phrase, one lumen less than absolute darkness, has no meaning because you cannot have less light than no light, the phrase, one second before the big bang, has no meaning because you cannot have time before the beginning of time. A mathematically more accurate metaphor is that just as you cannot go one meter South of the South Pole because the direction South ends at the South Pole, it is meaningless to talk about the time one second into the past from the Big Bang because the 'direction' past ends at the Big Bang.
So the big question of the temporal origin of the universe is answered in the most unexpected way. What came before the Big Bang? The answer is that the question is meaningless. Our words seem to indicate that there was nothing before the big bang but in actual fact there was no 'before the Big Bang'. Time itself is part of the geometry of the universe. There was no moment of creation or coming into being of the universe. Time is a direction within the universe and the universe is finite in that direction. Nothing exists beyond the first moment of time.
==== Meditation for the Day ====
If you can, perform this mediation outdoors. Otherwise, choose a room where you can stand and walk a couple of paces in different directions.
Every point on the surface of a sphere is the same and to the degree that the Earth is a sphere this is true for the Earth also. Only when you take the daily rotation of the Earth into account does the South Pole in any way become special. Unless you carefully watch the sky for several hours you won't notice the rotation of the Earth. If you want to do a very long version of this meditation by all means you may want to actually travel to the South Pole to do it. Otherwise simply pretend you are at the South Pole.
Pick an exact spot on the ground which is to be the South Pole. Stand facing it about one pace away from it. Imagine the snow swirling about you. The southern Aurora is dancing in a dark sky filled with stars above your head. The South Pole is directly in front of you so obviously you are facing south. Now take a step forward and stand on the spot you chose to be the South Pole. Now you are standing on the South Pole. You are at the furthest point South on the whole Earth. You are facing north. Staying on the South Pole spin slowly around. As you turn you continue to face north. Every direction is north from here. Is that true? Look down at your feet. That direction is still down. It is not south or north. Just as with any place on Earth, if you look down toward the centre of the Earth you are looking down not east or West or North or South. Look up. Imagine the bright stars and swirling aurora above you. That is still up. It is not south or north or east or west.
Now imagine that this place is not the South Pole but instead the Big Bang and that the surface of the Earth is actually time. Instead of cold, snow, stars and aurora, you are surrounded by some kind of plasma which is almost infinitely dense and hot. This is the beginning of time. Slowly turn around keeping your eyes on the horizon. You are looking into the future no matter what direction you face. Take a step away from the Big Bang and then turn back to face it. Imagine that the step you took represented a thousand years. You are now standing in a very young universe, only one millennium old. Although it is much less dense and hot here it is still much hotter and denser than you could survive if this were real rather than mediation. You are facing the past. You can time travel. Take a step back in time to return to the moment of the Big Bang. You have just travelled back in time to the beginning of time. Take another step. You have gone past the beginning of time and are travelling forward into the future again. Turn and walk right through the Big Bang. You began by travelling back in time but as you crossed the Big Bang, without turning you changed direction and began going forward in time again.
No matter how many 'times' you walk back and forth through the Big Bang you always end up in its future. The direction past ends at the Big Bang.
Quietly meditate on this idea for a while. Open your mind to unintuitive geometries.
=== December 24th : The Fourth Dimension ===
==== Quote of the Day ====
"To
The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL
And H. C. IN PARTICULAR
This Work is Dedicated
By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that
Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE Dimensions
Having been previously conversant
With ONLY TWO
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region
May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE OR EVEN SIX Dimensions
Thereby contributing
To the Enlargement of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development
Of that most rare and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races
Of SOLID HUMANITY"
-Dedication of Edwin A. Abbott's, Flatland: A romance of many dimensions.
==== Thoughts for the Day ====
Yesterday, we meditated on the unintuitive geometry of direction on a sphere and how this might apply to the 'beginning' of our universe. We pretended to move back and forth around the place where the direction, past, ends. We used this thought-experiment to think about how time started, one of the Big Questions of metaphysics. Today we will consider another such Big Question. 'What is a direction and how many directions can there be?' Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland is a story about a square from a two dimensional universe called Flatland. The square has the most extraordinary encounter with the inhabitants of Lineland, a one-dimensional universe, and Spaceland, a three-dimensional universe. What Abbott was trying to do with this story was educate his contemporaries about multiple dimensions and what they were.
It is worth reading Flatland. It is available on the web at http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/.
From a reading of soft-science-fiction or fantasy, one might come to the conclusion that dimensions are places. Authors of these works often speak of travelling to another dimension. But dimensions are not places and you can not travel to them any more than you can travel to Up-Down. Up and Down are a pair of directions that are oposite. Travel Up for a while and then turn 180 degrees and you will be travelling down. This is true of all dimensions. Imagine you are floating in outerspace, holding your body straight as if you are standing up. Based on the attitude of your body in space you could define 6 directions all at 90 or 180 degrees to all of the other 5. These would be three pairs, Up and Down, Left and Right, Backward and Foreward. Each of these pairs of directions is a dimension and each is at 90 degrees to the other two.
In the flatland story, the inhabitants of one-dimensional Lineland only know forward-backward. They can imagine no other direction. The inhabitants are short line segments and they believe that the points at their ends as their outsides and their lengths as their insides. The King of Lineland says, "I know not what you mean by 'right' and 'left.' But I deny that you saw these things. For how could you see the Line, that is to say the inside, of any Man?" In traveling to Spaceland, the square is utterly confused for he can no more understand Up and Down than the King of Lineland can understand Right and Left. The King of Lineland has no words for Left and Right and the Square has no words for Up or Down. The implication is that we have no words for the fourth dimension of space or the two directions in it.
But the fourth dimension of space is a geometrical concept and, as such, the implications of a fourth dimension for a three dimensional creature will be almost exactly the same as the implications of a third dimension for a two dimensional creature.
A line-segment living in Lineland can't touch any part except the ends of his compatriots, and therefore, believes that his length is inside him and cannot imagine his inside being touched from the side. To the line-segment, the length of a line is inside the line inaccessible to any other object.
A square living in Flatland can't touch any part except the perimeters of his compatriots, and therefore, believes that his area is inside him and connot imagine his inside being touched from above or below. To the square, the area of a shape is inside the shape inaccessible to any other object.
A human living in a three-dimensional universe, can't touch any part of another human other than their surface area (skin), and therefore, believes that his volume (guts) are inside him and cannot imagine his inside being touched from the fourth dimension. But from the fourth dimension every atom of our insides would be visible just as every point along a line's length or on a square's area is visible to us.
The sphere and the square are talking in Flatland:
"Sphere. Tell me, Mr. Mathematician; if a Point moves [forward], and leaves a luminous wake, what name would you give to the wake?
"I. A straight Line.
...
"Sphere. Now conceive the [forward] straight Line moving parallel to itself, [left] and [right], so that every point in it leaves behind it the wake of a straight Line. What name will you give to the Figure thereby formed? We will suppose that it moves through a distance equal to the original straight Line. - What name, I say?
"I. A Square.
...
"Sphere. Now stretch your imagination a little, and conceive a Square in Flatland, moving parallel to itself upward.
"I. What? Foreward?
"Sphere. No, not [foreward]; upward; out of Flatland altogether.
"If it moved [foreward], the [backward] points in the Square would have to move through the positions previously occupied by the [foreward] points. But that is not my meaning.
"I mean that every Point in you - for you are a Square and will serve the purpose of my illustration - every Point in you, that is to say in what you call your inside, is to pass upwards through Space in such a way that no Point shall pass through the position previously occupied by any other Point; but each Point shall describe a straight Line of its own. This is all in accordance with Analogy; surely it must be clear to you."
It is not clear to the square and so the square gets angry. The sphere was, of course, describing a cube. Try not to be like the square as I extend the sphere's logic to a hyper-cube, a four dimensional object which is like a cube but more so. Lets call the two directions of the fourth dimension fourthward and anti-fourthward.
==== Meditation for the Day ====
Do this mediation with a few sheets of paper, a pencil and a light source such as a desk lamp. If you can have some solid cubes (perhaps a Rubic's Cube or some 6-sided dice that might help you also. Allow yourself to draw out your thoughts to the best of your ability, without judging your drawing ability or your imagination. Be gentle with yourself.
Stretch your imagination a little, and conceive a cube moving parallel to itself (that is to positions which are parallel to its current position) fourthward.
Imagine that every point in the cube, that is its entire inside, is to pass forthward through 4-space in such a way that no point shall pass through the position previously occupied by any other point but each point shall describe a straight line of its own. This is all in accordance with Analogy.
Is it clear to you. Of course not. Your mind having been naturally selected to picture things in three dimensions and being practiced in picturing things in three dimensions does not have the ability to picture things in four-dimensions.
So try a different analogy, imagine a cube floating above a piece of paper on a sunny day. What does it's shadow look like? Two squares with the vertices conected and the space in between filled in. See the shape below but with the different parts slightly different shades just for illustration.
[[File:ShadowOfACube.png]]
Going down one dimension, imagine a square floating above a wire on a sunny day. To actually drop a dimension altogether, the square, the wire and the sun must all be in same plane. As the illustration below shows two sides of the square can be taken to caste separate line segment shadows on the wire with the space between filled in.
[[File:ShadowOfASquare.png]]
Going up one dimension, imagine a hypercube floating fourthward from our universe. Further fourthward from the hypercube is a four-dimensional light source (a hyper-Sun). Illuminating a patch of our universe. In the first example, the sun illuminated the surface of the paper; you can imagine that if the paper were large enough (perhaps a few square light years, the sun would really only illuminate a circular patch of the paper. Likewise but plus one dimension, the hyper-Sun would illuminate a spherical patch of our universe; a glowing ball of space illuminated from nowhere that we could see. In the midst of that glowing ball of space would be a region that would not be illuminated; the shadow of the hyper-cube. It would be two cubic regions of space (not squares; cubes) near to each other with the edges of the cubes connected by flat planes and the space between the connections filled in with shadow.
You may not be able to picture the hyper-cube but you can still picture its consequences if you use analogy and imagination.
Gently meditate on this idea. Your mind is limited but by careful analysis you can describe things beyond your imagination.
[[December 25th : The Flow of Time]]
[[December 26th : Patterns Not Atoms]]
[[December 27th : Curved Space]]
[[December 28th : Space-Time-Matter-Energy]]