Year 3: Quarter 3
- Branden Singletary
- Jan 15, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Well, well, well.
Those of you reading this right now have made it through the last few months, unscathed (relatively speaking), and that is certainly something worth celebrating! As I'm sure you're all aware by now, the meaning of time has been skewed and twisted to the point of minimal recognition, but that is the present nature of things.
Though we know not of what the future may hold, the most we're able to do, as individual, autonomous lifeforms, regardless of what point in history we may be in, is to reflect upon what has transpired in the (distant) past, so that we may focus on, repair and fortify the present, and finally, plan to forge and construct something better in order to have a more stable and secure future for oneself and for others.
Now is the time, more than ever, to focus on one's immediate surroundings and work to improve upon them in any way they can. A sturdy foundation for oneself and their environment allows for an even greater structure to be formed in its stead. Control what you are able to control. Keep an eye on those around you, and another on the distant horizon.
For me, personally, many things have occurred, some wonderous, others dismaying. And as is "tradition" of these quarterly updates, I will share my greater reflections of what has happened!
Indeed, it is time to review what has transpired!
Goals of the Previous Quarter
[✓✓✓] Generate additional, miscellaneous scenes from the Cosmos.
What you see here is what has been publicly posted, but in actuality, I have completed all of the scenes from the Cosmos, faaar ahead of schedule. For the next 9 weeks, you will have regularly scheduled content, and I will not have to draw anything else for the next several months, which is something I'm very thankful for. Long story short, I was on fire.
This has occurred for two reasons. A change in living circumstances and attention span. Due to the recent shift in living circumstances, I can't just putter around with Desire illustrations for the next few months, and due to my attention span, as well as my great desire to move on to the next part of The Astral Triptych, I've cut the amount of drawings down from the original total of 108 illustrations to 54. If I maintained the pace I was going prior to this decision, on top of the amount of illustrations I originally wanted to produce, I would be creating illustrations until March or April. On top of wanting to leap out of a window because of how much I dislike drawing anything related to astra now! So, I pushed to create what was 30+ illustrations before the end of January, having made that decision sometime before Christmas.
Why so many drawings? Well, the main goal of the scenes were to have enough to serve as visual aid for the videos I intend to produce for Desire. I thought 108 would be more than enough, and it absolutely would've been. However, I forgot how frustrated I get when I executed the same process of something for too long. I prefer to move from one task to the next and if all of the subsequent tasks are procedurally the same, I'm going to become increasingly miserable! I was ready to scream when I reached 18 - I have no idea how I thought that I was going to be able to get to 108! So, 54 illustrations is the number and is almost certainly going to be more than enough for the videos, especially considering they will be padded with stock videos and images!
Regardless, this important step has rendered Desire near-complete. I've been ready to move on from it for an entire year and it's finally going to be happening within the next few months.
Revelations
Destiny, Fate & Luck
These notions of temporality and happenstance are often referenced when something good or bad happens. Destiny and fate are often seen as synonymous, though, I would say that destiny allows for one's entire progression through time to be ultimately predetermined and generally positive, with them potentially knowing what life will give them, while fate would be one's predetermined end point, and only that - one's "fate" may be positive, negative or some bittersweet mixture. Fate is most often bittersweet, as is most of reality.
What of luck? It is bound to time, much like fate and destiny, but it is observed to be more varied and relative, and thus, far more subjective. And due to its nature of being apart of subjective experience, it can be, and often is, compared between individuals - from the environment that they happened to have been born in, down to their genetic code. These comparisons can be clear cut on a surface-level, one-to-one evaluation, but conflict arises when delving into the minutiae of each individual's circumstances and their individual progression through time.
It is possible to discern one's level of luck, given all of their life circumstances, but doing so seemingly negates the all of the misfortune that happened to that individual on a microlevel when making these judgments. The same is true for those that are generally perceived to be misfortunate, or rather, unlucky - the fortunate events that occurred in their lives are negated by the misfortunate ones when making these judgments.
With this, I ask: Is it reasonable to make such judgments upon one's own convergent circumstances, especially when they have little to no control over the external events that occur within their lives?
Allow me to expand further upon this.
I have personally had the greatest fortune in being born in America, as have many others. I've had great fortune in being raised in such a way that allowed me to flourish as a child and as an individual, where my inherent nature as a conscious, living organism has been nurtured by a surprisingly strong foundation - a loving and caring mother and a number of others willing to help her raise me. Where is the misfortune? It would be found in memories and the reflections upon them as an individual progresses through time.
I was a fatherless child and my mother and I lived on the edge of poverty, even at one point being technically homeless when I was around the age of ten, sometime after my little sister was born. We lived in a hotel for a number of weeks until we moved in with my babysitter that helped take care of me (and she did so when I was between the ages of five and nine). Fast forward a number of months later, we move closer to family several states away, I'm taken out of the private school I was very much enjoying because they were feeding me a bunch of information, and now we're living in what is essentially a ghetto. The apartment was run down, mouse-infested, with roaches claiming dominion over the place. It had a high-probability of being ravaged by tornadoes and tropical storms and had people across the street firing off gunshots at odd hours of the night.
Moving a bit forward, throughout my years in middle and high school (which have all but stripped away my desire to learn anything at all, save for the last two years of high school), there was a repeating cycle of moving into a new apartment, running out of money, and moving somewhere else. Eventually, I realized that's what caused us to move states in the first place, and yet, we were always seemingly lucky enough to have some semblance of normalcy. Though, my mother's steadily declining health over the course of my life has never really filled me with a strong sense of safety. The younger, teenage me couldn't conceive of something unlikely happening. Slightly older, 20 year old me did as the signs of it happening grew increasingly more apparent. 23 year old me, months ago, anticipated it to happen within a number of years and have thus been preparing for it.
(Un)luckily, it happened far earlier than I could've ever anticipated.
Death
My mother died of cardiac arrest, on the morning of November 17th 2020, while we were both at home, on what was assumed to be a normal day, about 10-15 minutes before the in-home nurse would've shown up. It was an incredibly visceral moment of reality. And although I'm able to share far more detail, I will refrain from doing so, as that would certainly derail the entire entry. Reflection upon that moment and the events that led up to it are exceedingly difficult to describe. The mad revelation gained from that reflection and how I personally perceive the progression of events in general - namely, how I tend to semi-accurately discern how events will play out and how I frequently retrace and reflect upon happenstances that have already occurred to draw patterns and connections between them - has led me to momentarily believe that all of the events in my life, leading up to this point, were destined to happen. But this is not true. At least, not in the way I thought it was.
Time allows for the continuous reaction of cause and effect. One thing happened, and the result of it happening was due to a chain reaction of events leading up to that point. The definitive future is not yet ordained - it can only be extrapolated, given enough information. Reflections of the past are merely that - reflections of the past. These connections I've made do not signify "destiny." They create a mythological dramatization of causal events that have already happened, that can only be changed within the realm of my own mind. A great and perhaps precarious means of self-empowerment, but no consequence of any notion of destiny.
The event was what it was: the unravelling of a consciousness that happened far too suddenly and far too quickly before I could hug it and tell it that "I loved her."
Fast forward to mid-December and I find myself in my own living space, with the resources I've been preparing just in case something happened, which were all mostly gained thanks to the onset of the pandemic (which has affected far more people, far more negatively than it has affected me), with plenty of time and boundless motivation to push to build something great.
This brings me back to the question I posited earlier, which was a representation of the internal struggle I faced. "Is it reasonable to make such judgments upon one's own convergent circumstances, especially when they have little to no control over the external events that occur within their lives?" and additionally "Is it fair that I get to have any of this, when I have not personally created any discernible cause to have this outcome?"
Continuity
I answer my internal struggle thusly.
This circumstance is not a matter of fairness, nor an indicator of deserving (or not deserving) anything. One cannot place the subjective concept of fairness or justice upon events that occur to them, while all factors of those events are completely outside of one's own control. One cannot hold causal events responsible for anything. The cosmos - more specifically, time itself - is incapable of acting within the parameters of fairness or justice as it is what enables events within it to be considered "fair and just." Time is without these parameters, being transcendental to them. No conscious being "deserves" anything when considering a series of events that are placed outside of the necessary comparison of other subjective experiences.
No one is at fault here, nor should I feel bad that no one else did not receive the benefits I've received from the misfortune over the course of my own life. Time ran its course and the effect that happened thereafter was the result of that cause.
This conundrum is ultimately placated by the acceptance of one's own present and current position in time and in nature, where ever they may stand. And so long it is used responsibly, there is no harm whatsoever.
However tragic this passing may be on the humane and terrestrial level, death, in the context of the whole of nature, isn't the end, nor is it the beginning of something new, but merely a continuation - a happenstance. "Death" is a fated severance that comes to recycle the individual's fundamental parts back into the natural system that unified it in the first place. No unification of elements within this cosmic system will last indefinitely, as the system itself, much like the conscious beings it is able to form, mirrors the rhythms of a lifeform itself, in that, it shifts and churns in accordance to its inherent laws, unending.
What was impacted within the natural system by the individual remains impacted, allowing for what they have done to persist and evolve, forever, long after their demise. All that they have touched has set in motion a chain of events that we're bound to move in tandem with, whether we are aware of it or not.
It is their action that enables me to be born, to bear witness to a terrible, maddening and beautiful universe. It is their action that enables me to express the depths of the core of my own perception, for you to potentially reflect and ponder upon. It is their action that followed after the actions of their parents, of all of our ancestors, of the rhythms of life and of the fundamental laws of reality.
Luck is a matter of perspective, with that perspective hinging on what the universe has bestowed upon them. An individual is given what they are given and one can only hope they are taught, by others or by nature, to make do with what they have. Should they never learn, they persist through life, angry and fearful of what's to come. A conscious being plagued with spite and fear, among other plagues of the mind ingrained in them by environmental circumstance, is one that is unlucky enough to be destined for a tragic fate - a life of boundless hope and potential, warped into one of doom, anguish and dismay.
It is within us all to recognize what the universe has bestowed upon us, and if we have the capacity to forge something great, given our circumstances, then it is imperative that we utilize our will, bestowed upon us by the universe, in order to achieve it.
All present lives are lucky to be. The fate of a life is, ultimately, to no longer be. As a life is a font of creation, it is, thus, destined to create, where ever it is permitted to do so. And so, we must.
And so, we will.
Goals of the New Quarter
Refine and fully launch The Ascendancy Program.
Create a unified series of videos for Desire.
Make preparations for Part 2 of The Astral Triptych.
'The Ascendancy Program?' A very curious thing, indeed! Using the philosophical framework I've built The Astral Triptych on top of, I'm now going to be using it to help people discern their "cosmic purpose," that is, what they, as individuals, are naturally inclined to do and guide them towards actualizing their creative potential. As it stands for the time being, I'm going to be running trials for it just to iron out the procedures and processes, and once it's done, I'll put a price tag on the service (you'll be able to read more about it here)!
The initial price of it is going to be a one-time payment of $350 and it will steadily rise as time goes on, so now may the best chance of getting in, so long as you don't mind things being a little rough around the edges!
So far, the results of the program have been surprisingly effective in the first session! It's just a matter of piecing together the follow up sessions catered towards those individual people. I highly recommend subscribing to my monthly newsletter if you haven't already, as that's going to be where you'll more than likely find my largest updates, outside of the quarterly entries.
The rest is reasonably self-explanatory and things I've been talking about doing for the past forever, it feels like, but come April, I'm confident I'll those things completed so that the next stage of this project can take flight. It's about time it happened and I'm glad that I'm ready to do it.
To all that have read this entry, all others and continue to engage with my work, especially with the intricacies of it, from now and onwards, you will continue to have my deepest gratitude. Again, no one will never be able to claim to know what the future has in store for all of us, but we can extrapolate what may come based on present circumstances, so long as they persist. Peace and prosperity, friends. Stay attuned to what you wish to will into the world, and should you not know what that may be, seek it out. Cling to that creative power. It's all that we could ever have in this world and it would take immeasurable force in order to rip that away from you.
Until the next one,
April 15th!