Fred,

To be honest about it, I think people have an extremely distorted view of "normal" reality.

Here a couple of essays;

https://medium.com/predict/peeling-the-paradigm-1ceab7e774b0

https://medium.com/@johnbrodixmerrymanjr/the-cliffs-edge-2b382ae2a73

Even our physics tries to model time as the point of the present moving past to future, that we experience as mobile organisms, with the sequential process of perception necessary to navigate, rather than change turning the future to past. Potential>actual>residual.

Which is similar to trying to model the cosmos as geocentric.

The reasons space appears to either contract, or expand, is because synchronization is centripetal and harmonization is centrifugal. Which is the same reason why there are nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems. As well as why society occasionally comes unmoored and spirals into the abyss, the black hole at the center.

Would a spiritual absolute be the essence from which we rise, or an ideal from which we fell? Consider the implications of assuming ideals to be absolute. Like spiraling into the abyss.

Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheism, while monotheism gave us 1500 years of monarchy.

As this article is discussing, money functions as a social contract, but we treat it as a commodity.

I could go on, but I don't seem to have much luck pushing these points. They run counter to too many deeply held beliefs.

As for identity, remember consciousness goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past, so we have to construct our identity out of the myriad options, examples, desires, judgements, etc.

Consciousness exists as that interface between our body and its world.

As I've often told my daughter, it's all educational.