Michael,

Yet all we experience is friction and tension. There is no up, without down.

The opposite of the absolute is the infinite and we seem to fluctuate somewhere in the middle.

If we remove all physical properties from space, it still has the non-physical properties of infinity and equilibrium. Infinity as nothing to bound it and equilibrium is implicit in Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock is closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. The unmoving void of absolute zero. So space is the absolute and the infinite.

Within space is energy and the forms this energy manifests. Energy radiates to infinity, or as far as possible. While form coalesces to the neutrality of the absolute. Galaxies are the convection cycle created by the feedback generated by this dynamic.

Any description or measurement of energy becomes form, so we cannot grasp its essence directly, but try quantifying it in terms of the forms precipitating out.

Energy is “conserved,” because it is always and only present. It’s changing configuration is what creates the effect of time. While our narrative perception is of the point of the present moving past to future, it is the changing configuration of this energy which turns future to past, potential to actual, to residual. Thus creating the effect of time, so there is no physical past for the energy to recede into, or physical future for it to arrive from.

Processes go past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

In a factory, the product goes start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.

Consciousness goes past to future, while the thoughts generated go future to past. Lives go birth to death, while life goes onto new generations, shedding the old.

The feedback is that the patterns steer the process. Individual actions steer the course of future events. The future is not determined, because it is the computation occurring as the present, that determines the outcome. Whatever laws might do the determining, the input into any event cannot be fully known, prior to that event, as much of it arrives at the speed of light.

Nor can will be free of cause, or it would be equally free of effect and that is the entire premise of will, to decide and have an effect. We have taken some of nature’s selection.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it, aka causality. It is a tapestry being woven of strands pulled from it.

So reality is not so much monist, as it is a dichotomy, of coming together and pulling apart. There is no core, other than the eye of the storm.

Nodes and networks.

Here is an essay on cosmology I posted, that is apparently only visible to those following me, as it was rejected by the original publication I submitted it to;

https://medium.com/@johnbrodixmerrymanjr/the-confessions-of-a-cosmic-heretic-5cd4c044b8ea