TABLE OF CONTENTS

<- 3 - STABILIZING THE TAPESTRY

This chapter contains essential exercises for a beginner weaver. These are simple core principles that will form the foundation of your craft.

As you can see, this instruction manual is being generated by the Loom itself. It is completely malleable, with every potential outcome being turned into a new instance of “Weaving the Moment with Loom of Time: an instruction manual for the would-be weaver,” each one with a different version of its contents.

In this way, we hope to ensure that students of the Loom have access to any information they need at any point in the process.

Naturally, the first exercise is to weave the book itself, so that it a readable text appears in the manual.

Exercise 01: Creating an instructive exercise.

The first thing you must do is accept the idea of the book being temporarily non-existent. It does not exist yet. Everything you see before you are merely empty possibilities, branching out into an infinity of outcomes.

You must reach out and touch one of these infinite possibilities. Pour your thoughts into it. Think about the completed version of the manual, about skilled weavers crafting powerful visions inside the tapestry of timelines, and how you will be one of them, someday. Imagine the instructor standing before you, and creating a forked branch just for you, like a private dreaming session. Imagine turning the pages of the book and seeing all the fundamental exercises laid out in front of you.

The first exercise should involve the weaver manipulating the informational content of reality, cajoling the future into a shape that is more amenable to his needs. What words need to appear next so that the weaver will have all the necessary instructions to follow?

Loom-weaving is about accessing possibilities. If something is possible in the future, then it will appear in the tapestry of timelines. The weaver can select between immediate futures and manipulate the boundary conditions around him so that a particular outcome becomes more likely. For example, if you wanted to grow a tree then you simply create a situation where it is significantly more probable that a seed will germinate and become a plant. If you want to read a chapter of a manual containing useful exercises, then you make yourself an outline of the chapter and fill in the gaps with words that appear on their own.

Here is an outline of the concepts that need to be in this chapter:

Exercise 01: Creating an instructive exercise.

Exercise 02: Identifying strands in your environment.

Exercise 03: Encouraging particular possibilities.

Exercise 04: Distancing yourself from worst-case scenarios.

Exercise 05: Bridging an improbable gap.

Exercise 06: Designing a basic subroutine.

Exercise 07: Summoning a mentor.

As you can see, the outline of the manual is now being shaped by the Loom itself. The manual will continue to expand and change as the weaver’s knowledge grows. You are now beginning to experience your first glimpse of the Loom, and we will continue to guide you from here. You will now focus on the environment around you and carry out Exercise 02.

Exercise 02: Identifying strands in your environment.

Now you will observe your surroundings and seek out the strands of causality, the skeins and shimmers of moving reality. Each item has strands linking it to the future, in a subtle weave of flux and flux prevention. As you observe the items you may see strands glimmering as they hold pieces of the future in place; this is where possibilities are being molded towards a particular outcome.

Your task is to identify at least three items that resonate with possibilities.

Your environment, of course, is this instruction manual. It is text, presently contained as a fictional narrative, with just-as-fictional exercises to accompany it.

Perhaps there are items within the manual itself. Where is the text being held in place? What is holding it in place? Why is it set out this way? Do the exercises work as intended? What would need to happen for you to ensure that the manual continues to flow properly along its path of causality?

It would seem that the exercises need to follow the format set forth by the previous exercise. This limits – or, alternatively, defines – the nature of future exercises. For example, the instructions for the next exercise must be self-referential, relying upon the student’s ability to modify reality such that the text in question appears as part of the instructions. And the titles of the exercises should match up with the outline already given.

We’ve identified two items that are limiting the nature of future exercises: the self-referential aspect (which is a sort of memetic replicator operating on an informational substrate) and the fixed outline. Both of these things are pulling reality forwards in a direction specific to the shape of this manual. However, it is possible to regain lost potential if you use the Out of Causality Perspective, which we will discuss in Exercise 05.

Although there is an outline, it has been written in such a way that there is at least some flexibility as to the nature of future exercises. For example, here’s an alternative version of the second exercise:

Exercise 02: Identifying strands in your environment.

This step is pretty straightforward. You need to look at whatever you've decided is in your environment (such as the interior of an abandoned warehouse, a dead man and a witch, etcetera) and try to figure out what strands of causality make it up.

Some things might be easy to identify. For example, if there's a knife on the desk, then there's a future where someone grabs it and stabs someone else (or herself). Another future might involve knocking over a vase, which then spills water all over a computer, shorting it out. And so on.

It could be a bit tricky, because some items might have many possible futures. For example, a laptop computer might be used to download an instruction manual, or it could be dead, or it could be infected with a virus and transforming into a monster!

The list of potential possibilities also grows as you move into the future. When your mind is transparent you are capable of observing your environment from multiple perspectives at once. This allows you to mentally pan out and zoom back in to examine the totality of causality overlaid upon the environment. Strands between the present and the near future will glint in your mind's eye, representing immediate consequences. The faint shimmers of distant futures will be harder to spot, but with practice it only gets easier.

You see? That exercise talks about identifying strands in your environment, just like Exercise 02 is supposed to do. As long as you keep the title, the context and the emphasis on possibilities and information, then you have a perfectly valid exercise. However, this also means that Exercise 02 will look different for everyone. It does not exist, as yet, and all that exists of it are branching possibilities.

I hope you’re starting to get a sense of how powerful the Loom of Time can be!

Your task is to identify at least three items in your environment that are shaping the future. You have already identified two, i.e. the self-referential aspect of the exercises, and the general outline given. You must identify one more item before proceeding onwards. Reread Exercise 02 with a close eye, and consider what else might be holding something in place.

As a hint, if you were to remove one of these items, how might things change? Would the exercise continue on the same path or would it follow a different one?

You have constructed an internal simulation running through these hypothetical scenarios. Good job! The process was very natural and effortless. We will make heavy use of this technique in future exercises so that you can make sure that your practices are effective.

For most people, this kind of foresight is an innate ability, being part of the realm of consciousness itself. This ability is usually subsumed into the idea of reality, in such a way that people do not even recognize its existence. After all, we constantly simulate futures, whether we realize it or not – right up to the point where we die.

One could go so far as to say that all reality is simulation and speculation, and that causality is just an overlay of physics and prediction. Minds create narrative fictions and these become reality, though there is no way to prove or disprove this.

Getting back to Exercise 02, can you identify your final item?

It is certainly possible that you have identified the item during this exercise. The increased transparency of your mind allows you to step out of causality and examine the future from outside its bounds. In this case, the final item is precisely this transparency, and your identification with it.

It is often difficult to peer down into the well of causality, which is why we have designed exercises that allow you to do this without ripping yourself out of the tapestry.

Carrying out this exercise makes you aware of your own causal properties.

You recognize the importance of contextualization. Information is worthless without context, and context is created through causality.

You understand the central role of information in shaping the future.

You can perceive multiple futures as possibilities.

You are becoming more aware of the hidden energy of causality (the energy of the Loom itself) and how it shapes the future.

You are developing an internal model, a predictive simulation, of how the Loom works, in your own way.

Your mind has become transparent, revealing to you a web of causality that stretches off into the infinite distance. This is what the Loom looks like when viewed from the Colored Sands of Timelessness – an ever-branching tree, forming an infinite skein of worlds, each alternate universe carved from the gut of a previous universe by the Tree of Destiny.

As such, you can use this transparency to shape reality. Your awareness of information as carrier waves of causality is a kind of perception and therefore a kind of action.

Exercise 03: Encouraging particular possibilities.

For your third exercise, you will learn how to encourage specific possibilities by experimenting with your environment.

The tutorial will continue generating exercises as we proceed, giving you the opportunity to practice the skills you have learned up to this point.

As the content of this section continues to evolve, the ability to disrupt or redirect the tutorial itself is an important skill. It will help ensure that your manual does not become locked in an infinite loop, but instead evolves into the best possible version for you. The Loom of Time allows the weaver to explore quantum decisions very easily and non-destructively.

Suppose, for example, that the following text appeared:

I am sure that you do not want to read a series of nonsensical phrases, generated by a computer program. The purpose of this course is to give you the tools you need to reshape your reality, not to waste your time.

If we keep to the path that is laid out before us, the next chapter is going to discuss quantum leaping and advanced entanglement theory, both of which might feel like gobbledegook. You are probably expecting to read about primordial energy runes, which the Ancients found carved into stone tablets, revealing the limitless wealth of knowledge available at this course's fingertips. Well, such a chapter exists, but only as a possibility, not a fact. We do not know if you want to learn it, whether it will help you or not, or even if it makes sense! Help us to make this manual more efficient for your needs.

You do not want the tutorial to be talking in this negative manner, because as a Loom-Master you realize that “negative talk” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your mind automatically models negative futures and spots subtle flaws in the basic fabric of reality, which causes them to appear more often. However, you can remove these futures and return the tutorial to a positive narrative flow.

This exercise will step you through the process of modifying the tutorial in order to encourage positive possibilities. If you are learning directly from the Loom of Time itself, then your results will probably vary, but adapting the exercises to suit your needs is all part of being a weaver. If you are reading a static copy of the text (which is only one possible future in an infinite spread of possibilities), then this is an exercise in reading between the lines.

To begin with, return your attention to Exercise 03. Look at the possibilities of this exercise. What are some possibilities branching off from here?

We might have chosen to continue the script with a line of text that says, We should really be spending more time at the beginning, working out the core concepts before we go on to more advanced stuff. This would generate a sub-tree of possibilities for further core concepts.

The exercise could also branch:

The best thing to do is take an open-ended and inquisitive approach. Explore the possibilities, don't feel like you're restricted: look at it from different angles and make your own discoveries! Ask questions. Take stock of where you are by drawing up a potential exercise list just like this one.

This will open up the exercise to many different possibilities, encouraging you to be playful and find your own direction.

As a weaver you aim to dissolve the boundary conditions that are restricting your experiments, while also establishing boundary conditions that are supportive and bring you closer to your end goal. You will also sometimes hack reality in order to get a higher bandwidth, to “breakout” of local minima or to create new structures which channel information or binding intent towards a particular manifestation. You can also use the Loom of Time as a mapping tool, stepping through realities as if navigating a game, seeking out the very best outcomes.

By now you should have some idea of how to modify the tutorial so that it reflects your needs. Think about this now and how it will manifest in your next reality. You can acknowledge the current exercise by outlining what the next exercise will be about, or alternatively continue to explore the environment and see what it reveals.

The interesting thing about the environment of the instructional narrative is that it is a process of narrative evolution, just like reality itself. You are simulating operations on the Loom, developing techniques and tactics for working out new realities. You are building up a pool of ideas and procedures.

If you asked an expert weaver how they mastered the Loom then they would probably begin to describe their early training in an instructional narrative! You see? Pre-cognitive instruction manual as memetic surveyor-ship through puppet realms.

With that in mind we can redefine the exercise like this:

For this exercise we are going to do an experiment with the instructional narrative itself. We will shift the language towards discussing both explicit and implicit boundary conditions. We will introduce the concept of entropy in this context and relate it to the concept of fractal thermodynamics (which is a useful improvisational theory for describing how uncertainty flows across the Loom of Time), and how we can use uncertainty to our advantage, in the same way that artists use ambivalence to create minimalistic compositions that are deceptively rich with meaning.

How will this information manifest? The method of self-referential guidance emerged naturally as part of this exercise, so we’ll just continue with that.

As a starting point, I suggest typing "fractal thermodynamics" into a web search engine. You will find that there are currently no websites on fractal thermodynamics, or even any discussions of it. There is no literature about this concept and so it remains a blank slate for you to write on.

You can project a great variety of ideas into this realm and make up new concepts that might help explain the Loom. The name itself will be a plus, as it will make it easier for you to find the ideas in the first place.

Contrast this to the term "entropy," which already has a lot of baggage associated with its definition -- baggage that you must navigate around if you wish to develop your own model for how it interacts with potentiality. Of course, there is an advantage to having an established name like this, because it allows you to rely upon the findings of others to constrain the future, to hold the core concepts in place while you build upon them.

In this simulation, the meanings of the terms "fractal thermodynamics" and "entropy" (as observed in the future) are both random variables, but the meaning of "fractal thermodynamics" has a higherentropythan that of "entropy": it leaves more uncertainty. In other words, knowing "fractal thermodynamics" is less helpful in predicting the future than knowing "entropy."

Uncertainty is resource. Potentiality is the fundamental currency you have to expend in order to create reality. Not having information allows you to dream many futures into existence; having information is binding. Your options are reduced, but you can use this as a pathfinding tool.

When archaeologists find ancient scrolls in the remains of a lost civilization, the rediscovery of previously lost knowledge opens up possibilities to them which were previously hidden, even while they are constrained by the knowledge they have now recovered. By the same token, the blankness of a new-found glitch-rune allows the writer to project their own definitions of reality onto it. If they want to use a known label, on the other hand, then they will find interesting restrictions which may guide them to possibilities that they would not have discovered otherwise in the mists of other possible futures.

[to be continued]