The Round World — Folding
Bending (something flexible and relatively flat) over on itself so that one part of it covers another
Today we will talk about folds. The purpose of folding is to minimize the surface of a thin flat object for better storage or transportation. Just like a tablecloth, all things that get folded will display distinguishable characteristics: grooves, lack of wear, wrinkles.
We fold memories in our minds for many reasons, to free up space, to obscure things we don’t need all the time, to conceal unpleasant memories. We wrap this knowledge with great care, mark it with the contents, minimize its conscious footprint to just that marker so we can retrieve it at will, and submerge the rest of the packet into long-term storage, deep beneath our thoughts. There is an entire world of these mental artifacts under there, all labeled, a strange collection of treasure and garbage.
Every now and then we accidentally stumble upon one of these labels and the respective fold suddenly unfurls, spilling its guts into its surroundings and disrupting current activities.
Memory folds are neither good nor bad, you fold foreign languages you learned but no longer use in the same way you do painful memories. The funny thing about folded information is that it stays in mint shape, no matter how much time passes. That’s why old people can recite pages of poetry they learned when they were twelve, and why you can still remember the name of a passing acquaintance from a long time ago. Ironically, if you want something preserved forever, you label it and you forget it.
This activity defeats its own purpose; you want to be able to retrieve the contents on demand, so you have to make your label easily recognizable, but keeping it a place of prominence in your conscious state would trigger it to spill its contents all the time. What can you do about that?
You label it with something other than a conscious thought.
I know that sounds like an impossible thing to do, but bear with me. Imagine your mind as a canvas filled with text you can read, and other graphics, illuminations, illegible scribbles. Your mind doesn’t pay attention to any of those while it is reading what it can read. It will glance over the strange drawing or script, ignore it and keep going, it is just part of its context, like birds in the trees when you walk, or smoke coming out of the chimney of a house on the horizon. If properly placed, these signs will jump at you almost on their own, and connect with the text around them in ways that make sense, that remind you what the sign meant and what is underneath.
[The manuscript shows moisture damage here. The water stain did not infiltrate the writing, which tells us that the wet medium fully dried before the text was written.
The stain darkened significantly during the long reaction time between the water and the paper. This process seems to continue in the present and is, sadly, irreversible.
We were fortunate to retrieve the text in the manuscript’s darkened portions before it became illegible, but as of this time some parts of it are already too dark to read.
The research team debated what would be the best approach — to allow the manuscript to continue this natural process of discoloration, which will be in keeping with its authenticity, or to attempt a chemical treatment that preserves the visibility of the text.
Unfortunately, none of the titration tests pointed to any effective methods of preservation, and although the team never stopped trying to find a working solution, by the time they find it it will probably be too late.
We also tried enhancing the contrast of the text, but the acids damaged the paper, so we had to stop.
We documented the manuscript extensively, so we can reference all of its details if we can not salvage the original text.]
This technique can reach extraordinary levels of precision and sophistication.
You can mark your imaginary boxes to open by date, by feeling, by reaching a certain level of knowledge, by association with a specific event, by seeing a certain person, with an accuracy that still gives me the shivers.
The strangeness of all of this is that you are not even aware you are unpacking a fold, it just jumps at you, like your normal working memory, and you can only tell it is not by the telltale signs of folds — grooves, lack of wear and the occasional wrinkle.
Grooves are deep-seated feelings you can’t explain, and that show up again and again, despite your better judgment. Strange familiarity with places and people, knowing what door to pick in a stranger’s house, that sort of thing.
Grooves are sometimes so deep they make you question your sanity, because there is no reason a rational person would espouse that specific belief.
Before we go deeper into this, remember what the goal of these teaching is: to help you understand the mechanisms that govern your mind, so you can use them to your advantage.
If you do not understand that folds and all their components are nothing more than moving parts in the mechanisms of your thought, you will confuse them with providential guidance or with some higher calling.
Folds are morally neutral mental entities, storage containers, nothing more.
Lack of wear is the most obvious sign that points out to an unpacked fold. Whenever you have feelings like “why am I thinking this” or “why is this so important to me”, you are looking at an unpacked fold. With any luck, you would have thought to pack the instructions too.
The wrinkles are not always there, they only happen when you have to cram too much information in too small a space. When you do, it makes the whole concept you unraveled feel fuzzy, logically inconsistent, even if it kind of makes sense as a whole. It has details and corners you can’t see, while you are staring straight at them, and it generates a sense of awkwardness and reluctance to examine it further.
[We pause to mention that the page is loaded with symbols. Some are recognizable images, some are weird scripts, placed in odd places in the middle of the text.
We understand that this blended map exemplifies the technique described above, but since the references were meant for a specific person, the pupil with whom the master is sharing his knowledge, it would be impracticable for any of us to use it in her absence.]
I will say this again. Folds are morally neutral. Don’t assign them value because they seem to jump at you out of thin air.
Since we pack most of the folds unconsciously and label them randomly (imagine labeling moving boxes with numbers instead of “pots”, “books”, “quills”) they are often more of a hindrance than a tool, and they clutter the space beneath your thoughts with useless and potentially harmful artifacts.
It is good practice to air out the boxes occasionally, to remember what’s inside. There is a high likelihood that you folded them unconsciously, and many of them are not worth keeping.
How do you get rid of them? It usually happens all by itself when you question why you need to remember a certain thing.
We will go through a very rudimentary technique for memory folding.
Let’s say you want to keep track of your current priorities and revisit them ten years from now.
Ponder them carefully and as you are thinking about them, also think about something that will call your attention to them, but that you are not likely to encounter until the ten years have passed.
You can bury your reference in lots of different ways, none of which involve placing an object that symbolizes your thought process in a sealed box that reads “open in ten years”. You can make your reference, for instance, the first fruit of a tree that needs ten years to mature, or a major eclipse with a precise date. These things are easy to put out of your mind, but you will not miss them when they occur.
I like to call these references life markers. If you pay attention, you will see a lot of them in your life, and they will trigger an immediate sense of recognition.
Not all of them are of your own making, those who are like me, we sometimes like to meddle, if we see fit, but we won’t go into that now.
[What follows is a series of etchings describing the phases of the moon, rendered in watercolor and ink. The moon is full and embellished with a garland of roses. The rose petals are light blue, while the moon is golden yellow; this removes any doubt that the blue color was intentional. The drawing doesn’t seem to have any association with the text.]
What things can you do with folds? That’s where the sophisticated process begins. You can fold an entire language and only have it come out when you are exposed to its words. You can remember the normal rhythms of your heart every time it goes aflutter. You can store happiness in a hand gesture.
[The manuscript cuts off abruptly and continues on a different page which was placed out of sequence to improve the clarity of the document.
According to handwriting analysis, many years passed between its two parts, with the second half of the script looking a lot more fluid and even, which betrays a more experienced hand.]
Upon learning the techniques described in these lessons, students display a tendency to use them extensively and in combination, just to prove what they can do.
This is ill advised and will probably achieve the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish.
When you are a master cook, for instance, you know how to choose the ingredients and the tools appropriate for the recipe. Part of the mastery of the mind is knowing which tools to use for what purpose, and in what quantity. Never use more than two, three techniques at a time, even after you have reached the top of your skill, which will take many years. You cannot keep simultaneous control over all of them and they will backfire.
How do you know if a technique was successful? Whatever you were trying to accomplish worked. That’s all.
What are the best techniques for folding emotions?
Emotions are a little more elusive than thoughts, but a lot more powerful.
It is rare that one can find a container strong enough to contain an emotion in its entirety, and it can be a dangerous endeavor to attempt such a thing.
When dealing with emotions, you are better off holding them at the level of conscious thought. Besides, whatever emotion you want to keep out of sight is probably not a good one, and it is not healthy to have it lurking in the dark.
What is the difference between an emotion and a mental state?
Emotions are time specific, they fluctuate and relate to a person or event.
Mental states are permanent, stable and independent of circumstances.
You are asking whether the latter can make good candidates for folding? Sure, if you can find utility in doing so.
Can you have embedded folds?
I hesitate to answer this question. Yes, you can.
[The research team experienced a strange optical illusion during the reading of this portion of the manuscript.
The words on the page seem to vibrate, which makes them barely readable, and a bizarre picture emerges suddenly from underneath the text, showing what looks like a complex spiral tessellation, constantly in motion.
What is even more unusual is that every person describes this phenomenon using the same words, which are “That’s elaborate!”
The pattern, if there is such a thing, since all spectroscopic analysis of the manuscript determined there is only one thing inscribed on the paper, the writing itself, consists of flowers of variable scale drawn in a single line which changes hues so that no two adjacent flowers are the same color.
Independent testimonies from all the members of the team turned up the same description of the image, and however unexplainable this occurrence may be, we felt it was our duty to document it.
The flower pattern displays only temporarily, we individually timed it and found that the optical illusion persists for about fourteen minutes.]
You are asking me to elaborate on this laconic response.
The problem with embedded folding is that you have to place a label inside a map which, if you’ve done your work properly, should look unfamiliar to you.
This makes it a lot harder to find a signifier inside a more or less amorphous set. Assuming that you do, and you unfold the second half of your compressed treasure, now you have two overlapping maps you haven’t seen before. I do not see the usefulness of such an endeavor.
I assume a highly skilled person can do it, during extreme circumstances that would warrant it.
[Based on the questions and comments we concluded the manuscript documents only a portion of a much more in-depth series of oral teachings.
We would have liked to learn more about the way the master trained his students in the use of these techniques, in which the latter seem to have become proficient, judging by their questions. It would have been useful to learn the limitations of this process, which seems to increase mental capacity by orders of magnitude. If the process worked, we can’t help but wonder what happened to the students, and if there are any documented uses of their skills.
We can’t exclude the possibility that the master was one of several teachers who formed a school, one whose other teachings were sadly lost.]
