The Soft Crumble Revealing Infinity at the Edges

Companion to Episode 5, Shifting Landscapes - Part Two

(Please note that there are again multiple blogs to support this episode. Follow this link for the blog focusing on The Fragments of the Whole map - which expands the conversation so far beyond the Podcast conversation that it demands an unplanned Part Three episode - coming soon!

The Soft Crumble

I didn’t abandon proof in one dramatic gesture. It eroded — gently, persistently — like sandstone at the shoreline. Little by little, the frameworks I leaned on stopped being granite and started showing themselves as provisional scaffolding. This is the story of how different lenses — Ra’s Distortions, Bashar’s Five Laws, the Hermetic Principles, the Reiki Principles — helped me cross from certainty into practice, and why Infinity Plus One became my shorthand for living with blurred edges.

The Law of One and the Three Distortions

My first touchstone was the Ra Material, where creation is framed not as a neat Big Bang but as a dance of distortions. At the root: three primal bends in the beam of Source — Free Will, Love, and Light. Free Will: the absolute permission to explore in any direction. Love: the binding energy that makes relationship possible. Light: the structuring principle that turns pure potential into form.

At first, I read them as metaphysical abstractions. But as I sat with them, I began to see how they mapped onto my lived days. Free Will wasn’t a cosmic clause — it was my child’s laugh pulling me off a spreadsheet, my own choice to follow a strange nudge rather than the path of least resistance. Love wasn’t sentiment — it was the cohesion that made dialogue possible even in conflict. Light wasn’t photons — it was the skeleton of pattern that kept reappearing in synchronicities, like a theme resurfacing in a novel.

The beauty was in their distortedness. These were not pure absolutes but lenses, each bending the beam differently. To call them distortions was an act of humility: even the most foundational forces are skewed, partial, perspectival. That insight softened me. It meant my maps could be provisional without being meaningless.

What I carried forward: that all philosophy begins with a distortion. There is no view from nowhere. And if Free Will, Love, and Light themselves are distortions, then so is everything I might later frame. This wasn’t discouraging — it was liberating. It meant I could walk into mystery with my models, then shed them when they stiffened, without losing the thread.

Bashar’s Five Laws

If Ra gave me cosmic architecture, Bashar handed me an index card. Five laws, simple enough to scribble on a napkin:

1. You exist.
2. Everything is here and now.
3. The One is All, the All is One.
4. What you put out is what you get back.
5. Everything changes, except the first four.

When I first heard them, I bristled. Surely reality was more complicated? But their very bluntness is what worked on me. They stripped away my excuses. If I exist, then I matter. If everything is here and now, then my focus is the only portal I need. If the All is One, then separation is costume. If what I put out comes back, then honesty isn’t optional. And if everything changes, then clinging is a kind of comedy.

Incorporating them didn’t mean I became a Bashar devotee. It meant they became a checklist in my back pocket. On anxious days, I would ask: am I forgetting I exist? Am I trying to time-travel in my head instead of living here-now? Am I treating others as less than One? Am I sowing what I’d hate to reap? Am I resisting change? Almost always, one of the five was the snag.

What carried forward: simplicity as discipline. The Five Laws didn’t add new metaphysics; they shaved down the noise. They became something like a stop sign on the spirals of over-analysis I was prone to. Proof had once been my shield; the Five Laws taught me that practice — actually living into these plain truths — was harder but more fruitful.

Watch & Explore

• Bashar — The Five Laws

The Hermetic Principles

By the time I reached the Hermetic Principles, I no longer wanted cosmic laws to reassure me; I wanted them to tune me. The Kybalion’s seven principles read like riddles, but I began to hear them as instruments.

• Mentalism — All is Mind.
• Correspondence — As above, so below.
• Vibration — Nothing rests; all moves.
• Polarity — Opposites are degrees of the same.
• Rhythm — The pendulum swings.
• Cause and Effect — Every action has its echo.
• Gender — The dual weave, the dance of currents.

Each became less “law” than tuning fork. I would strike them against lived experience to see which rang true. Polarity helped me stop demonising opposites — my scepticism and my mysticism weren’t enemies, they were the same spectrum. Rhythm explained the seasons of contraction and expansion that had always felt like failures. Cause and Effect showed me why resonance mattered more than intention — the pattern of my inner life echoed outward regardless of what I declared.

What carried forward was the posture of testing. These weren’t commandments carved into stone, they were resonances waiting for a body to strike them against. They reminded me that practice is relational: principles only live when rubbed against the grit of life.

Watch & Explore

• Afterskool/Sarah Elkhaldy — Hermetic Principles explained.

Toward “Infinity Plus One”

Together, along with my own contemplations, these frameworks nudged me out of the need for proof. Ra showed me that even the roots are distortions. Bashar showed me that truth can be plain without being trite. Hermetics showed me that “laws” can be lived as music rather than memorised as doctrine.

And then a simple number threaded the personal into the cosmic. 43 had followed me since birth (7:43 on the tag), reappearing for years in clocks, inbox tallies, stray pennies, battery levels — until one ordinary shower turned into a koan. I asked, “Why that number?” and a childlike flash arrived: 42 (Douglas Adams), the playground dare “infinity plus one”, and a felt click as the air went dense. I knew it was an Easter egg I’d left myself: not proof, but permission. From then on, Infinity Plus One became my shorthand for the Infinite as a particular lens — the Whole expressing through a Fragment without losing either. You are the Infinite, and you are the aperture; the colour of your life is the “+1.”

The equation is simple: Infinite Field x this unrepeatable lens = lived meaning.

Infinite Timelines → Intimate Infinity

Around this time, the many-worlds idea stopped being a physics metaphor and started becoming personal. If every fiction exists somewhere, then why not this fiction — my life, my choices, my absurd little synchronicities? The infinite wasn’t a faraway cosmos; it was already leaning in close.

This real/unreal paradox was liberating. Every experience is both utterly valid and utterly provisional — equally real, equally unreal. We are each a bubble universe, travelling alone, together. Every consciousness is a portal into a world no one else can fully step into. Which means our strangeness should never be ridiculed — it should be studied, celebrated, and shared. We spend so much energy searching for aliens out there, but the deeper truth is that we are the aliens to each other.

That recognition flips curiosity on its head. Wow! You see music as colours? Tell me more! Wow! You have visions of other realities? Tell me more! Each unique perception rubs up against the limits of my own senses, showing me where my aperture is still narrow. In that way, the Unknown becomes Knowable through one another. We can’t individually explore dimensions that our biology keeps hidden — but collectively, as a larger organism, we can map more exotic realms by paying attention to the ones parked there. What’s peripheral for me might be central for you, and together we extend the frontier of the Known.

And here’s the deeper layer, as I explored in the episode: if every timeline exists, then all is already complete. Every possible story has been told somewhere, every potential has been walked. At first that might sound like a dead end — if it’s all already out there, why bother? But the truth is gentler, and far more playful.

Infinity is not a closed book; it is an endless palette. Imagine the keys of a piano without limit, stretching in both directions forever. Every note exists, yes — but the miracle is that each of us gets to choose which keys to strike, and how to combine them, moment by moment. The song has never been played this way before. The colours have never been mixed in quite this proportion. Infinity is already complete, and yet it keeps making itself new through us.

That’s why novelty never runs out. Each encounter, each choice, each glance across a room is a fresh arrangement of the infinite notes. This is why we play eternally: because the combinations are inexhaustible, and because the act of playing is the point. It isn’t about discovering the final chord or the perfect painting. It’s about tasting what arises when this shade brushes that one, when this note harmonises with another.

And so each of us is not just valid, but necessary. Without your note, the chord is incomplete. Without your colour, the canvas lacks a hue. Infinity Plus One is simply this: the Infinite expressed through the unrepeatable texture of you.

No one else will ever taste strawberry as I did that summer afternoon: in a garden perfumed by roses, bees bumbling past, my children’s overstimulated laughter vibrating through me, still carrying the ache of a recent scapegoating, and yet suddenly overwhelmed with love for the entire mad mess of it all. That moment was an orchestration of Infinite keys struck together, a colour-mix never to be repeated. An intimate infinity.

And that’s why every life is more than valid — it’s perfect. Not because it’s flawless, but because its very flaws define it. The All could not be the All if even one experience was missing. Each fragment, each bubble, is essential. Which means we are both profoundly special and utterly ordinary. Our ordinariness is the very thing that makes us special, because we all carry that spark. The miracle is not that some experiences are worth more, but that all experiences — yours, mine, even the messy, painful ones — are woven into the infinite pattern.

Synchronicity: Mirrors in Conversation

Once proof softened, synchronicity stopped auditioning as “evidence” and began showing up as conversation. Not a law to recite, not a superstition to obey — a living back-and-forth between a Fragment and the Whole. In the mirror model, the world isn’t telling you what to believe; it’s showing you where you are, and asking if you’d like to tune.

A mirror doesn’t flatter or accuse — it reflects. Read this as relationship, not blame. What appears “out there” often carries the fragrance of what’s stirring “in here”: a question you’ve half-formed, a boundary you’ve avoided, a permission you’re ready to grant. The point isn’t to force meaning into every coincidence; it’s to notice when reality leans in and answers the thing you actually asked.

You’ll know the difference because of the felt quality. Sometimes the air seems to thicken; the scene gains texture; time narrows to a bead. Often it’s gentler — a number, a line overheard, a name repeating across unrelated contexts — but the tone is the same: light, precise, slightly amused. Synchronicity has a humour to it. It winks more than it lectures.

In this frame, signs are permission, not proof. The All is not trying to win an argument; it’s inviting co-authorship. You are free to meet or ignore the invitation. Your response — the meaning you choose, the step you take — becomes the next line in the dialogue. That’s the loop: attention → response → echo → refinement.

Infinity Plus One lives here as a private dialect. The Infinite speaks through a vocabulary tailored to the lens — your “+1.” What rings for me may do nothing for you; don’t borrow another’s omens and call them your own. Let your lexicon emerge from lived resonance: the textures that land clean, the motifs that keep returning with kindness and precision.

This isn’t an excuse to see patterns everywhere. Sometimes noise is just noise. The mirror shows what you bring to it — projections included. Humility helps: if you have to strain to make it fit, it probably doesn’t. When it’s real, it lands softly and requires less explaining, not more.

Held this way, other people’s strangeness becomes sacred data. We are, in a sense, aliens to one another — bubble universes travelling alone, together. Treat their anomalies as maps to regions you don’t yet perceive. Curiosity widens the collective aperture; what is peripheral for one of us can be central for another, and together we chart a richer sky.

The stance, then, is light and participatory: listen, answer simply, keep moving. Say thank you. Adjust your course a degree. Let it stay playful. Coherence grows not from hoarding signs but from walking honestly while they arise. As the masks fall away, the conversation clarifies — the chord changes, new notes appear — and the mirror keeps doing what mirrors do: reflecting you, as the Whole, right here.

The Reiki Principles — From Restraint to Resonance

The last framework I want to add here never made it into the episode — but it deserves its place in the story of how my need for proof gave way to practice. Through my try-everything-on-for-size exploration phase synchronicity took with to my Reiki Master, Melissa Senkel, who taught me the five simple principles of Reiki. They were always framed “Just for today,” like a permission slip to start small:

1. Just for today I will not worry.
2. Just for today I will not get angry.
3. Just for today I do my work honestly.
4. Just for today I will live in the attitude of gratitude.
5. Just for today I will be kind to myself and every living thing.

At the time, I heard them as guardrails — ways to soften my reactivity and keep me in the stream of kindness. They felt gentle, almost parental. But months later, after the Fragments of the Whole map arrived, I found myself rewriting them in my own hand, reshaping them into principles that weren’t just about restraint, but about resonance.

My reinterpretation looks like this:

1. I need not worry, because I am surrounded by myself and mirrors of myself.
   On the deepest level I am one with everything, and my external world is a reflection of my inner. If I am not afraid of my own reflection, then what is there to fear?
   
   
2. I am true to myself in each moment.
   That means no walking around with a tranquil face through gritted teeth. If I’m annoyed, I let myself be annoyed — not as a failing, but as a signal. I allow myself to want solitude after a draining day, even if my children still want to play. Sometimes voices must rise to be heard, and that too can be love. Authenticity, not performance, is what serves them best.
   
   
3. I consciously follow my flow.
   When it’s time for novelty and play, I walk there. When it’s time for work, for channelling, I give it my whole attention. And perhaps most importantly, but most honestly, the area I regularly still fall short in, when it’s time to stop, I stop. Rest is not laziness — it’s listening.
   
   
4. I live with the Attitude of Gratitude.
   This one hasn’t changed, gratitude just becomes my default posture. Whatever the weather, I am The Joyful Explorer.
   
   
5. I honour the Whole in every Fragment.
   This ties directly into the map that I presented in this episode. Infinity Plus One isn’t just a cosmic joke — it’s a daily practice of seeing myself and others as reflections of the All. If my children are mirrors, then their frustrations reveal my pinch points; if my world is a mirror, then the fragments invite me to remember the Whole.

Authenticity as The Path to Enlightenment

What I love about the Reiki Principles, especially in this updated form, is how they feel lived. They aren’t distant metaphysics; they’re rhythms I can actually walk. They don’t ask me to suppress anything — not anger, not fatigue, not joy — but to hold it all as signal. They remind me that authenticity itself is a practice of alignment.

Authenticity is not decoration — it is the work. When I give myself permission to feel what I actually feel, I stop fighting with shadows. Suppression only buries energy; it doesn’t dissolve it. Anger pushed down becomes bitterness. Sadness ignored becomes numbness. Desire denied becomes distortion. But when I let the raw signal rise — even when it’s messy, even when it’s inconvenient — it clears the channel. Shadow brought into light is no longer a blockage; it becomes part of the current.

This clearing is what coherence really means. Coherence isn’t about perfect calm, it’s about being undivided. A life of masks splits us: the smiling mask, the tranquil mask, the spiritual mask. Each one drains energy to maintain. But since my “Strange, but Normal” moment in my awakening, when I first began to drop those masks — I found something unexpected: not chaos, but flow. The looser, more playful, more astonishing experiences only began after I allowed myself to be entirely unfiltered. Channelling, which had felt like an unreachable gift for others, became simply a natural extension of honesty. It was never about gaining access to something new — it was about removing the debris between myself and the part of me I now call my HyperSelf.

Belief shapes reality, but not in the simplistic “wish for it and it appears” sense. Belief decides what we allow ourselves to see. If I believe anger is a failure, I will not let myself notice its wisdom. If I believe synchronicity is coincidence, I will not hear the orchestration behind it. Authenticity reopens those doors. It widens the aperture of perception by refusing to censor what arises. The more I hold my actual experience — shadow and all — the more reality reveals its depth.

This is why authenticity is not only healing but enlightening. It is the path to self-awareness because it integrates what we’ve split off. Trauma, catalysts, moments of rupture — they aren’t detours but invitations to see the parts of ourselves we’ve exiled. When integrated, they stop distorting the signal and instead strengthen the coherence of the whole. And it’s in that coherence that the infinite flows most easily. Authenticity, then, is not just a personal virtue — it’s the threshold to enlightenment, the moment where being ourselves is indistinguishable from being the All.

Practices — easy, honest, do-today

Here are seven simple practices that cover the arc of this piece — from proof → practice, mirrors → conversation, and Infinity Plus One lived in the everyday. Keep them light; they work best as gentle repetitions, not heroics.

1) 60-second Signal Check

Use when: something “weird” lands (a number, phrase, nudge).
How:

• Breathe once. Ask: “Does this land clean, or am I forcing it?”
• Label what’s present: body / story / choice.
• If clean: take a one-degree step (send the note, change the route). If forced: smile, let it go.
  Trains: permission-not-proof; Hermetic Cause & Effect with humility.
  
  

2) Mirror Note (3 lines, max)

Use when: you want to treat reality as dialogue, not evidence.
How (journal or phone):

1. Question I’m holding: …
2. What showed up: …
3. What I’ll try next (tiny): …
   Trains: Ra’s Free Will (you ask), Love (you relate), Light (you pattern). Keeps synchronicity playful and honest.
   
   

3) Polarity Dial (5% shift)

Use when: you’re stuck in either/or thinking.
How:

• Name the pair (e.g., sceptical ↔ mystical).
• Imagine a dial from 0–100. Move it 5% toward the other pole for one action today.
• Notice what changes (or doesn’t).
  Trains: Hermetic Polarity and Rhythm without overcorrecting.
  
  

4) Five-Laws Reset (1 minute)

Use when: you’re spiralling in thought.
How: Read or say:

1) I exist. 2) Here-and-now. 3) All is One. 4) What I put out returns. 5) Everything changes. Then ask: “What’s the cleanest next step available here-now?” Do that, and only that.
Trains: simplicity over performance; momentum over image.

5) Flow Triptych — Play / Work / Stop

Use when: energy feels noisy or scattered.
How:

• Choose one mode for the next block: Play (novelty), Work (focused channel), or Stop (rest/reflect).
• Set a timer (20–45 mins).
• Honour the mode fully; then switch or end.
  Trains: authenticity with energy; Ra’s distortions as lived posture (will, care, clarity).
  
  

6) Aperture Minute (Infinity Plus One)

Use when: you want coherence before action or channelling.
How:

• One breath: “I am the lens; let the Whole look through me.”
• Sense the note/colour that wants to play now (one word is enough).
• Let the next action express that tone.
  Trains: lived meaning as Infinite Field × this unrepeatable lens.
  
  

7) Coherence Micro-Boundary

Use when: resentment or performative calm appears.
How:

• One honest sentence (no drama): “I’m at capacity; I need ten minutes.”
• One tiny repair if needed later (text, hug, acknowledgement).
• Return to centre without self-attack.
  Trains: authenticity as integration; reduces “mask tax” so the channel stays clear.

Keep these tiny. Repetition > intensity. If you only do one today, do #1 Signal Check — it quietly teaches all the others.

Glossary of Terms – The Soft Crumble Edition

Aperture (Lens) — The “opening” through which the Infinite looks as you; attention + honesty determine how much light passes.

Authenticity — Feeling what’s true as it arises (no masks), integrating shadow so the channel stays clear; coherence in practice.

“Authority of Presence” — Letting lived clarity (not credentials) set the tone; proof gives way to practice.

Bashar’s Five Laws — A pocket reset: you exist; here/now; All is One; reflection; everything changes. A discipline of simplicity.

Bubble Universe — Each person as a self-contained world: travelling alone, together; treat others’ strangeness as sacred data.

Channelling (Intuitive) — Clean, felt knowing arriving through (not from) you; increases as masks drop (“Strange, but Normal”).

Coherence — Undividedness. Fewer splits between inner state and outer act; the signal grows stronger, effort falls.

Collective Aperture — The group’s shared “opening”; what’s peripheral for one can be central for another; together we map more.

Conversation with the All — Synchronicity framed as a two-way exchange: attention → response → echo → refinement.

Correspondence (Hermetic) — “As above, so below”: patterns rhyme across scales; useful for reading mirrors without blame.

Distortions (The Three) — Ra’s root lenses: Free Will (permission), Love (relational glue), Light (pattern/structure).

Flow Triptych: Play / Work / Stop — Simple mode selector to keep energy honest: novelty, focus, rest.

Fragment (and Whole) — You are a unique facet (Fragment) of the Infinite (Whole); both are true at once.

Free Will, Love, Light — See Distortions (The Three).

Gender (Hermetic) — Interweaving currents (receptive/active) in all processes; not about identity, about function.

Hermetic Principles — Seven tuning forks (Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause & Effect, Gender) used as practice, not dogma.

HyperSelf — The “you-but-wider” balcony perspective that comes online as coherence grows; source of cleaner downloads.

Infinity Plus One — The Infinite expressing as a specific lens (you). Infinite Field × this unrepeatable aperture = lived meaning.

Infinite Timelines → Intimate Infinity — Many-worlds made personal: novelty is endless because combinations are.

Mentalism (Hermetic) — Consciousness as substrate; mind shapes experience; beware projection.

Mirror Model — The world as reflection: not blame, a reading. Shows where you are; invites a one-degree tune.

Mimicry Fields — Performing aliveness instead of living it; image over contact; common at the Rupture threshold.

Permission (not Proof) — The stance that lets synchronicity guide without turning it into dogma or debate.

Polarity (Hermetic) — Opposites as degrees of one thing; use the Polarity Dial to move 5% toward balance.

Polarity Dial — A tiny, practical slider to soften either/or; a small move often unsticks the whole.

Reiki Principles (Updated) — Paul’s lived reframe: no worry; truth in the moment; follow flow; gratitude; honour Whole in every Fragment.

Resonance Check / Signal Hygiene — Quick honesty tests: does this land clean? If you must strain, let it go.

Rhythm (Hermetic) — Inhale/exhale of life; contraction is not failure, it’s weather; plan for seasons.

Signal Check (60-second) — Body / story / choice; permission to act one degree or release the noise.

Strange, but Normal — Paul’s mask-drop threshold: life stays ordinary while the channel opens.

Synchronicity — A playful, precise reply from the field; a mirror-conversation, not evidence for debate.

Vibration (Hermetic) — Everything moves; states shift; don’t over-identify with any single mood.

“43” (Signature) — Paul’s private lexicon motif that seeded Infinity Plus One; a permission-marker, not a proof.

(Please note that there are again multiple blogs to support this episode. Follow this link for the blog focusing on The Fragments of the Whole map - which expands the conversation so far beyond the Podcast conversation that it demands an unplanned Part Three episode - coming soon!