Orientation: Actual is zero-dimensional, Expectation is two-dimensional, and Reality is one-dimensional. Each serves a unique role in shaping the subjective felt experience of the present moment.
Actual: Zero-Dimensional Certainty
Actual is a point. It is complete, immutable, and beyond alteration. Once something has happened, it is fixed in the Immutable Past. Zero-dimensionality means there is no “shape” or “extent” to Actual. It is absolute. You cannot stretch it, bend it, or reshape it. Actual simply is.
This zero-dimensional character is why memory cannot reside in Actual. Actual is not a record you can leaf through. It is not a storage medium. It is more like a singular mark on the ledger of existence. Actual provides the numerator of the Reality Equation, but it does not evolve; it is given.
Expectation: Two-Dimensional Morphology
Expectation is complex: it has both a real component (Predictor) and an imaginary component (Ideas). This gives it two dimensions, allowing it to take shape. Morphology—whether blobular, spiky, square, or circular—emerges only here. These shapes are not decorative; they are the architecture of memory and habit.
When Expectation’s shape resists change, we call that habit. Habit can be useful—providing stability, efficiency, and learned skill—or destructive, locking us into cycles of fixation and trauma. Either way, the resistance of shape to deformation is what makes habit measurable in the denominator. Memory, too, belongs here: what persists as pattern over time is inscribed in the geometry of Expectation.
Sheldrake’s idea of morphic resonance finds a natural home here. Memory is not stored like data in a hard drive; it persists as form, as shape in Expectation’s 2-D morphology. A stable hull, a recurring outline, is what carries memory forward.
Reality: One-Dimensional Presence
Reality is a quotient: Actual divided by Expectation. This produces a single scalar, a ratio with no shape of its own. Reality is one-dimensional. It can be plotted as a point along a line segment—sometimes bright, sometimes faint, sometimes recurring at the same spot with different intensity. But it is always NOW. Reality has no past, no future, no memory. It is the living present, the felt experience of the moment.
The temptation is to imagine Reality as a curve across time. But this is a misstep. What looks like a curve is only the sequence of individual 1-D points. Reality never accumulates its own shape. It slides, instant by instant, along its axis of surprise, giving us our immediate conscious experience.
The Interplay
The three dimensions—zero, two, and one—work together in elegant tension:
- Actual (0-D): immutable certainty, outside influence.
- Expectation (2-D): morphology, memory, habit.
- Reality (1-D): the now-slider, pure subjective presence.
Students must learn to resist conflating them. Reality is not Actual; Actual is not Expectation. Memory and habit never appear in Reality; they only shape it indirectly by deforming Expectation. Actual never bends to your will. Reality is what you feel. Expectation is what shapes how you feel it.
Practical Reading of Shapes
By training attention on Expectation’s morphology, one can diagnose the state of memory and habit. A blobular hull signals diversity of ideas, openness, and resilience. A spiky form signals domination by a few ideas, fixation, and vulnerability. Reality at that moment will still be one-dimensional, but its quality—the felt tone—will depend on the shape of Expectation that frames it.
Thus the practice: track the slider of Reality, but interpret its fluctuations in light of Expectation’s morphology. Memory lives in the denominator, habit in its resistance to change, and Reality remains always, only, now.