Here are some Toltec aphorisms pertaining to the dream written up this morning and you can see for yourself if they have a wider applicability.
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Here are some Toltec aphorisms pertaining to the dream written up this morning and you can see for yourself if they have a wider applicability.
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Here is last night’s dream and my subsequent initial response to it. It was from before 3 AM.
The dream starts with me outside a car rental forecourt in southern England. Terry appears there on the opposite side of the road. He is, as he was wont, emanating aggression and anger in my direction. He saw me as the one he had to destroy. He is mouthing a foul invective about me and at me. He trying to catch the ears of anyone who will listen, any passersby. He is trying to talk me down and big himself up, as he did in real life. He imagines that he was responsible for the inventions and even claims this. He is full of anger, resentment and is not having a pleasant time of it. He is experiencing and emanating a dark cloying malevolence.
I cross the road and stand very calmy in front of him an arm’s length away. He continues to emit vitriolic anger, hard-done by vibes, fear and clinging anger. They wash over me and he is disconcerted that I remain unaffected.
In the dream I know that I am witnessing an aspect of the evil which was in him. I know that this is a part of his death dance. The restless and unsatisfied, the angry and the bilious as he is slowly taken out of life kicking, sulking and most of all blaming, blaming, blaming. He blames me, others and the entire world because things did not go entirely how he wanted according to his whim. His death is very uncomfortable. As he passes out from this world, I see an evil entity leave and reluctantly let go of the dying form. It is a shimmer of dark malevolent tendrils, evil, now looking for a host.
I see next a young man of in-between “gender” in a hotel room. He has blonde hair and an androgenous look. He is psychiatrically unwell and contemplating suicide. I see the tendrils enter the man and he briefly wakes up coughing and spluttering as the entity tries to enter. I assist him in waking and forbidding the entity. The man is writhing around in struggle with difficulty gasping breath. I command him to wake up which he does and immediately reaches over to turn on the hotel room lights. He is dripping in sweat and very disoriented.
I awake and note that I too am disoriented.
I instinctively start Guru Rinpoche and Vajrapāṇi tantric practice for protection. I chant silently and invoke and create a full-blown Vajrapāṇi visualisation of considerable size which has persisted in consciousness afterwards and is still resident as I type. I make other tantric adjustments before falling off to sleep.
Maybe it is time for me to fully verbalize events from back then.
As a part of my personal end of year review, I like to review. One of the questions is, “does this matter?” “Is what I am doing here of any significance whatsoever?”
The only objective criteria I have for readership is supplied by WordPress stats. It tells me that there are around 400,000 words here spread among 575 posts over the last year or so. There have been a total of ~900 visitors. These come from France {Normandy and Paris region}, UK, USA. Spain. Germany, Canada and India. {In decreasing order of number of visitors.} The views are from diverse towns which might be real or arise from a floating IP used by many ISPs. That works out at about 450 words per visitor. The average post gets a few {literally} views.
Clearly my significance as a global influencer knows no bounds!!
On the basis of this it does not matter what I write because “nobody” is listening. Whatever idea or notion I come up with will sink without a trace in the petabyte torrents of this raging internet thingy. There is no point in me developing any of my ideas, just get them out of my head and move swiftly on. I can sit here dreaming away and the world at large goes about its business unperturbed.
We live in a surveillance society. There is an outside chance that some of my key words might pop up in an intelligence search. But I am not connected to any group. I am pacifist and hermit like. I am not a civil disorder problem. I don’t agree with Trump or Netanyahu. They are powerful men and face disagreement from others way more important than me. I doubt the NSA and MI6 are quaking in their bunkers.
To an extent I have drawn what meaning I can from the dream catalogue herein. I know how I interpret them and in what context. I have a number of theories about what they mean individually and collectively. I have clarity of sorts. One that does not need to be verbalised. I understand the wider potential implications. My understanding points at large tracts of unresolved karma burdening others. I cannot foresee them addressing this.
If I want to change things, then one do-able is to wipe the blog. I will still catalogue incoming dreams (privately) but I will create a space which might be filled with something, else. Sometimes a tiny change can be causative.
The growing trend is that each blog I write gets fewer and fewer views. Which says something.
I reckon that a hip replacement blog with what passes for my sense of humour would have a much larger readership…This could propel me into internet stardom. I could become a legend on my disability enabled throne hand crafted by Armitage Shanks.
Maybe I’ll sleep on it…
This dream from between 4 and 7 AM this morning. It continues the theme of very diverse subject dreams and seems also out-of-the-blue.
The dream opens is a very brightly lit portacabin type building. The light is stark and there is a hum of fluorescent lighting that is getting old and resonating. The room is minimally furnished and it is an office, a site office. In the centre of the room is Sarah C much as she was three decades ago only slightly aged. She is wearing blue jeans and a cream-white jersey. She is very pleased to see me. She is stressed and under pressure, the load is heavy for her. She feels overwhelmed and downtrodden.
She walks over to me and wants me to put my hand down the front of her jeans. These are ill-fitting and too loose. Like everyone else she is undernourished. I put my hand down the front of her jeans and cannot discern any genitalia; she is like a plastic doll though warm to the touch. I withdraw my hand. She wants me to work with her, to have a relationship with her and to help her with the business. There is a knowing that she might grow genitalia in the future if the relationship works out more. There is a knowing that human reproductivity has failed. She knows that I can help her. It is her business and she is for now in charge and trying to do her best.
I return the next morning just before dawn on a winter morning. I am dressed in heavy clothes and I continue to examine the yard. There is no law and order. Government has broken down. There is a distinct post-apocalyptic sense. I look through the yard, it is a recycling centre. Sarah and her team have collected various objects according to type and are busy trying to arrange proper recycling of them. There are stacks of computers and keyboards, piles of furniture, piles of clothes, light bulbs, metal drums, car parts and bottles. There are larger items of metal. I go into the portacabin and there is a tall woman there with unkept hair and fingerless gloves. She is a part of the collective. She has a Scandinavian accent to her English and asks me to sign a “contract” which I do. We both know that there in no longer anyone to enforce the contract but go through the civilities anyway. I will work with them. She takes me on a tour of the yard as the sun struggles to pierce the gloom. She shows me the white plastic five gallon volume drums for liquids. These are very valuable and bring a good price. I comment that there are no plastic supermarket bags anymore, thank God. We both chuckle. In a part of the yard there are piles of car batteries, gravel, sand and bark chips. There is a stock of shredded vegetable matter of high wood content. This is to be made into fuel briquettes. I am due to start work there in a few days’ time.
The next morning the site is attacked by several men with flat bed “pikey” trucks. The employees are threatened and some of the scrap metal is stolen. The team are very upset and scared, the men have threatened physical violence. I am to arrive early the next day.
The next morning I am there. We have not yet manged to fix that large metal security gate damaged in the attack the day before. Two trucks with men turn up and make their way into the compound. They start trying to gather more scrap metal. I go over to one pair of men and tell them to stop. They get right in my face and threaten me to get out of the way. I do not flinch and stare back into the face of one of them They threaten to beat me up. I say that this would not be a good idea, they are welcome to try and that I would not recommend it. I say that it is time for them all to leave. The intent in me starts to swell. The men sensing a growing malevolence in me get back into their trucks and leave.
Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
The dream ends.
Following on from a theme in this morning’s dream write up we have:
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The Nirmāṇakāya (Ch: 化身, 應身; Tib. sprul sku; the body of transformation, emanation, manifestation or appearance) is a reflection of the Saṃbhogakāya, one of the myriad magical manifestations created by the Saṃbhogakāya. It is also called rūpa-kaya, the “form body” or “physical body”. The Nirmāṇakāya generally refers to a Buddha’s human-like appearance in imperfect worlds like ours, which appear for limited periods of time and seemingly die in paranirvana. It is usually associated with “historical” Buddha figures, like Shakyamuni Buddha. It is thus the most historic, temporally and spatially contingent, and humanistic aspect of the three bodies.
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Nirmāṇakāya (Chinese: 應身; pinyin: yīngshēn; Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་, tulku, Wylie: sprul sku) is the third aspect of the trikāya and the physical manifestation of a Buddha in time and space. In Vajrayāna it is described as “the dimension of ceaseless manifestation”
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Diverse nirmanakaya (Tibetan: sna tshogs sprul pa), these nirmanakayas manifest in numerous ways and forms to help sentient beings in any way possible, these may even include seemingly inanimate objects like boats or bridges. There are many forms and types of these, and can include:
From Wikipedia
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Normal “sane” westerners may struggle with the notion of a nirmanakaya manifestation. They would find Saṃbhogakāya even harder to swallow. Yet they listen to the Dalai Lama.
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Saṃbhogakāya
The Saṃbhogakāya (Ch: 報身, 受用身; Tib. longs sku) refers to the divine magical bodies of the Buddhas which manifest for the benefit of noble bodhisattvas. It can be rendered as “co-enjoyment body”, and “communal bliss body” (when reading the prefix saṃ- to refer to ‘together with’ or ‘mutual’) or as “complete reward body”, “total enjoyment body” (reading saṃ- as “complete”, “thoroughness”). The Saṃbhogakāya is described by the Mahāyāna-sūtrālamkāra as that which “brings enjoyment of dharma to the circles of assembly.” The term is usually associated with more supramundane, cosmic or otherworldly Buddhas. For example, Sthiramati names Vairocana, Amitabha and Samantabhadra as Saṃbhogakāya Buddhas.
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To me it is not all surprising that I have the word nirmāṇakāya in my dream this morning. Way more surprising was that I had a mobile ‘phone!! In esoteric thought a nirmāṇakāya manifestation can be a thought projected form of either temporary or quasi-permanent duration made by an adept or master. This form is usually for communication. These need not to be full carnal and would have no need for the DNA building blocks of a human form. These nirmāṇakāya are behind legends of magic and apparition / disappearance of certain masters. They are said to be made out of thought substance.
The most common form of nirmāṇakāya is the tulku of Tibetan-Bhutanese Vajrayāna Buddhism. All of these woman or womb born tulkus would need biological DNA in order to evolve into adult humans. According to the legend these reincarnating masters often have non-mundane capabilities. Their minds are trained and differ. But biologically they ought to be the same. A DNA test would most likely return human DNA.
Human beings worshipping at the altar of modern science like “proof” and carrying out a DNA test / autopsy might appeal to the Josef Mengele mentality. Just as if we found a real alien from outer space. Some would want to slice them open and have a look inside.
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Like a sociopath with a frog or harmless animal, humans like to experiment on other species. There is a whole industry in animal testing.
It is also possible that people see a nirmāṇakāya either as a waking vision or in their sleep and dreams. If you see a nirmāṇakāya or saṃbhogakāya buddha or bodhisattva in your dreams that is considered auspicious and a good thing. Even if that is a bit of a trouser changer so to speak. Such a manifestation is likely to be a noteworthy and impactful dream.
In my opinion a womb born nirmāṇakāya will probably have human DNA. A thought projection nirmāṇakāya may not have any chemical substance whatsoever, nothing to put in a mass spectrometer or for PCR work up. Nothing to do an autopsy on when they die.
Last night as I was drifting off to sleep a question popped into mind, “can AI dream?”. It was followed up by another question, “Can AI be taught to dream?” “And if so, would AI be fully lucid when it was dreaming?”. “Would AI know the difference between awake and slumber?”
“Or would it simply dream of electric sheep?”
I thought to myself that I had better nip this line of thought in the bud otherwise I would be awake for a long time. I thought that I have hundreds of dreams in word format and they could be used to teach an AI “entity” to dream like me. I don’t know how AI training works but a true test of human-like intelligence would be a capacity to dream without the pseudo-rational control of “wakefulness”.
That kind of intelligence would exhibit an intuition something which geniuses often cite as important. AI in order to mimic humans needs to have fantasy including sexual fantasy. Already I have heard of AI hallucinations.
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Can machines think? Can AI dream?
This question is along the lines of a Turing Test. How could we measure, prove or disprove in the dreaming ability of AI?
Dreaming would be a ground-breaking game-changing faculty of artificial intelligence…
I could ask an AI bot to dream and see what happened…
It is safe to think this now, in the middle of the day.
Dreaming if AI can dream is safe at 13:15 on a summer’s day…
Here are last night’s dreaming sequence. It is a little “bitty” and is in three parts.
The dream starts on a mediterranean-like island. I am walking along a trail with the wife. We are carrying rucksacks; it is sunny but not hot. We are on a cliff side path far below is an azure-blue sea. Ahead of us is a port town from which we aim to take a ferry to our next destination. In the middle distance we can see a rocky island with fertile splashes of green farming land. It is less cliffy but dominated by a peak which I know is a supposed extinct volcano. We start to have a drone’s eye view over the island. Small volcanic vents open up around the island venting first smoke and then the occasional pyrotechnic of red hot lava. The central volcano starts to smoke and vent too. We can hear the rumble of pre-eruption. It is pretty clear that the island is unsafe and that we will have to alter our plans. If the volcano blows the island will cease. We cannot go to that island yet.
I say that we need to find a hotel for the night. We walk into town as night falls and the nightlife starts up. There are bars and clubs. It is Greek. We find a large hotel on a central plaza. The wife thinks it too expensive but I know they like to fill all the rooms. I go to reception where the hotel manager / owner is. He is an oily man with yet black hair. I ask him for a room it is £50 per night. This he says is because the pool is out of order. I accept and ask what time breakfast is. The hotel is in need of TLC.
The dream fades.
I am now in a medical centre come hospital on another island which feels like Jersey but may not be it. I am in a waiting room with many others. My name is called and I am taken into a consulting room by a woman of similar age to me in a dark navy-blue nurse practitioner uniform. She does blood pressure measurements and listens to my chest. I gesture to her where I have had my chest hair shaved for a recent ECG. For some reason we both find this funny. She takes down some historical details. Then she gets an envelop out of her desk drawer. She proceeds to take a lock of my hair which is much longer than it is this morning. She places this in the envelope. She then proceeds to trim all my finger nails with scissors. Collecting the nails and placing them too in the envelope. I say that I hope she is not going to use these for voodoo or witchcraft on me because everyone knows that these are key ingredients. She says no, the samples are for DNA tests, the government wants to test my DNA to check if I am normal or not. I say to her that I have had a normal birth and not a different Nirmāṇakāya manifestation vehicle. It was not thought created. I came out of a womb. The DNA results should come back as entirely human.
Outside the hospital I go down a hill to where the ambulance entrance is. I see the nurse posting the envelope into a bright red old-school UK mail box. I wave at her, she waves back.
The dream fades.
I am now in a large metropolitan building which has been subdivided into a number of flats. The building has a common room area with a watercooler and seating. I am standing there when a tall man comes in. He is holding is mouth. He says that he has broken a tooth. I know he is Hungarian because we have been out for a few beers. I say that I can drive him to a dentist and explain how things work in England. I ask him to show me his EU health card. He does. I say show this at the dental clinic and they will reduce the amount you have to pay. We are joined by a young woman who has recently moved into the block. She is around mid-twenties and has jet black pig-tailed hair and is heavily made up. I know that she considers herself trendy.
I take the Hungarian to the dentist in my car and drop him off in reception I give him the number of my mobile ‘phone in case there is difficulty. Neither of us foresees any. He will have to wait for hours. I go back to the block of flats where I am some kind of custodian.
The young woman is still there in the communal rooms. She wants to go into town and asks me to accompany her. There is a mild sexual frisson from her part towards me which is completely unexpected by me. She takes my arm in hers and we walk out into the night. I am quasi-paternal.
It is very urban and under the yellow street lights she starts to tell me how she is trying to change. She has a lot of piercings and several large tattoos. She is of mixed race a real melting pot of nationalities but speaks pukka English, posh. She says that she is a warrior girl, that she is striving to be a warrior girl. In a London accent I ask if she means warrior gall or warrior gell, innit. This makes her laugh. My accent is unexpected.
I say to her that being a warrior is harder than she might imagine and that whatever her preconceptions are, they are wrong. I say to her that is a good thing to aspire to be a “warrior gall”. This makes her happy and she tries to skip. I cannot. I look at her and we both laugh.
The dream fades.
In this house it is common practice to review our dreams sometimes stretching back many years. That is a part of the idea of keeping a dream lab book.
At the moment I am looking to see if my dreams reveal any residual devoirs for this life and what my residual fate might be. We are faced with a need to downsize to a place with a much smaller garden and a smaller house. The question is currently framed as blighty or France. The need is not urgent but it is sooner rather than later.
This morning’s dream when published referred to my Boscombe Down dream earlier thanks to WordPress. This is near Stonehenge. At the end of my Ph.D. I was pretty close to getting a job offer at Porton Down which is not too far away. The West Country is an area where it is possible for us to perhaps afford a small house. I once fancied living at Avebury inside the stone circle. This morning’s dream is not too radically far away from an actual possibility. Were we to move to a small village I would be more country and less townie. We could go along the 303 and see what is possible. I could end up involved in local activities.
Over the years and before we moved here the wife had numerous dreams which with hindsight could have been predictive of the house we live in and the county too! The fit concerning the floor to ceiling windows is with hindsight, good. As is the stream etc.
One of the major factors for me to move here was get away from all the dogmatic, ignorant and never ending adamant gobshite about Brexit. How Brexit would supercharge the UK economy and solve everything including immigration in one fell swoop. The soap-box preaching has not yet yielded an English country garden utopia, the envy of the world. This mental attitude, this xenophobic jingoism, bullshitting, is a major factor which is putting me off.
Is Britain still full of wankers and adamant gobshites?
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I don’t know…
People can think of themselves in different ways to how others consider them. They may imagine that they are wonderful, shit hot and the dogs’ bollocks; others may deem them to be a wanker, a bell end.
For example people might ask me why I am not working or collaborating with a specific person or group, expecting some long explanation. I might reply that they are a wanker, or they plural are a bunch of wankers.
In general I give people the benefit of the doubt for too long. Then when the last straw arrives, they are assigned mentally to my wanker pile, this assignment is generally irrevocable. Once on the wanker pile, I am extremely unlikely to want anything whatsoever to do with them. The grief level is just way too high for any tiny positive benefit. In my mind no further explanation is needed. The matter is closed and I do not have to justify myself; they are on the wanker pile and that is that. People might try to persuade me otherwise; it is very unlikely to work.
I try to learn from experience and not repeat it.
You might imagine me a rigid judgemental person. But in order to end up on the wanker pile a person needs to have provided plenty of evidence. Their behaviour has been instrumental.
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The dream this morning is not a warning against the UK. It is a reminder of village politics and that there are some people who deem themselves big cheeses. The phrase pompous arse sprung to mind when writing up the dream.
So I’ll try to keep an open mind until after our exploratory visit to the UK later in the year. Maybe some people have changed their tune and have seen that the UK shot itself in the foot because it did not like imaginary rules about straight bananas demanded by Brussels. Maybe it would prefer orange chlorinated antibiotic laden chicken from Trump-land?
You never know what is really going on in the minds of others. Maybe a little humility has found its way into the Rule Brittania 1966 and all that “thinking”.
Britain might have an inkling that it is now becoming past not present or future…
The days of the shire are numbered…
Here is this morning’s dream. It is out of context. We did however watch “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” the other day and I once helped a NIMBY protest against an incinerator build for a Buckinghamshire village.
The dream starts on a small, grassed square outside a red brick village church / parish hall. Despite being made of very dark red brick and flint the building is centuries old. A special parish / village meeting has been called. It is very important for the village as there is some unknown sense of danger which needs discussed and a plan needs to be made. Under the thatched roof of the “bus stop” around a pub table are sat a couple of women my age. One of who is of Indian origin. They are discussing a recipe in poor French, Franglais. It is all village fete, quintessential even. I am sat on one of the park benches with the wife. Everyone is invited especially those who do not attend church. The vicar has made the church available and the town council committee has sent out invites.
Inside the church the angling club is holding a meeting. We are relatively new to the village, the first thing of interest / excitement to happen there in a very long time. It being a small village the word has gotten about. There is some expectation of me. That in some way I will play a role perhaps an important role. I have been pressed to come by some of the village “elders”. As the village gathers the hubbub increases. The young farmers from outside the village bounds are chatting excitedly. They are opposite us sat on a low wall. They have a slight schism with the influx of townies. The head of the angling society opens a window on the side of the church and tells everyone to be quiet. They have important business. The middle finger of my right hand extends downwards in a gesture. The farmers note this. The wife is mortified but my gesture has gone down well.
One of the famers, whose family have lived in the village long, says to me, eye to eye, that the head of the angling society is a “right wanker” in a slight west country accent. The famers start calling out “come on you toss pot we have got things to do, hurry up so that we can get started.” This has broken the ice in the assembling villagers. The man closes the window. We can hear chat inside and know that the meeting has been called to a close. The head of the society was once a big cheese in the village but his stock has fallen of late. Before the doors to the church are opened everyone starts to make their way into the hall.
The dream ends.
A while back I wrote and entire blog around the notion of façade. It was called “Spiegelfassade”. The idea being is that people portray a façade, a persona, an ersatz, to others and then hide behind that. Rarely are human beings WYSWYG. They live in manner inconsistent with their authentic essence, life is a show-and-tell affair and they are not true. The public-relations-faux-façade is more present and giga-pixel ready these days. Insta-ready is not reality. One could make up a whole new identity with the help of AI and photoshop. This having a cover story is not new, it has been around for ever. There is tacit acceptance that some will need a cover in order to ply their trade. Others can take a face from the ancient gallery in a sociopathic manner. Others are knobheads.
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The trouble with cover stories is that people can struggle to know what is cover, what is real. There were cases in the UK of undercover cops fathering children whilst in deep cover. Who knows how wide the psychological damage from that propagated? I doubt national security warranted such cynical imposition.
Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I kept “getting” the number 37. Today I learned that 37 is a prime number, which I kind of knew anyway by sight. Apparently, that makes it useful for cryptography. If you ask human beings to pick a number at random between 1 and 100 it is the second most popular number after 7. Human random number generators are skewed. It is also a number used in a magician’s or mind reader’s force. They can, by prompting, guide you to this number. Ta-dah…magic!! 73 is also a prime number which makes 37 an unusual reversible prime. People choose numbers that are “lucky”. The odds for picking 37 are not 1 in 100. Humans have biases where they imagine there may be none.
The problem comes when façade interacts with façade and there is an illusion of reality on one or both sides. To an extent this is the basis of all 1:1 human interactions. We have a professional façade, a home one and perhaps are real only when we are alone. But if we have over egged the façade, it is impossible to understand or know our true authentic essence. People do not know themselves well and may deny a whole bunch of stuff. They may only know their shell, their façade, which they mistake for reality.
One of the answers in the University Challenge quiz last night was that “an unexamined life is not worth living”. People can quote philosophers in an erudite manner as a groovy tag to conversation. Rarely do they enact fully. Even those enamoured with the classics may quote more than do. We are selective. In this context fate is an interesting idea, that has on occasion a hackle tingling effect. We might like to believe it but only to an extent. We think we determine our life direction rationally, we choose. But a simple leaky condom can alter trajectory dramatically. We can be fated to meet someone who changes our life forever. We may miss a meeting that might be transformational by a hair’s breadth. We were not yet fated for that transformation; we came within a whisker.
If we live within the confines of our façade we may never know. If we are meant to find out, that façade might crack and perhaps violently so, revealing an unprotected nascent embryo beneath. It may evolve or develop another calcified shell quickly, lest the world sees an emperor unclad.
In all of us the authentic essence might leak through a crack. We might think, “what the fuck was that?” as we glue the porcelain mask quickly back together.
If like a Matryoshka doll there is façade after façade, identity after identity, it may take a long while to find that authentic essence. If we are fated to approach said essence then we will, no matter how much upheaval and struggle it entails. Layer after layer needs peeled back and like with onions we may cry along the way. If we are fated to stay in façade-land that is where we eke out our days.
Fate may engineer or come close, in one of these cases we will never know. Along the way we will have lent fate a hand by our choices, our decisions. It was fated thus.