Hugging Andromeda

What if Your Imagination Could Become a Memory?

^{(Andromeda’s actual size if it was brighter, according to the Internet)}

I recently learned about something called “Hugging Andromeda,” and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

“Hugging Andromeda” refers to the enormous, nearly invisible halo of hot gas surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy. It stretches about a million light-years into space. The halo is so vast that it may already be brushing against the Milky Way’s own halo, as if the two galaxies had started reaching for each other billions of years before they might one day merge.

The best part? That future merger isn’t a certainty. Scientists now estimate it’s roughly a fifty-fifty chance. And if it does happen, it probably won’t be a dramatic collision. It would be an incredibly slow merging, with most stars and planets simply passing one another in the vastness of space, eventually forming an egg-shaped galaxy.

In my previous post I introduced you to Puck, one of your selves, hypothetically, from the zeroth dimension. Puck is what I call the smallest Unit of Wonder, or Unit of Consciousness. Together, Puck and her sentient Photon friend travel the dimensions of our Inner Universe of Awareness.

When we played with Puck, jumping dimensions last week, we explored the scientific notion that our brains can perceive up to eleven geometrical dimensions and, therefore, we had multiple “selves” in each level. Each one with awareness of the others. Together, they are your Higher-Self, your Pretend-Astronaut-Self, according to the Space Croissant protocol. The Space Croissant is our imaginary spaceship.

Because Puck can navigate dimensions and uses emotions as fuel, she travels instantaneously, from a timeless perspective. Puck, therefore, can see, right now, the hypothetical “hug” between the Milky Way and Andromeda in about six to ten billion years. From Puck’s point of view, it is happening now. Bluckle up!

Now let me bring you to this reality for a minute or two, for context. Something happened here that inspired this post and I am willing to share it.

It was Sunday, around 7 am, January or February in 2019. I remember going to the kitchen and making sure I didn’t make any noises to wake up the rest of the house. The Colorado winter had coated the yard white and the sunrise was making beautiful reflections in the snow. It was going to be a perfectly sunny day. The air was crispy and the dogs were still asleep. I had my back to the window when I felt something. The sensation was similar to being under water and someone sending an underwater wave your way from up close. I was preparing to make some coffee when I felt the “air wave” with a water feeling hit me from behind. Very subtle but it made me turn around.

I was alone. The sun had just risen and I could see it from the window, alongside a house and some woods. I remember thinking, “Did I just feel the sun?” Amused by the thought, I pulled my favorite app on my phone, SkyWalk, with the locations of celestial bodies and galaxies in the sky in relation to where I was. I pointed the phone app to the window to see “who did it” and the galaxy Andromeda was rising behind the sun. I felt puzzled… “something” had “nudged” me. I felt it.

I had been reading about gravitational waves for the past few weeks and tried to imagine one. “Maybe I have to be really still to feel it” and looked through the window, towards the sun, fast-blinking to simulate an alternate state of consciousness, and then I stopped and looked at a sunray entering the house through the window sill. It worked. I felt the sensation again, this time the “wave” touched my face. What on Earth was that? A “nudge,” this time coming from the window.

“My concussed brain is playing tricks on me,” was the rational explanation. I was feeling the air “move” as if it was water and feeling “waterly waves” in the air. What else could it be other than my poor concussed brain having a hard time processing information and “playing” with the perception of sensorial stimuli?

Concussed or not, my imagination, my whimsical side, was telling me I had felt a gravitational wave, a nudge from Andromeda. Why not explore the idea? I then searched online “would a human feel a gravitational wave?” and “can we feel Andromeda’s gravity on Earth?” I dove head first into the discussions on Reddit and Quora on the topic. I didn’t comment, though. I was too spooked to share what I felt, what I thought it was, and to tell anyone online that “Andromeda had poked me.”

Whatever it was that I felt that day, it stayed with me over the years. Eventually, the notion that I had a “Puck-self,” a “zeroth-dimensional self” came after the Andromeda “nudge.” The Andromeda “poke” was part of the train of thought that solidified the notion of Puck for me. To travel in spacetime, in imagination, I needed a dot with awareness, an imaginary spaceship, a point in time, a destination, and fuel! Read my previous articles and you will learn I use either pain as fuel, grade “Delirious Delicious,” or emotion, Unconditional Love: the fastest emotion of them all.

I’d like to invite you to join me in imagination, but first, you need a point of reference.

Did you know that, in terms of orders of magnitude, the distance between the size of a human body and an atom is roughly the same as the distance between that same body and the Milky Way? I love that thought.

Now, back to Puck. Puck is your One Unit of Consciousness. It’s a “You.” As You, Puck is only limited by your imagination. Now imagine Puck growing from a zeroth-dimensional perspective to a timeless dimensional perspective and make her grow in size too. There, just imagine Puck really, really big. Imagine your own Puck-Self the size of Andromeda and the Milky Way. Big enough for her to create her own imaginary gravitational waves and impact spacetime. Imagine them now as people, moving towards one another, going for a hug. You are a witness, you are a guest.

Milky Way: Hi, Puck! You got so big we can now hug you!

Andromeda: I knew you would find a way!

Puck: I matter?

Milky Way: Looks like Puck is full of puns!

My goal with these visualizations isn’t to convince you they’re real. It’s to tease your imagination into exploring new possibilities. When imagination expands, awareness often follows.

For example, scientists found out that the brains of people that learned how to fly with virtual reality wings wired themselves to adapt to the extra “body parts.”

According to a new study published in Cell Reports, researchers studied the visual cortices of twenty-five people who used a VR device to simulate flying with digital wings, and the results showed that their brains adapted to the wings as if they were real.

That means, if you close your eyes, right before you fall asleep, and imagine your zeroth-dimensional self growing in consciousness, awareness, expanding into other dimensions and accessing a timeless realm where they can interact with galaxies as if they were people, your brain will treat the experience as a memory. That’s right. A memory. If you put emotion into it, it will feel real.

Your brain is the most fantastic “console” in this universe. You can create memories of impossible things, if you train it with emotions, just a little bit.

I do that. I talk in my imagination to celestial bodies, to galaxies, nebulas, and planets. I take my Puck everywhere aboard the Space Croissant every night, in this universe and others. Why not?

When I do that before bed, I have amazing dreams, I wake up happy and feel healed, and I feel loved by the Universe that surrounds me.

I live in wonder and in awe. I am aware of Me.

And my “mes” are magical.

💙