Lately, I have been listening extensively to sound and music with recently acquired headphones which I hope to review on my Youtube Channel. The emphasis on these devices is their ability to effectively reproduce the multi-layered frequencies that make up the sonic piece. 

I find myself dwelling on the question of frequencies and vibrations a little beyond the confines of headphones. 

Quantum physics reveals that, at a fundamental level, matter and energy behave as oscillations, waves, and fields, interconnected in dynamic patterns of motion and probability.

What this means in the appraisal of reality remains a subject of debate in the scientific community. However, if we allow ourselves to examine how such a fundamental principle of physicality is embodied within the human consciousness and plays out in our relationships, we may find that this probability uncoils into the vastness of possibility. 

If perceived reality arises from movement and vibrations embedded deep within the fabric of existence, and if there is even the slightest chance that all matter is composed of the same stuff—photons and atoms—then, invariably, much of what we commune with are vibrations far older than any chronology of time we could ever imagine.

These vibrations, as the quality of timelessness, reach us instantaneously; fusing, shaping, moulding and focusing their motion into matter – and into us, in our myriad forms of apparitions and difference. 

Thus, the appearance—the difference—is contextual within a pulsating flow, delineated only by time, and therefore thought. I think, therefore I am!

Chronological time is an echo chamber of replicable events, relying on the interactive structure of memory. Manipulate that interaction, and you can exploit time, at which point the vibrations shed their quality of instantaneousness, becoming not just the physical and the apparent, but a symbol.

Our understanding of reality is pervaded by symbols—from the esoteric to the totemic, to the referential. Yet, what are these symbols, if not effervescent and effusive oscillations divested of the quality of timelessness? A symbol is impotent without its credential of duration which constantly reaffirms its structural integrity, thus its “identity”. 

It is no wonder that every insistence on ‘the way things are’ or ‘the way things ought to be’ inevitably falls back on a symbol—be it a myth, an insignia, or a belief system. This symbol then ossifies into an image. There is an image of the world through which we have been socialized to look at ourselves and others. The threat to one’s sense of belonging is a threat to this image. 

This, however, is not some willful sleight of hand by existence. It is, rather, the very process by which physicality manifests as a tactile illusion. We must keep in mind that there is no contradiction here. If anything, we are seeking to arrive at the point of conflations that undergird the tensions and conflicts of our relations. We are, after all, masters of limitations. Read beyond its negative connotation, limitation also embodies the art inherent in the act of form- and meaning-making. Isn’t that what physical life is about?

When I speak of tension and conflicts, I do so in an expansive sense. It should not defy our reasoning to acknowledge that tension and conflict will always ricochet, entropically, toward the destructive tendencies of violence. Yet, I do not advocate for a world devoid of tension and conflict—lest we get ahead of ourselves.

Rather, within the movement from probability to the vastness of possibility, we are capable of understanding the nature, structure, and kinetic positioning of that which coagulates into conflict. The acknowledgement and acceptance of Difference, in whatever form it may appear to the observer, rests upon this understanding. 

We stand at a crossroad in the evolution of the human being. It is a crossroad between our individuality—shaped by the symbols inherited and accumulated, with their inscribed duration of chronological time—and the collective, the multi-contextual, the multi-dimensional, and the pathless road of timelessness. We are sandwiched between the refracting rays of our proliferated and well-groomed self-image(s), resulting in what I have called in another essay, ‘flares of duplicity.’ The duplicity, in this instance, is evident in the double standards, hypocrisy, manipulations, and conflations that form the underlying structures of conflict. It is a volatile negotiation between the past and the present. The conflict has a peculiar nature: it is existential. In other words, the resulting sense of powerlessness leaves no hiding place. We know it, both internally and externally, and we fear it. And because we fear it, we are helpless before it. 

Yet, in all this, it is Difference—the manifested form of essence—that takes the fall. It is this aspect, insusceptible to coercion, that remains steadfast in its autonomy. Its conformity is an offering, not an obligation; a voluntary dance with the world, not a forced submission.

I have said that Difference is the manifested form of essence. I will expand on what I mean.

Difference is not a distortion or separation from the essence of being; it is its very expression—the unfolding of the singular into the plural, the one into the many. Just as a wave emanates from the surface of the ocean, so too does Difference arise from the eternal depths of essence. It is the unique form through which essence becomes visible and tangible in the world. What we call ‘Difference’ is the shimmering thread that holds the fabric of life together, creating the patterns, shapes, and connections that define the world as we experience it. It is not an opposition or a lack but the very presence of manifestation.

In this light, Difference is not a deviation from unity; it is the vibrant multiplicity of unity itself: the logic of entropy in the cyclical movement from order to disorder. Each difference we encounter in the world is, in fact, a reflection of essence from which all things emerge. And it is through our attention—our focus and engagement with the present—that these differences come alive. It is the quiet pool of water from which all myths, all symbols, all imagery are contextualized. Difference is unity in motion.

Essence, in this regard, is not essentialism. It is not reducible to an image. All images are delineations by memory and thought, constructing time as they do so. Essence is the locus of potentiated, emergent intelligence of infinite magnitude. It is the weightlessness between the known and the unknown. And because nothing operates outside the framework of existence, all things have essence. Conversely, there is no such thing as “non-essence,” “more essence,” or “true essence.” Essence is that which is present, vibrating uniquely in every connection. It is its recognition and acknowledgment that makes any contact between seemingly disparate things an encounter. 

A contact that does not recognize and acknowledge the essence flowing through the ‘now’ of things is a non-encounter—merely a replication and deployment of fixed images or symbols constructed by thought and preserved by memory in the vault of a belief system. Non-encounter is the failure to recognize the timelessness of a thing’s presence. As such, it bears the seed of conflict, and the potential for the violence of one thing annihilating the other.

How, then, does Essence manifest? First and foremost, through Difference, which is Unity in motion. Then, through attention.

Attention is instantaneous. Whether consciously or unconsciously, one is always giving attention; it cannot be withheld. Attention is timelessness. And since we have said that Difference is the manifested form of Essence, to recognize essence is to be fully attentive—instantly and completely—exactly as one is, without approximation, comparisons, mediation, or deference to authority.

If attention is an act of timelessness, the now-forever, its state of being is awareness. It is to be—now, exactly as you are—without judgment, without comparison, without measure, but simply in the effusive acknowledgment of the encounters that pervade reality.

For such a world, we must be conversant with Difference and uphold it as the embodiment of essence. It is to realize that timelessness is not abstract but the living manifestation of Essence in Difference. Conflicts, then, are constructs of conformity and annihilation. Yet all is contained by timelessness, even painfully so.

As with attention, what we give is what we ask for. If we give comparisons, judgment, conflict, or violence, that is what we become, for we are, after all, masters of limitation.

Yet within the realm of all-possibility lies a pathless road—one that leads to the recognition, acknowledgment, and absolute acceptance of Difference. It begins with entertaining its probability and viscerally offering ourselves to its urgings.

Movement as Relation: Where one thing stands, something else stands beside it. 

To grasp the free-flowing, ever-rolling, and emergent nature of Difference-as-Essence is to consider that in movement, there is only relation; all dichotomies are a human-made construct and therefore context-specific. Dichotomies are, at best, comparative tools for ascribing structural integrity and function. But the often-overlooked aspect is that they also carry residues and burdens that, if left unattended, coagulate into conflict and, subsequently, violence within that ever-rolling, self-acting wheel of movement-as-relation. Thus, it is movement-as-relation that undergirds reality. It is the air, breath, and wind of all formations.

The by-products of dichotomies—conflict, violence, annihilation—are synonymous with non-biodegradable waste. The correlation I make here is intentional, linking together our seemingly mundane disagreements, born of ossified, self-enshrined identities, with the waste we offload onto the ecosystem, straining the body and circulatory systems of our planet. Yet movement is always in relation. Could it ever stop? Or will it always continue—sweeping, transforming, becoming?

The wisdom embedded in the Igbo proverb, “Where one thing stands, something else stands beside it,” perfectly illustrates the emergence of movement-as-relation in the everyday. This saying, which draws from Igbo epistemology, foregrounds non-dichotomous, co-creative relationality and proposes a semantic re-reading of the Newtonian (Western scientific) framework of interaction of forces. Before a thing or action becomes “opposite and equal” to a reaction, they are first in relation—beside each other.

This reading of encounter carries profound implications for how we see ourselves and each other. In subsequent writings, I will expand this into the realm of visual culture, which has played a seismic role in shaping the gaze of the world and all that emanates in and through it.