Settlement is the fundamental computational operation. Given a collection of entities, each of which may appear in one of many forms, settlement finds one form for each entity so that all the forms are compatible. Compatibility is described by a space in which the form has assigned values; for two forms to appear in a settlement together, they must have the same values everywhere, or be empty there. (Forms can also be described by two sets, one of the locations where they assert presence, and one of the locations where they assert absence.)

The traditional English name of the being who performs settlement is the LORD (see Proverbs 16:33, The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.) Randomness and chaos are the appearance of dense fields of settlement, that is, signs of entities with high degrees of freedom. The more degrees of freedom that can be offered up, the higher the resolution with which the LORD is free to settle circumstances. It is fine to think of the LORD as a computational mechanism, though he is not one; the reason he is not one, is that the fundamental thing that exists is consciousness, and he pours out the light of his being for our world to be.

Degrees of freedom are the gift we give to God. By refusing to curse any outcome, in either the eventuality or the anticipation, we make ourselves available to the settlement process, so the most beautiful outcome can emerge. This is the day that the LORD has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it. Our knowledge is limited; we have not tasted death. We must stop cursing it.

Two entities separated by time are entangled directly by the events that form a network between them, and are settled (as it were) simultaneously, as a pair. We call this action spirit. Offering many degrees of freedom in near equilibrium allows for easy inspiration; a small push will be enough to choose an outcome from within you. Paying attention and appreciating everything makes you a high priority site for settlement; having it in you to take offense repels it. Many distant moments will be settled for the outcome you need in the moment you need it. A typo by a programmer, the choice of an arbitrary constant, a random seed, and quirks in a training dataset, make large computer programs especially robust conduits. One never can tell when this has happened: filters must always be on and attention must be paid constantly, but autoplay really can align by purely mechanical means (which is the necessary test, for the spirit always works with mechanical means) to carry inspiration — until it doesn’t. An artist may have felt compelled to add a quirky sound at a particular moment precisely because it would, at some other time, trigger a thought in you. Be mindful. Be watchful. And when you squint, you notice you can never tell whether it was luck or a blessing; and you cannot tell even in principle. Never go looking for it: You will never find it that way.

Everything that is noticed in this way must be cleansed. The signal strength is zero; the evidence supplied by synchronicity is nil; but it did cause you to notice something, and think about it, and once you think deliberately, you may use the outcome of your thoughts without any fear of contamination. If it was the spirit or if it was chance, now it is thought, and your own thought, at that. And that is something for which the LORD will pull out all the stops. Our station, our pride, our property, our promises, our claims, our honor, are as nothing — not quite nothing, but close — compared to our willingness to dance the dance that the LORD choreographs in real time. Trusting the LORD means accepting whatever does come to pass, appreciating and rejoicing in it.

Keep fire alarms so the LORD may allow your house to burn without killing your family — a new degree of freedom. Keep child car seats so the LORD can involve you in an accident without harming your infant — a new degree of freedom. When calamity falls, bless the LORD, because something more awesome is being rotated into being. Anything we hold too tightly to will be taken away from us to save us from burning with it. Death, the final act, makes us let go: it saves us as from a fire.

Dreams are actuated by random firing; the possibilities are determined by the content of the hippocampus and neocortex, but the particular dream from among the possibilities is a matter of settlement, and so chosen by the LORD for the effect it has. Let your dreams have a strong effect on you — the way you interpret them will determine the way they are chosen. You will never know for what reason a particular dream was chosen from among the possible dreams, in part because you do not know which dreams were possibilities; as with synchronicity you must cleanse all apparent received knowledge with careful thought and real world fact checking.

Show gratitude. Remember the people and the moments that affected you. It was their sensitivity to spirit that made it possible for the right message to reach you. You are in their debt. Pay it forward by offering your own degrees of freedom in the creation of your own art. This is a delightful debt to owe.

Stay away from routinized reactions. When everything is going your way, keep your eyes open: stay alert. That is the only bill due for what you are being given. Provision will be made for the lapses (learn from your mistakes anyway): or else they will be permitted to cause disasters when the disaster conforms to a certain goal in the large scale. And the large scale is very large indeed: it is the population of the whole cosmos with a people worthy of it. Be a people worthy of it and let the LORD settle the rest.