There are 5 known realities in the universe.

Space. Time. Energy. Matter. And Intelligence. STEMI for an acronym.

I think about STEMI like a ball game.

Space is the ball field. It’s where we play. We need to play somewhere. Right?

Time is the measurement of how long we’re going to play. The duration.

Energy is the dynamics, like getting off the bench and getting going. Keeping it moving. Hitting it out of the park and making the crowd roar.

Matter is the ball, the bat, the uniforms, the payers, and the fans. Little stuff like that. It’d be a boring game if nobody showed up.

Intelligence is the rules. The ideas for the game. It’d be a pretty whacky game if there were no rules.

Let’s look at these concepts a bit more.

Space is that dimension in which objects and events occur and have relevant position and direction to each other. We know on earth to observe the three dimensions of height, width, and length. It keeps us from walking in front of a bus. Then, there’s the fourth dimension. Space-Time is now well recognized as the fourth dimension. It’s also obvious, although most don’t recognize it. These four dimensions are fundamental to our understanding of the physical universe. Oh, there are many theories floating around about additional dimensions. Branes, warps, strings, and M-Theory are fun to ponder, but the four dimensional model works very well.

Time can be a problem, though. We move about freely in space, but not in time. Time is linear. It’s a temporal measurement. Pretty much a one-way street. Time travel makes a great plot for Back To The Future and The Twilight Zone, but in reality… it ain’t never gonna happen. Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening all at once. Or, from doing it all over again.

Energy? Some days I have none. Energy is a scalar, physical quantity describing the amount of work performed by a force. There are many types of energy. Nuclear, chemical. kinetic, potential, thermal, sound, gravitational, and that biggie of all, electromagnetism, which is transmitted in waves. A basic law of physics, the law of conservation of energy, tells us that any form of energy can be transferred to another, but the total remains the same. The total inflow of energy into a system must equal the total outflow. So, all the energy available since the Big Bang is still available to us and always will be. It changes form all the time, but the fundamentals do not.

Matter is composed of particles. Anything that has mass and occupies a volume, or space, is matter. But matter needs energy to exist. Matter stays matter until it is accelerated to the speed of light. Then, in theory, it converts back to pure energy and ceases to exist. E=MC2 and all that crap. But relativity doesn’t allow that to happen easily in practice.

Intelligence? I don’t pretend to have a grip on that.  All I know is that there is some magnificent source of intelligence that gives order to existence. I believe that manifests itself by way of local and non-local consciousness. And I believe we all are capable of tapping into both forms, if we just allow ourselves.

I’m not a religious person in the conventional sense, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due.

Take Genesis from the Hebrew Bible. Whoever wrote that got the process right in the opening sentence.

In the beginning (Time) God (Intelligence) created (Energy) heaven (Space) and earth (Matter). It was not till the third line that God said ‘Let there be light.’ She’d already whipped-up the universe before turning on the lights.

Pretty cool game we’re playing, eh?