BEING HUMAN
Our human experience essentially consists of perceiving – in a continuity of now-ness, and more or less mindfully – a sense of a self/soul/consciousness that feels and appears to direct actions of body, speech and mind while reacting to unending arisings of emotions, thoughts and sensory perceptions.
Through this process, our “perception filters” and memories are continuously ri-processed to create and transform instincts, habits, values, principles, goals and preferences, which in turn affect our future thoughts, actions and our perception of external phenomena.
Core to such experience is the continuous perception of various levels of pleasurable or painful feelings in mind and body.
PERCEIVED AND PHYSICAL UNIVERSE
We never and can never directly experience the physical universe, but just our perceptions of such physical universe, which arises from the intellectual and emotional meanings we give to physical and perceptive phenomena as they unroll.
Nonetheless, we consistently appear to be a part, limited in time and space, of a whole that we call the “Universe”, consisting of finite amounts of mass and energy that have been interacting and transforming into each other according to a set of physical laws for 13.73 billion years, when a Big Bang happened.
We know something will always exist. In fact, as nothing cannot create something, and something cannot create nothing, we know something came before the Big Bang, but not what did, and that something will always exist, but not what it will be.
We do not know if this is the only universe or one of finite or infinite number of universes interacting (multiverse) in space or not (parallel universes). Such universe(s) may or may not have different laws of physics.
NATURE OF THINGS, BEINGS, AND HUMAN BODY AND MIND
All things and living beings are transient phenomena, without any independent or permanent nature, thoroughly intertwined with innumerable other transient phenomena. In fact, at the end, we could say that just one whole big phenomena exists.
As interactions among phenomena is of almost infinite complexity, it cannot be disproven that there may exist additional factors that influence the interplay of phenomena beyond the laws of physics: a partially-free will of sentient beings, elements of randomness, “magic” or divine will.
As living and sentient beings, we differ from other phenomena and plants as we have minds with more powerful memory and processing power, which increases the amount of preconceptions, memories of past thoughts, actions and emotions, that influence our ongoing experience and perceived choice of action.
HUMAN SENSE OF WILL
We normally have a definite feeling that our “free will” completely masters our actions and thoughts and that, when we choose to, it prevails on our instincts and habit. A will that, therefore, not only does what it wants, but independently wants what it wants, at least when it decides to.
Our will is not completely free as we see it is conditioned at least by arising phenomena, and internal emotions and thoughts.
It’s autonomy is either partial, or just a complete illusion. Both of these are compatible with the laws of physics.
Our sense of partial-free will, as integral part of our consciousness, may well be an illusion but our perception, that we have a complete or partial free will, nonetheless exists.
If our will is partial, then its autonomy, or it’s appearance of autonomy, can be increased by cultivating awareness, contemplation, clarity of comprehension, yoga-like bodily exercises and re-processing memories, habits and entrenched values and conceptions.
If our will is a complete illusion, than there is very little we can do outside be, and, possibly, try to best enjoy the ride, and to transform our thoughts and emotions as life unrolls according to laws of physics, and possibly elements of randomness or magic/divine.
WHY OUR LIFE HAPPENS AS IT DOES
“my mind i not me, it’s mine. My mind is not me, it’s mine!
Our life as it happens in the present moment is the account of an arbitrary set of effects of innumerable causes.
It happens as a consequence of a continuous interplay among all these factors:
- our current will and/or higher self, dependent on the extent and duration we do/decide-to exercise its power over habitual mindstream
- the sum to-date of our life’s imprints, as a record of our emotional and higher-self experience, partially extended, overwritten and transformed every single split-second of our life, in accordance to the interplay of our will, past arisings and past outer and bodily physical conditions
- our current arisings, as a direct consequence of past imprints (will, arisings, conditions) and current will, current bodily and physical conditions.
QUALITY OF LIFE
The perceived quality of our life now depends entirely on 3 factors, as they play out now and have played out in our past life:
(A) How we take it. It can be summed up by “contentment”, the ability to enjoy life as it happens to a high degree on average. We try to interpret and/or transform positively what happens.
(B) How we make it: We continuously make actions and plans of actions that are aimed at best promoting our immediate as well as our future well being.
(C) How it happens: If a car bumps into me or someone steals my luggage those are quite certainly things that affect, although temporarily the quality of life. Many more happenings and coincidences affect my life in varied and complex ways.
It is clear that the most we can do is in How we take it. In fact, that may be the best we can do for others as well. …
BIRTH AND DEATH
Are split-second events affecting a miniscule set of arbitrary phenomena of the physical universe and perceived universe.
Are split-second events in the experience of every human, and therefore of no importance. What matters are the period during life of 0-130 years, therefore life and the after death. It may be important to understand the periods just before and just after death.
We are never born and we never die as separate independent entities in the physical and perception universe.
After Death: resonance, legacy of emotions, thought, writings, art works, compassion, exemplary behavior ..
CONCLUSIONS: ME, MIND, LIFE, DEATH, UNIVERSE AND TIME
We all share with billions this mysterious state of being humans, all with extremely similar inclinations, desires and wants, with bodies, mind and a perception of self, immersed in nature.
On one side, there is no real meaning to the whole thing; on the other, the way we use our mind and body during our lives leaves some legacy in other people, and therefore in a universal cosmic mind, and we always were and always will be.
We are never born and we never die as separate independent entities in the physical and perception universe.
Each of us is at once a part, a fragment and a point-of-presence of a ever-changing universal cosmic mind, that has existed and will exist so long as sentient beings have existed and will exist in the physical universe.
We are at once a part and the whole of the energies and forces making up both the physical universe and perceived universe, which coincide respectively with the laws of the universe and unconditional love.
We are hosted in a body and a mind over which we have variable level of control for a period of 0 to 100 years.
“Unconditional love is not something we do, but what we are. It is only by embracing and understanding everything, without depending on anything, that we obtain everything.”
WHAT AM I, WHAT TO DO, WHAT IS GOOD
Only by fearing nothing, and desiring and wanting nothing specific, we obtain everything.
In order to most effectively get closer to the highest happiness for our higher selves and all sentient beings, we should desire nothing specific while decidedly gravitating toward pure bliss, towards the highest imaginable state of self and others, towards the maximum growth of our spiritual self.
As what happens is only in a small part dependent on what I choose to do now and in the future, desiring something specific to happen to us or others, inevitably has a high probability of creating fear of that something not happening, delusion and anger (towards self or others) for a such thing not having happened.
Our nature and means as single human beings is limited, there is only so much we can accomplish to improve the present and future lives of sentient beings.
Ideally we would do a lot to benefit all sentient beings during our lifetime and beyond. Only very few humans manage to do a lot of good during their lifetimes, because of a mix of luck, clarity of understanding, and acquired abilities and virtues.