THOUGHTS ON LIFE

What's it all. . . . . . . .

...about? Life, that is!

I've thought about this many times. But then, who hasn't? 

It is often suggested that the meaning of life is too profound for us mere mortals to comprehend, something that at best may become apparent as we croak out our last few breaths! But I believe that is far from the truth, that we already have the meaning of life with and within us during every living moment.

Surely all we have to do is look, then! It is, after all, being lived out every day, in the forefront of our awareness, an amalgam of the events that we are involved in and how we react to those events. 

For this reason, I am passionate that whatever we do in life, it is very important that we focus upon it and notice what is happening!

This may sound a strange, or even a silly statement, but what I'm calling attention to is that we should try to consciously connect with the deeper meaning within the everyday events of life. In particular, we should notice how these events are affecting us - what responses they pluck from us. 

Self-observing in this way, we connect with the real essence of life and who we are. 

It can turn life from a frog into a prince! 

I believe that there is a lesson in every experience of our lives, no matter how trivial that experience may seem. And it's us who create the meaning in our lives by how we choose to experience its events. 

Aren't we primarily to experience?

It is through experience that we change/evolve, and, in turn, as we evolve, our experiences themselves evolve in quality, in a `tuned' cycle. This is self-improvement, which certainly gives life meaning.

Meaning for me that I only have one goal in life, and that is to do everything I do in good spirit, with good intention (rightness) and awareness.  

The beauty of this goal is that that it isn't in the future. 

Every moment being an opportunity to live in it.

Of course, doing everything in good spirit is an impossibly tall order, something we will fail to do time and time again. 

But it doesn't matter. 

It's who we are - flawed! 

What is wonderful about life is that it serves chance after chance to gradually...de-flaw.

In a society sharpened by competition and aspiration, people often talk bluntly of failure. The thing is, though (🤨), do we fail? 

I feel confident that the answer is `no'. It's ALL experience, no matter what ends up happening. It may not be the experience that we were aiming for; we may not achieve that prescribed goal, but whatever happens instead is still experience. Such `failing' always points us in a new direction in life, so it has succeeded in that sense. It also carries a bonus; it teaches a certain amount of acceptance. We have to learn how to fail.

The way we engage with others is of paramount importance in life, in that we do it in the spirit of love, hopefully bringing them happiness. 

It was in my twenties and early thirties, when I travelled and worked abroad extensively, that I learnt that it is through variety in life that we experience and get to know who we are. If life is lived in a rut, we become habitual and withdraw from much of life's opportunity for personal growth. We fail to stretch ourselves. 

It doesn't do to strive to live too safely. Clinging to security in life is a self-defeating delusion. The only true security we can have is being secure with the idea of being insecure. Dive in at the deep end, I say, and then soak up the experiences! That said, there are two kinds of variety in life, variety of our life events and diversity within the inner mental exploring ground that can also become a place of great adventure.

Contemplation of the awe-inspiring enormity of everything and immersion in the joy of intellectual inquiry has made my life truly blossom. The simple action of connecting with the beauty in everything can bring great bliss, which can then be taken into the busier parts of everyday life.

And then there are the painful times, great teachers. We need to see the good in them, to love the pain they cause for what it does, reveal us to ourselves.

In short the meaning of life is living it. We are here to be changed. 

I believe that when we look back at our lives, what will outweigh everything else is the degree of love that we have given in everything that we have done and the gratitude that we have had for the good AND bad things that we have experienced.

Compassion is the source of our own well-being; it opens our hearts and we gain a sense of purpose and a connection with those around us.

Dalai Lama

The Soul, Self and Consciousness

Let's start with what we mean by 'the soul'.

A huge question!

If I may venture...isn't the soul...well....who one is?  In one's real, inner depths, I mean.

I'm talking here about the deep part of us that is satisfied by meaningful, fulfilling living and that loves and cries out in pain at the woes of life. The part that doesn't really change much throughout an entire life on Earth...yet is ongoingly shaped by the impact of what the consciousness discerns.  

How about consciousness itself; what is it?

A starting point in investigating that question may be to divide consciousness into mind and awareness.

The mind is the party of us that thinks and seems like the relatively straightforward aspect of the `self', until we ask where the thoughts that we think come from. 

Long pause.

Whilst some thoughts are driven by logic and reactions to events, other thoughts just seem to `arise'. The mystery is in where these thoughts actually come from. More on that here: Reality 

Onto `awareness', then...this is something very nebulous to conceive, without doubt a multi-faceted, diverse and little understood phenomenon, operating at many different levels, such as basic outside-world awareness, self-awareness and what we call the sub-conscious. And, of course, memory. It also includes non-physical perceptions like our sense of time. 

It is also something that continuously evolves throughout life.

Our awareness seems to have another aspect, something very mysterious. It's the part that is able to watch the mind in action. Thoughts can come into our heads and we can watch them do so, if we make the effort to be our own observer. Furthermore, if we sit quietly and acknowledge these thoughts coming into our head, the awareness that does this also seems to also be aware of itself.

Try it!

One more thing – would we categorise feelings and emotions as properties of consciousness, or are these as soul qualities? 

Again, we encounter the entanglement. Trying to distil these rather indistinct distinctions is clearly the folly of the separative attempt of categorisation itself. But then, how else can one attempt to discuss the topic?

Consciousness as a Physical Phenomenon

Despite the mind-boggling depth of complexity, profundity, beauty and deep feeling involved in our consciousness, many people make the soul-destroying claim that consciousness is purely a physical phenomenon, merely the product of one's electrical and chemical brain activity. Indeed, this wholly material view appears to be the dominant view in the domains of science and neurology, if one refers to articles on the topic, of which many have graced the pages of magazines.

Well, of course, we are not in a position to entirely rule out the possibility of this mainstream view as being correct, but I am powerfully compelled to disagree from my depths. 

Is it really feasible that the deep feelings and meaning which I'm trying to convey within this piece of writing have just somehow `arisen' from electric currents and fizzing molecules within my fleshiness?

My driven feelings certainly don't believe so, and just why are they `driven'? 

That in itself is a significant question. 

There's something else those driven feelings disbelieve. And that is the contention that neurological mapping of the human brain will ever do anything for the understanding of the source of consciousness. Why? Well, because consciousness exists outside of physical reality. 

Consciousness is life...is being

More than mere biology. 

All neurological mapping shows is the response of the brain to consciousness and nothing more. It shows what we have made happen inside the brain. 

That's my view, and I will now present some arguments that support that view.

When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.

Edgar Mitchell

Consciousness Beyond Brain 

I believe that consciousness is `non-local', to borrow a phrase used in quantum physics, meaning without boundary - everywhere - universal. 

Not that I came up with this idea myself! 😉 Many other people have also written of this belief, from ancient times to modern times. But, I'm not going to just believe them because what they say feels right. I'm going to be scientific in my approach, putting forward some evidence that points to this.

 One personal body of evidence that I cannot help but draw upon is my own plethora of out-of-body experiences. This is, of course, very compelling to me, but less so to others! However, I ask sceptics to just hold their minds open for a bit and read on - just indulge me.

 During these experiences, I am able to see physical reality and hear physical reality, but obviously without using my sense organs, because I'm not in my body! 

Strange. 

How can this be? 

Doubters will totally deny that this is evidence, claiming that these experiences are some kind of elaborate illusion. Fair enough (but why should this happen?), but we also have an abundance of so-called `paranormal phenomena' that defy explanation, one of them being `remote viewing'. How can people `see' something that is in another continent? Isn't it a natural outgrowth of this phenomenon to propose that consciousness is not geographically limited? And what about clairvoyance, telepathy and the widely held belief of reincarnation? We also have documented cases of apparently time-transcending phenomena that occur in dreaming, such as precognition.

If you have time, try these videos for some interesting additional evidence:

Medical proof of consciousness and memory outside of the body.

Scientific Evidence Supporting a Theory of Consciousness Outside of the Brain 

Anita Moorjani Interview - A Near Death Experience

Evidence of the Afterlife - Dr. Jeffrey Long

Psychics Put to Prove Themselves in Scientific Testing!

Remote Viewing - Hal Puthoff

Being scientific about this evidence, we should first note that the concept of consciousness without boundary is a model that supports coherent explanations for ALL of these unexplained phenomena.

 Many people will claim that the evidence that I have mentioned in the previous three paragraphs is not evidence at all - more a load of hogwash! I can understand that it is difficult to believe for some people who have had no personal experience of this sort of thing. 

But consider much of the evidence that is the bedrock of modern scientific theories, for example, the concepts of parallel universes and 11 dimensions, or whatever! Isn't this rather less objectively and empirically substantial than the idea of consciousness existing beyond the skull? And what about dark matter, dark energy and dark flow? Based upon loose theory to fit assumption-riddled observations, aren't these merely ideas that attempt to plug holes bored by the inexplicable?

It is far from proven that consciousness is purely the outcome of brain activity, despite the repeated issuing of confident and undoubting statements in many scientific and neurological papers and magazines that `we' are finding out more and more about how the brain `creates our consciousness'! Not only is this far from proven, there is no supporting evidence that should even give rise to a belief that consciousness is a brain product at all, and yet, it's the enduring belief! Of course, the reason for this could be mainly steered by the desire to `keep the faith' in `rational' disbelief, especially as this is a disbelief that has been declared publicly as their professional stance.

The evidence often touted as proof that consciousness is manufactured in the brain is the fact that modern technology allows neurologists to observe that different activity occurs in different parts of the brain in direct correspondence to the type of thought that we are having. As a very general example, remembering things most heavily involves the hippocampus of the temporal lobe. Similarly, decisive thinking deeply involves the frontal lobe.

Whilst this is good scientific observation, isn't the conclusion that this proves that the brain is a big thought factory a flimsy conclusion to reach? After all, we can similarly observe that different parts of an orchestra surge into action to create a different mood of music during a concert. The music appears to arise purely from the mechanical activity of the instruments and arms and mouths that are operating them, but truly the mechanical activity is in essence just a sound producer; any music produced is in the coherence of the arising sounds, and is at the behest of a conductor and the instructions contained within a song sheet that has stored the outcome of a soul-deep process of composition.

To me, the idea of our entire `being' simply being the creation of brain activity is ridiculous. Is it good science to dismiss the probability that there is more than what we see, just because we don't physically detect it?

If consciousness is just the result of electrical brain activity, shouldn't it follow that this computer that I'm writing with is conscious, albeit to a primitive degree? Why not? I know that it has much organised electrical activity - far, far less than a human brain, but surely enough to constitute a primitive consciousness. No one in their right mind would suggest that this computer is conscious, though, would they? Well, at least I don't think it secretly discusses how it feels with other computers that are connected to the internet! 

At least we DO have anecdotal evidence for consciousness being more than just a physical phenomenon, provided by numerous accounts of remote viewing, precognition, telepathy, out-of-body experiences and past life regression and other reincarnation evidence, but these are widely and abruptly dismissed as wishful thinking, illusion and delusion. 

To use an allegory, I believe that one's body is just like a car that one's consciousness (spirit) climbs into in order to travel through one's physical life, necessary for interfacing with physical matter. It is a mistake to look at brain scans/mapping and, speaking metaphorically, conclude that it's the steering wheel that determines where the car goes, when it's the unseen driver who determines that.

We only need to notice how such creatures as ants, termites and bees act with such sophistication to suspect that consciousness is not just a product of brain complexity. Surely they can't have much brainpower, can they, in a head that size? Take ants, those tiny creatures who can even switch to different roles, as required within the community. When under attack, they perform systematic and strategic defence manoeuvres, with amazing rapidity. For example, when their nests are destroyed, they get straight on and do a rebuild, but more rapidly than the last time they built it! How does that compare with the efforts of us humans, I wonder? 

Taoism

The shape of the two sections of the symbol above represent the continual flowing movement between the two universal energies. At the extreme of Yin, Yang appears, and at the extreme of Yang, Yin appears; where Yang is greatest, Yin begins and vice versa. The dots symbolise the fact that, at the extreme maximum of one condition, the other always penetrates, because, at the extremes, instability occurs. There can never be one force without the other.

The `ideal' of Taoism is that when the principles of the Tao are embodied into our lives in a balanced way, avoiding extremes of anything, it is possible for people to find perfect harmony and happiness in their lives.

With life being busy and full of so many changes, simplifying life is regarded as helpful for bringing what is important into focus. Lao Tsu wrote the following:

“Dualistic thinking is a sickness. Religion is a distortion. Materialism is cruel. Blind spirituality is unreal. Chanting is no more holy than listening to the murmur of a stream, counting prayer beads no more sacred than simply breathing, religious robes no more spiritual than work clothes. If you wish to attain oneness with the Tao, don't get caught up in spiritual superficialities. Instead, live a quiet and simple life, free of ideas and concepts. Find contentment in the practice of undiscriminating virtue, the only true power. Giving to others selflessly and anonymously, radiating light throughout the world and illuminating your own darknesses, your virtue becomes a sanctuary for yourself and all beings. This is what is meant by embodying the Tao.”

Taoism also stresses the importance of seeing beyond distractions and looking to our hearts, as described in the Hua Hu Ching:

“Do not go about worshipping deities and religious institutions as the source of the subtle truth. To do so is to place intermediaries between yourself and the divine, and to make of yourself a beggar who looks outside for a treasure that is hidden inside his own breast. If you want to worship the Tao, first discover it in your own heart. Then your worship will be meaningful. ”

The Taoists `masters' taught the art of living and surviving by conforming with the natural way of things; they called their approach to action `wu wei', meaning `enlightened non-action'. They said that all straining and striving are counter-productive and that we should endeavour to merely follow this path of enlightened non-action.

This doesn't mean sitting back and doing nothing, as it first appears to the uninitiated. It means to discover what the natural forces of life are and follow them, rather than fighting against them, being spontaneous and adaptive in our actions, moving with a situation, rather than fighting against it.

Fighting against events is seen as a counter-productive response to life, so there can be regarded `action in non-action' and `non-action in action.'

As an ex-Qigong instructor, I am very aware that these principles are adhered to in the physical and mental aspects of the Chinese health disciplines and martial arts, as the human body and mind are part of the natural order of things. A good example of this is in the combat discipline of Tai Chi Chuan, where an opponent's attack is neutralised by first yielding, rather than resisting it with a strong countering force. This renders the opponent off-balance and a much lighter attacking force can then be applied to very good effect.

 The same philosophy is effective in the situations of our everyday life; it is by resisting a situation we allow it to impact upon us to a greater effect. As it is written in the Hua Hu Ching:

“ Acceptance is the very essence of the Tao. To embrace all things means also that one rids oneself of any concept of separation; male and female, self and other, life and death. Division is contrary to the nature of the Tao. Foregoing antagonism and separation, one enters in the harmonious oneness of all things.” and from the Tao Te Ching: “Embracing the Way, you become embraced; Breathing gently, you become newborn”

To summarise, Taoism is not a God-based religion; it is more a set of observations about the way life is and how we can work within our lives to live in the best way. As with most other major philosophies, Taoism tells us of the value of letting go of prejudices, moderation in action and opinion, the development of flexibility in our attitudes, enjoying the mystery of life, enjoying the beauty of life, humbling ourselves by recognising that we are part of everything and subject to its forces, having gratitude and love.

Finally, it also tells us that we cannot understand our life and the universe, however hard we try. Quoting from the translated Hua Hu Ching:

“The Tao gives rise to all forms, yet it has no form of its own. If you attempt to fix a picture of it in your mind, you will lose it. This is like pinning a butterfly: the husk is captured, but the flying is lost. Why not be content with simply experiencing it?”

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Still in the Dark

Latest cosmology:

FACT: Firstly, galaxy studies have shown that the stars in the outer arms of galaxies are rotating around the centre of the galaxy at the same speed as the stars near the center. This shouldn't happen – a perfect example of this is the solar system, where the outer planets move around the sun more slowly!

It is assumed that the only thing which could cause this is that there is greater gravity present in the outer arms of the galaxies.

To correct this anomaly, cosmologists have `invented' dark matter – the supposition that some other kind of matter that we can't detect exists, in the required quantity and correct position in space. This can be used to conveniently correct the maths which is used to support the big bang theory! All known matter either emits or reflects light......but this dark matter that is proposed appears to do neither.

I believe that all known matter is currently modelled by a theory comprising 24 different particles. Super Symmetry predicts that there must be 24 new particles which spin in the opposite direction (dark matter?) and which would pass straight through `normal' matter.

We have suppositions built upon suppositions!

FACT: A huge telescope, located in Chili, has been used to determine that the expansion of the universe is still speeding up, not slowing down as it should after a huge explosion such as the `big bang'. After such an explosion, collective gravity should act as a brake to any expansion, so why is there increasing acceleration?

Cosmologists suggest that the only way that the expansion could speed up is if extra energy is being produced from somewhere! Does this mean that the big bang is still happening, that energy is being produced from somewhere which is speeding up stellar movement?

Cosmologists can't find this energy, so they call it `dark energy'! What could it be – anti-gravity? Or could it be that the space between the universal matter contains energy which is causing this expansion rate increase?

Dark energy is the energy of `nothing'......or `space'. So, it appears that `nothing' is `taking over' in the universe – increasing in amount.

Once again, we have a `model', called `dark energy'. However, we must remember that, like dark matter, dark energy isn't a solution to a problem; it is merely a description of a problem. It makes the maths fit what is really happening!

So, we have a universe which starts with an explosion, according to theory; it then inflates and dark energy forms, and continues to form, fueling the expansion process and `stretching' the universe, like elastic. I think that all we can say is that some unseen force is controlling things – “Perhaps we should take it at face value” I recall a leading cosmologist from America saying, when I watched a TV programme on the subject.

Regarding the Big Bang Theory, see: Was there a big bang?

To explain some anamolies about the Big Bang Theory, cosmologists have invented `Dark Flow'!

Dark flow is the supposition that there is something else beyond our universe – something which is causing the stars and planets to move towards something.

Cosmologists are now hoping to find some more truths; the trouble is that the more that is discovered, the more alternative theories can be created to explain the discoveries! As more is discovered, more questions emerge! Hmm...I've heard that before somewhere!

Even what we have so far is only a story, built on mystery!

As discoveries increase, I have to say that I start more and more to wonder if what we see in deep space is not what we think we see....hmmm... mind you, I'm wavering, though.......space craft have proved that the solar system is what we see....perhaps I'm wrong with this intuitive hunch.......that is a danger of trusting just intuition, without left-brain intervention!

I do start to think about David Bohm's `Implicate Order', i.e. that there is another underlying reality, a `consciousness' from which our physical reality manifests, or, put another way - God! After all, quantum physics does seem to suggest that matter is just energy, and it does seem reasonable to suggest that thought is also energy. Have we discovered an underlying energy in action when the way in which `quanta' are observed appears to affect the behavoir of photons?

Pausing for thought........again! Are answers coming to us? Due respect to the cosmologists, but don't hold your breath!