01.30.2002
Life, Contradictions, We are not bodies, Think about it...
I
think it's time to attempt to convey some feelings that I have long held. They
seem obvious to me and yet I don't know that I can make them seem obvious via
words, but I'm going to try.
We exist. If there
is one thing I am sure the reader will not deny is that we do exist. The impossibility
of that defies all reason, yet that impossibility seems to go largely unrecognized.
If it is recognized, then it is often just brushed aside as something too counfounding
to ponder. We may say, that god created us. Fair enough. But how? Forget how.
Where? Did "where" exist before god created it? What existed before god?
These are not foolish
questions that have not way of being answered. These are thought provoking questions
that can lead one into discovering just how amazing it is that we exist. I have
long felt that when it has been suggested that this world is an illusion, that
it is in many ways, though the term implies that it is not "real", which is
not true at all. It is as real as real gets. What makes it real is that it is
experienced. What makes it not so real is that it is not the complete picture
that it presents itself to be. Like a movie is real and yet it isn't. Even a
movie based on facts is not "Real", though it may feel real, which make it real
in it's own way. This reality that we are together experiencing is real in it's
own way.
Evolution
could never have begun. Creation could never have happened. Each presupposes
ideas that are contradictory. Let's look at that a bit.
Evolution says,
in effect, that there was nothing, then some small stuff, that got started somehow.
This led to greater and greater organization until here we are. Humans, hanging
around wondering how we got here. So what made the initial "stuff" that became
us? What guided that development? What gives intelligence to a sugar molecule
that we call DNA? The contradiction? What started the process? Give it some
thought. Be brave and see what you come up with. Try to fathom what we are talking
about here. It's part of us all. Evolution relies on the creation of stuff.
It relies on a source that even science will often acknowledge in private quarters
as god.
Creation says, god
made it all in some way. Yet things evolve. We change. We evolve. So creationists
must acknowledge evolution to some degree. If you have a child, that child changes
throughout it's life. Did you create that child? Does it's own evolution detract
from your involvement?
But even if we acknowledge
that life is a mystery, we may still get stuck thinking in ordinary physical
terms, such as, 'well, that's not for me to understand. It's in god's domain.'
That seems like a shirking of our inherent ability to think and explore. We
are as not here as we are here. We exist in a domain that can not exist as we
believe it does. There can be no space to be in. It can not exist for this simple
reason. It could not have ever come into being as space. Existence is not like
a room to be filled where someone called god comes along and picks out the pieces
to place in the room. If god came along, god didn't come along down a road,
in a car or on a beam of light. There could not have been "things" prior to
god because even god is not a thing.
There is the problem
with being human as it is presented to us today. We are "thing" focused. We
may call it physically focused or any other term that makes sense, but we are
focused and structured around the 5 senses. We readily dismiss that which falls
outside of those 5 senses, even when there is evidence to support it. We are
good at what we do. What we do is exclude what is not a part of our 5 senses.
The senses of a molecule of air are different than the senses of an atom or
even the senses of a DNA molecule to which we often credit the intelligence
of life.
I don't feel that
I have yet sufficiently made my point, so I'll struggle a bit more with this.
What you know for sure is that you experience. You may feel that you are your
body, but that is how you feel when you are dreaming. Your dream body is real
to you as you dream. It is experienced. The same is true for what you consider
to be your "real" body. But like your dream body, your "real" body is experienced
as "real", but is not the kind of real that most have been trained to believe.
It is experienced as real. It is real because it is experienced. It is not real
because it is physical and because you can't seem to be without while you are
here. Just because it is a tenacious little bugger doesn't make it any more
real than your body is in a dream. After waking up you can say, "that was 'only'
a dream" because you can place it as not within the world that you call "real."
But that doesn't make it less real than what you think of as your own physical
body.
Were you to be able
to wake up to the greater part of you, then you would have a new reference point.
This reference point would be outside of what you think of as the main reference
point of your physical body. You would see the life you are living as an aspect
of yourself, like a dream is an aspect of yourself. But this is unbelievable
to many folks, but to others, it is the way it really is.
There is a odd thing
here that I find peculiar. Most people believe in god and an afterlife of some
sort. Yet I would venture to guess that many of us don't feel that we can directly
be part of that in a profound way. We believe and yet part of us doesn't. I
also have a degree of feeling that I am not able to directly experience what
I'm talking about here, though I have a number of times. I have not been able
to control it to such a degree that I am completely assured of what I speak
and yet I know that what I'm speaking about is true. It's partly why I express
these views in a fashion that is designed for others to read. By expressing
these views I'm forcing myself to remember what is so easy to forget.
Forgetfulness
We are all
masters of forgetting. That's what's so cool about realizing what I'm trying
to express here. We create this and do it with such precision and cooperation,
in spite of what seems to be great conflict, and we do it to such a great degree
that we can even argue that it isn't happening. We are incredible. I do believe
from experience that we are cooperating more than we would feel comfortable
knowing. But that still is disconcerting since the cooperation is often painful
as evidenced by wars and the lack of mutual support at the human consciousness
level, the "I don't remember" mode of most of humanity. I don't remember much.
Some do. I just remember that I existed before this life.
I still don't think
I made my point, but I think I made some progress. Take care. -Duane