The Human Condition

The strangest part of life and death to me is that time always carries on. You live your life to its fullest, or to its lowest, and when you die time carries on. ‘You’ become a decomposing mass of inanimate molecules. Your body stops working. Your memories are lost. Your experiences, your secrets. Every detail about your suppressed or gratifying moments are vanquished. You no longer exist the way you were. Your brain dies. This constructed identity of ‘you’ dies.

This concept of spirit is so lavish now, isn’t it? How can we die? How can we exist, then we don’t; it just stops? We are sentient. We are alive. Are these only gifts of the brain, consequences of complexity? What is me, then? The central observer witnessing my senses and emotions, observing my surroundings. For my body does not do that, not when I dream. Perhaps my brain, but “I” am the one that is in the dream. “I” am the one that experiences my dreams, I become conscious in lucid dreams, not my body. Do “I” die with my body? Or do I carry on in sentience after death? My body recycled back to the physical realm, and my spirit back to its?

"How can life be afraid of death? Life knows nothing of death."

- Osho

Death is our reminder, our humble teacher. The sad truth of being a physical being. We are on a timer, and we frequently ignore it for the sake of our comfort. Our existence is finite, and time only seems to be passing quicker and quicker as we become more familiar with the passing of it. We live our lives flustered, trying to figure out what is happening to us, or trying to manage to live without the thoughts of death and reality seeping into our minds. We search for answers and strive for goals, all of which will inevitably be forgotten. We all know this deep down, yet we strive. We place value only in our future. We fight, and we grow. I suppose it is better than giving up and dying. It seems that is the essence of life; fighting against the universe, maintaining order, and preserving ourselves. Preventing the natural courses of nature. Everyday we lose so many to the natural flow of our cosmos. We are all little flames, extinguished by the cold winds of death. We must nurture our flames, and each other’s. In the end, sentience is the ultimate concern of people.

We are confused and detached, unable to connect the dots we resort to supernatural explanations. Logic, however, is difficult to apply here. Nothing about this life makes sense in the way we want it to, nor do I see it making sense any time soon. However, we are sentient. All of us. Not just humans but animals, bugs, all creatures. We all share this consciousness, obviously of different levels of awareness and capability, but consciousness is consciousness. Not all of us are able to see this, and people find differences among us to prioritize ourselves over others, and with it detach from all other beings. But nonetheless, our sentience is what connects us. Its what connects you to you. Sentience is the ability to be aware in this moment, not to be animated or biological. Sentience is the gift of volition, of experience and sensation. Why is it so hard to help each other with this life? Why can’t we share this burden together, and with it find harmony among ourselves? That is the most effective way of living; symbiotically. Death is the enemy, not opposing deities or political regimes. Not which way to think about it is right and which is wrong. There are an infinite number of ways to think about it. What is important is that we love. This is the only way we can survive, through love.

"You can tell the size of a man by the size of the things that bother him"- Adlai E. Stevenson

People become so angry over such little things. It is sad to see people let such small things affect them so immensely. It seems people take offence where they can, as if they cherish it. It brings people power, it brings people reason to be mad, reason to feel something, reason to fight and act out. These are all such superficial causes. The reason they are mad and angry are much much deeper than the fact someone disagreed with their interpretation of gender, or disagreed with their ideology. The things people become offended about all have to do with identity or belief. When you create instability in someone's identity they become upset, they are angry because they start to question their identity or their reality, and this causes massive upset. This is a cause of clinging to thoughts, clinging to ideas and superficial constructs that we deem real. These are illusions, the need for you to identify yourself as something, such as a specific gender or ideology, is pointless. The only person this is for is yourself, or your conception of what you think others think of you. So long as you know what you are experiencing is real why would you care what others think? If you love and if they love there is no need for petty arguments over what I am relative to what you are. Additionally, why would you criticize what others are feeling? The internal decisions of others does not affect you. You do not know them, you are not them, and thus you have no domain over what they feel. In all reality, they're just as lost as you. Your true identity is merely sentience, the rest is just self constructed layers we coat ourselves with in an attempt to fit in, or be unique.

We live in an era of ignorance. We are not aware of what is going on in our minds. We fade into the background of our being as our mind chatters and spews us thoughts and sways how we feel about things. These habitual thoughts lead to beliefs and views, and eventually actions. If you are unaware that you are thinking, there is no way to stop destructive thought patterns. This is why meditative practices are so vital in the progression of your mind. Meditation is not a strict practice, meditation can be found or done anywhere. Meditation is the practice of being aware, it is focusing your mind and being saturated in your current situation, regardless of what that is.

The Responsibility of the Gifted

We have reached a point of civilization in which us humans are responsible for more than just ourselves. We alone depict the fate of almost every other species on our planet, and it is quite evident we are being irresponsible. We are being ignorant and selfish. Humans are not the only observers in this universe, even if the spiritual realm so many invest faith in does not exist, I still encourage the utmost respect for all observers in this cosmos. No matter what they are. Regardless of their body, they too are struggling with life, and they too will benefit from love, as will you. Not all beings are going to reciprocate this, as most beings on Earth (including humans) are more aware of their instinctual impulses and act defensively or aggressively. That is okay, so long as you do not match such behaviour and continue to interact in a loving way they can potentially, with time, come to understand. With animals, this may be much more difficult to attain, however, we are technologically capable of evading basically any animal without the need to harm them.

There are answers to all of our problems, but to find them we must progress our way of thinking, and to progress we must change. These answers are likely not what we want to hear, or what we want to do. That is because we have never done them, we do not know the rewards of change we have not experienced. Our world is in a very fragile stage, with a conglomerate of loving idols and cold leaders. It is the segregation of power, and the misconception of our leaders that is ruining our world. Our leaders are far too often not conscientious people.

“Being a skillful talker does not make you wise.”

People’s minds are far too ductile these days. We are all indoctrinated, to one extent or another. The ones who are aware of it are often too light of heart to do anything about it, which is why movements of love are so often dismissed whereas movements of hate are so prevalent. Relativistically speaking, we live in such a blissful society. Everyone abiding the same rules, everyone working together. It truly is amazing. But the leaders of our society are not the ones that do this, we the people are. The face of my nation (Canada) is a young man who is ambitious, and that is great for a nation, but what is better for a nation is someone who does not want to lead. Someone who simply wants to guide, who wants to softly direct his pupil in the direction of growth. It is not up to one person, it is up to a nation. No one person is capable of making decisions for an entire country.

It is hard to know which path we are on, both in life and in society, as pleasure is not a characteristic of growth. In fact, it often appears to be quite the contrary. People are scared to change. If we tried to change our society one day, everyone would lose their minds. It is this change and uncertainty that people siphon their fears through. They find reasons to cause chaos as their inner world is projected onto ours. It is important our society moves with great tact, as so many humans are very lost in their world. They are not to blame, there is no one to blame. It simply is the way we are, but the great thing about it is that we can share our knowledge with others. We can enlighten others on these truths of our existence, and bring them to terms with it. If every human had to first invent the wheel before they could use it, we would not be anywhere near where we are now. It is this knowledge, like a flame, that we can spread that makes our species and others alike so promising and enduring. Our species has so much knowledge, so much power, yet we waste it. We remain in the shadow of comfort, fearful of what change may bring. We all strive our whole lives to be the flower of our world, the hero, yet the flower is nothing more than the soil in which it grew. We are all at our own center. Our own observation point, our own world, in which we see and judge. Conquer that world instead, and I promise you will find much more gratification than first attempting to conquer others'.

Letting Go of Yourself

As you sit here, focus your mind on your breath, but be aware of your emotional body. You can feel emotions all throughout your body; your chest, your stomach, your eyes. These can be good emotions, bad emotions. Perhaps it is stress, anxiety, excitement, depression. Perhaps you have a sense of longing for time to pass, or a sense of resistance to something you must do. These emotions arise throughout your day, and if you do not bring awareness to them they become apparent in your actions. Emotions, like knots in your muscles, are eased by bringing awareness to them, nurturing them. Once they are addressed, you no longer have this emotional limp, and you can make conscious decisions based on your genuine desires, rather than your fallible fears. These techniques were never taught to me as a child, nor any other that I was aware of. It seems us as a species is unaware of our emotional bodies. We can have good diets, exercise daily, but our emotional body is left drained and uncared for. As we become aware of this side of us, we are able to be more consistently in a positive state, more susceptible to growth. Emotional issues often arise from interactions with others, and in such interactions both emotional bodies are likely damaged. This creates a mutually assured destruction of negative interactions. The negative emotions are accumulated even more after the interaction, as people sit in their mind and argue with themselves as if speaking to the person, in which they create phantasmal realities in their mind, and this simply amplifies the negative interaction. When you are confronted with a negative interaction, it is very important that you consider what happened. First, observe objectively what happened, and be aware of your wrong doings as well as theirs. Seeing your own faults are often most difficult as we are so accustomed to seeing things through our perspective, it is important to consider the alternate observer’s perspective as well. After such conclusions are made, you are able to learn from this. And after that, the experience has no benefit to you and should be let go. Thinking of this interaction will only make things worse. Take a deep breath, release the past, occupy the present, and carry on with the tasks that are immediately at hand. That is only one example of where these residual emotions can come from. They can also arise from fears, typically subconscious fears, in which are much more difficult to address and typically require intensive self-exploration and honesty, as well as courage to face them. As you live through these perpetual interactions, the emotions that are produced from them that are not released are carried with you. This can be good or bad, as we experience both positive and negative interactions. It is important to do this to both positive and negative interactions, as an over attachment to these positive interactions cause us to attempt to recreate such events, sacrificing new positive interactions from the fallacy that recreating past events is possible. Happiness is available to those that do not cling to other emotions that occur. Happiness is our ground state, and to reach it you must let go of this false conception of yourself.