The Odds Against Your Existence

Imagine if your mother married someone else.
Would you be here reading this right now?
Then that might mean your father may have ended up with someone else as well.
Now if they both, separately, had a single child with their alternate spouses, which one do you think you'd be? As in, would you come into existence as your mother's child, or your father's?

The answer is neither. You are only you- the unique, specific combination of your own mother and your own father, which has happened and most likely will only happen once in the entire history of the universe. Now you may say I would have been my mother's daughter even if she married someone else,
wrong, it wouldn't be You. You, as you right now, would not exist!

Now think of your two sets of grandparents. Imagine if just one of them ended up with a different spouse. Would you be here reading this right now?
Nope.

Now imagine that long, very specific lineage of couples that had to come together, generation after generation after generation after generation. If this exact, specific sequence of coupling, dating back to the beginning of man, did not pair up exactly in the way that they did, you would not be here. Imagine, out of all those people, thousands of generations of couples, just one of them ended up with another spouse, then you would not exist. You would be nothing. (State your name here) _____ would Not be, right here, right now, sitting here, reading these words. Try to imagine that alternative as reality for a moment.

Now go outside, enjoy a deep breath of fresh air and give thanks to the millions of opportunities and events that had to occur specifically as they did over the past couple million years in order for you to merely exist. Some gratitude is in order whether it's for God, fate, beautiful random accidents in the universe, or some combination of all of the above. It's a beautiful thing once you realize the magnitude of probabilities that were stacked against the favor of your existence.

But here you are, right here, right now.
Let this be a reminder, that everything is as it should be, just for you.

Conscious Driving

Are you choosing what you're doing?

Are you aware of where you are in the context of your existence?

Are you "on track" to do all that you want to do, experience all that you want to experience, accomplish all that you want to accomplish with the 15,000 - 20,000 days left of your existence?

Your time is in fact limited. Do you know what you want to get out of this life before its over?

Well the probability of you doing or achieving something, is significantly increased with the simple awareness of identifying what it is you want to do or achieve. Meaning those that know what they want have a much better chance of achieving success in whatever they're doing versus those who don't know. If you don't know, do you want to know? Just fast forward to the last 3 years of your life and consider what regrets you may have. Basically, it would be best to get to the winter of your life with a feeling of maximum fulfillment and zero regret. If you want to know, then dig deeper, the closer and closer you look at it, question it, search for it, basically the more attention you give to it, the sooner you will find it. It is not a matter of when you will find it, it is a matter of how hard are you really trying.

So ask yourself, right now, what do you want in this life.

Everything is Changing

Everything around us constantly changing. Everything. Always. From the seeds growing in the ground, to every cell in our bodies constantly growing and moving without our conscious will, to the sun that rises and falls everyday without any of our effort, to metal oxidizing, to the decay of organic materials, to the shaping of the earth's land by it's oceans, to the automatic, natural transitions between gas, liquid and solid states, to the forces of gravity and electromagnetism, expanding and contracting all around the universe, to the the perpetually expanding universe itself.

It is all moving, growing, changing, dying, redefining, rejuvenating, and reconstituting itself all the time, and always has been. But is there a birth to all of this? Conceptually, it does not seem feasible for there to have been a time before all of this movement where "nothing" was happening. For if there was "nothing", how could any "thing" be started from "nothing"? There would have to be "a something" to start something.

Imagine the universe and everything that is in a state of nothingness, what could have possibly happened during that time, to initiate some kind of motion, from absolute nothing, that would begin all of this going on right now in the universe? If the Big Bang was correct, so what? Is it not infinity before the nothingness that preceded the Big Bang anyways? Or even if God created everything in 7 days, what was he doing for eternity before that? Was he born? Maybe this perspective, or this understanding we have of time is the problem. We have a need to know what the "beginning" is. Because that would then dictate the "end".

We also have to admit, science has come along quite a bit since the days of Galileo. We have solid, concrete evidence of certain things, and not of other things. I'm not talking about things that are debated today, but those things we all know without a shadow of a doubt are true, but once thought were ridiculous, such as the earth being round.
But the mere idea of this when it was first introduced was fiercely ridiculed by the church because it suggested that man and Earth were not at the center of the universe. Everyone please stop and think about this for a second, we are not the center of the universe.

"Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
-Arthur C. Clarke

Do you know how old mankind is? I believe the oldest human remains are about 6 million years old, but who knows, maybe there are older remains that are 20 million, or even 100 million years old. Whatever it is, now think about how much longer has the earth been around before mankind, unless you believe in creationism. The difference would probably be somewhere between millions and billions of years. On top of that, the universe would have to be much older than the earth. So how can humans really be a significant element in the context of the life of the universe? We are just a tiny fragment, an insignificant blip in the life of the universe. Just look at how much space we occupy in the universe. Imagine if we blew up our own planet, destroying all life as we know it, it wouldn't change much in the grander scheme of things in the universe. Really, what would happen to the rest of the universe? Would just sit there? For the rest of time...forever? Doing nothing? In all that time, wouldn't you think the possibility of life starting again would be pretty good- I mean, its eternity, there is no time limit. Somehow it happened before, chances are it could happen again given the infinite time frame. And maybe we came from nothing, but what came before the nothing? Isn't it probable some life was there before? If not already there in another part of the universe.

So if our planet, life as we know it, all of mankind and its history, is such a small, insignificant speck in the overall universe, what is the significance of our existence? It all comes down to appreciating what has happened so far.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine not being. Imagine you never existed. You would not even know it, right? Compare this absolute nothingness to the something of an existence you have right now. Doesn't this make Anything better than nothing? In fact, it makes everything that exists around us... a miracle.

What Are You?

Look at your hands. Move your fingers around. Your brain is simply sending signals to move each finger. Just like a car being controlled, with a driver telling it what to do.

Now this exercise seeks to separate the car from the driver, in order to take a closer look at your driver...you. What are "you"?

The Barrel Exercise

Imagine standing next to an empty barrel.

Now if I asked you where you were, you could say, "I'm here", outside of the barrel.

Now imagine your hand was cutoff, and placed in the barrel. You could still say "I'm here", while your hand would be in the barrel.

Now imagine your arms were cut off and placed in the barrel. Again, you could still say "I'm here", with your arms and hands inside the barrel.

Now imagine your legs were cut off and placed in the barrel.

And next your torso.

Then all of your remaining hair.

Then your face.

Then the rest of your skin.

Then all of your muscles, joints, veins, ligaments, and bones.

And all of your remaining organs except for your brain, which was then somehow kept alive and conscious through an imaginary life support system that allowed you to maintain communication with us.

Now if we were to ask you where you were, your brain could still think and communicate to us "I am here", with all of your body parts in the barrel.

Now take a closer look at the human brain.

Think of your favorite car. Really, take a moment to stop and quickly picture it in your head before proceeding.

What did you see? What color was it? What was in the background? What angle were you viewing the car at? From the front? From the inside? From the side?
Do you know where this image originated from?

When you have a thought, or a memory, or say something, or do something, it is just a series of electric signals firing across a web of synapses in a certain part of the brain, that then communicate to the rest of your body. So if we were to continue in our journey of removing all that is truly not the "driver" in your body, could we remove all those remaining pieces of the brain that are just parts of the "car"?

When I then ask you where you are, and something responds to my query, it is just a series of electrical signals that specify a message "I am here", while the rest of your body parts that are not needed for this direct communication are in the barrel.

So is that what you are? A series of electrical signals that compose thoughts of response?
Now take a closer look at electrical signals. It is merely a flow of charged particles.
Is that what you are? No, that is still just the message being sent from the driver. Like the pieces connecting the steering wheel all the down to the wheels turning.

So then when I ask you, "where are you?", and some electrical signals are fired off, specifying a message back to me "I am here", the question is, from where are these electrical signals originating? Once the sounds of my question leave my mouth, and are then heard through your ears, then quickly processed by your brain, there is a brief moment of response preparation.
The incoming message is translated, interpreted and then You, the driver prepares the response and sends it out. Before the outgoing response is projected, like a stopped car in an open lot, it has a plethora of directions, or choices to choose from. It then selects one. This selection helps to define You. Just like the favorite car you pictured a moment ago. Where did that image come from? It came from the driver.

Once you're more aware of your driver, you must then ask him/her where are they driving to?
See the post Conscious Driving next.