2016
You may immediately be thinking, “Wow, that’s kind of a depressing and blunt question?” I thought so myself, but how many times have you asked yourself a question of this sort? I remember a particular situation (I can laugh about now) where I was taking some math final (my second time taking the same class with the same professor - my strong suit was not mathematics…at all!); it was my last year of college and if I didn’t pass the class…my life was “O-V-E-R”! Before, during, and after the final I said multiple times, something along the lines of: “Ugh, my life sucks; why was I born’ what’s the whole point of this; WHY DOES LIFE ON EARTH EXIST - I hate math…why me!” I was very dramatic, yes, I know. I went from being upset about something “petty” (now) to questioning life and even my existence (not in a suicidal way - just got “randomly” philosophically curious during a math final, that’s all).
Now getting older, life events get “bigger” (weird/strange or a coincidence how that happens?), where I ask the same questions, but really and truly meaning it. If you have never questioned life and existing (that’s cool- don’t know if it’s good or bad…maybe you just haven’t had that ‘math’ class you disliked…), then, well, welcome to my Online Diary (haha). If you have asked yourself this question (or something of the sort), know it’s completely normal - that may be why philosophers exist; scientists; and theologists’?
Humans like to feel pleasure. If you feel anything besides pleasure, you will find something to replace that feeling of discomfort to gain pleasure again. This could be any aspect in your life- relationships, career, food, home, etc. In the book, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, a situation arises where a lady is displeased with her significant other and walks out of the restaurant in a rage. “She’s just like the rest of us. We’re looking for more fulfillment in our lives, and we won’t put up with anything that seems to bring us down. This restless searching is what’s behind the ‘me-first’ attitude that has characterized recent decades, and it’s affecting everyone, from Wall Street to street gangs.”
This is a broad topic- I just want to cover the surface (not write a book…yet) as I feel it’s a topic/question that needs to be openly discussed. I wanted to write about the meaning of Life, because I don’t want to end up hiding the question deep within myself and let life situations “get the best of me”, without knowing that I can control the outcome.
So, obviously the first thing I did was ‘Google search’, “What is the meaning of Life?” Wikipedia (this is a platform with sources within, so unlike middle school, I find nothing wrong with it, if you use it correctly) gave me clarity. “The search for life’s meaning has produced much philosophical, scientific, theological, and metaphysical speculation throughout history…Many other issues are also involved, such as symbolic meaning, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will, the existence of one or multiple gods, conceptions of God, the soul, and the afterlife…An alternative, humanistic approach poses the question, “What is the meaning of my life?”
First off, how did Life on Earth begin to exist in the first place?
According to Robert Lanza and Bob Berman, authors of, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, “The cosmos (according to recent refinements) sprang out of nothingness 13.7 billion years ago, in a titanic event humorously labeled the Big Bang.”
In The Celestine Prophecy, Redfield talks about the Big Bang and how energy transferred, created LIFE “…then two investigations occurred, which opened our eyes again into the mystery of the universe. Much has been written over the last several decades, about the revolution in physics, but the changes really stem from two major findings: those of quantum mechanics and those of Albert Einstein. the whole of Einstein’s work was to show that what we perceive as hard matter, is mostly empty space, with a pattern of energy running through it. This includes ourselves. And what quantum physics has shown; when we look at these patterns of energy of smaller and smaller levels, startling results can be seen. Experiments have revealed that when you break apart small aspects of this energy, what we call elementary particles and try to observe how they operate, the act of observation itself alters the results….as if these elementary particles are influenced by what the experimenter expects….In other words the basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy, malleable to human intention and expectation…”
What that paragraph simply says, is that us humans, with the act of observation and energy…we are creating Life. Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Get out. No freaking way.” Makes sense though. Have you heard that if you talk to a plant, it will grow faster. Wait, even cooler. After you EAT plants, how alive do you feel? Energy transfers from the mountains, to the flowers, to the grass, to the animals…everything prospers, forms, and grows. Wait, I’m not done. An article from Jeremy England in Quanta Magazine, goes on to talk about Entropy or Energy.
“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant…At the heart of England’s idea is the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of increasing entropy or the “arrow of time.” Hot things cool down, gas diffuses through air, eggs scramble but never spontaneously unscramble; in short, energy tends to disperse or spread out as time progresses. Entropy is a measure of this tendency, quantifying how dispersed the energy is among the particles in a system, and how diffuse those particles are throughout space. It increases as a simple matter of probability: There are more ways for energy to be spread out than for it to be concentrated. Thus, as particles in a system move around and interact, they will, through sheer chance, tend to adopt configurations in which the energy is spread out. Eventually, the system arrives at a state of maximum entropy called “thermodynamic equilibrium,” in which energy is uniformly distributed. A cup of coffee and the room it sits in become the same temperature, for example. As long as the cup and the room are left alone, this process is irreversible. The coffee never spontaneously heats up again because the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against so much of the room’s energy randomly concentrating in its atoms.”
Now secondly, “Why am I here?”
Redfield talks about 'Spiritual Awakening' (nothing to do with religion)- “it begins with the recognition of an inner urge to find more meaning in life, than the issue of bodily survival or day-to-day mundane matters. We may be quite happy but a deeper truth eludes us - yet we know it is there. As we respond to this inner prompting and step back to look more objectively, we begin to notice "chance coincidences," that are really no coincidence but rather synchronistic events in our life. This synchronicity demonstrates that an underlying process is operating, that there is a causative factor underlying the material and mechanical - spiritual forces that oneself is playing a part in.”
In The Huffington Post, by Robert Lanza, he talks about the existence of human consciousness: “When asked if he believed in God, even Einstein replied “There must be something behind the energy.” According to biocentrism, that something is the human (or animal) mind. It’s you, the observer, who collapses reality. Consciousness is one side of the equation, and matter and energy the other. In these days of experiment and disconnected theory, one point seems certain: the nature of the universe can’t be divorced from the nature of life itself. If they’re split, the reality is gone…In this world, only an act of observation can confer shape and form to reality -− to a dandelion in a meadow, or a seed pod, or the sun or wind or rain. Anyway, it’s impressive, and your cat or dog can do it, too. And even the spider, there on her web, moored outside my window.
The answer to life and the universe can’t be found by looking through a microscope or inspecting spiral galaxies. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves. Our consciousness is why they exist. It unifies the thinking, extended worlds into a coherent experience and animates the music that creates our emotions and purposes -− the good and the bad, wars and love. It doesn’t load the dice for you to play the game of life. True, there’s pain and strife everywhere. But as Will Durant pointed out, we need to see “behind the strife, the friendly aid of neighbors, the rollicking joy of children and young men, the dances of vivacious girls, the willing sacrifices of parents and lovers, the patient bounty of the soil, and the renaissance of spring.”
“She leaned toward me. “Have you ever had a hunch or intuition concerning something you wanted to do? Some course you wanted to take in your life? And wondered how it might happen? And then, after you had half forgotten about it and focused on other things, you suddenly met someone or read something or went somewhere that led to the very opportunity?”
Charlene looked down at the table for an instant and then back at me. “Don’t misunderstand,” she said. “Certaintly this consciousness has been experienced and described before. In fact, the priest made a point to say that the first insight wasn’t new. He said individuals have been aware of these unexplained coincidences throughout history, that this has been the perception behind many great attempts at philosophy and religion. But the difference now lies in the numbers. According to the priest, the transformation is occurring now because of the number of individuals having this awareness all at the same time.
What did he mean, exactly? I asked.
He told me the Manuscript says the number of people who are conscious of such coincidences would begin to grow dramatically in the sixth decade of the twentieth century. He said that this growth would continue until sometime near the beginning of the following century, when we would reach a specific level of such individuals— a level I think of as a critical mass.”
— The Celestine Prophecy
I was born, and I can’t do anything about that. Now I’m here on this universe to be with other humans; plants; animals; nature- to do the best I can with my human existence. Not to compete or be better than anyone but use my consciousness to create the reality I want. To create, take, and transfer energy. To me this means: teach, learn, grow, give, nourish, forgive, don’t hate, receive…manifest my reality with my consciousness and the coincidences that happen before me.
So, why do you exist? To give to others and our universe. The universe needs us (and our energy), and we need the universe. Everything that grows is because it was given something. Plants are given water and they in-turn grow and give you energy. “That's why in real experiments, the properties of matter - and space and time themselves — depend on the observer. Your consciousness isn't just part of the equation — the equation is you,” says Lanza. We are one with the universe.