|| To Experience Life ||

In the days of ever increasing interconnectivity, are we losing touch with the human experience? The other day I read an article about how social media sparks higher narcissistic tendencies in people, and a quote that stuck out to me read, “people are unable to experience life for what it is.” As a culture, we’re disproportionally focused on the importance of the individual. Our desire to market ourselves to the outside world as special and unique has become a near constant quest. And while we are all unique and special in our talents, they are not demonstrated through the superficial; our individualism is special because it connects us as part of a whole, it allows us to use our talents to benefit our entire human community – not just ourselves. Yet we look around daily and see people essentially staging their lives, hoping to capture the perfect picture, aiming to create this illusion we’ve decided is necessary in hopes of curating our ideal self image. Dreaming to better ourselves is a wonderful thing, but we are doing it in the wrong way – we are forgetting to live, connect, experience the present and appreciate its genuine beauty.

When our online lives showcase our superficial attributes and our less-than-realistic realities we lose touch with our actual realities, we forget how to live in the moment because we are so focused on uploading the next highly altered photo. Instead of reveling in the irreplaceable beauty of the present moment we are seeing it through the eyes of our camera lenses; instead of solidifying in our memories what the present looks like, smells like, tastes like, sounds like, feels like we are focusing on how our peers will view this moment. The desire to be accepted is entirely human, and healthy to some extent, but I believe our culture has gone beyond this to a place where we provoke competition, comparison, judgment and jealousy. Instead of finding our genuine happiness by doing the things we love, we are causing others to feel badly about themselves and their realities by producing false and inauthentic images, in the hopes to sell the idea that we are the best.

Living a life you are proud of is integral to a happy existence, but is that really what we are doing when we spend so much time creating an idealized image of ourselves for others to judge? Are we really doing what brings us joy and working towards self-love when we’re constantly focusing away from our present moment? When we look around to see so many people starring down at their phones, furthering themselves from human connection and their experience of life, it feels like we’ve created a fake culture, a culture of make believe. We are losing touch with ourselves and with one another. The more our focus is on ourselves, on the ironically named social media platforms, on our superficial image, the less we know how to truly live.

Let’s remember to do the things we love because we love them, not because we hope others will too. Let’s remember to appreciate the ever dwindling human contact which surrounds us. Let’s force ourselves to remain intertwined in the present moment, even if that means feeling uncomfortable feelings. Push back the urge to grapple for our phones the second we are bored or feeling alone, take a deep breath, let the life-giving air flow through our bodies, listen to the sound of silence, find peace in the chaos, and remember how incredible it is to be alive.

|| We are all just Cosmic Accidents ||

“Look again at that dot.
That’s here.
That’s home.
That’s us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” >>Carl Sagan<<

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How strange it is that we are encouraged to tout our hardened beliefs like they’re medals of honor. Standing unmovably by our beliefs is often included at as a desirable characteristic in people. I’m not referring to basic human ethics, like refraining from killing and torture, but about the random array of half baked ideas that our civilization encourages as facts. Taking a firm stance on certain subjects in the vast ever-evolving pool of knowledge is like insisting the world is still flat because it looks that way. This blind adamancy is essentially admitting that we have closed off our thought process on that particular topic, that we are standing willingly in ignorance regardless of the weight other ideas may hold. There is a wonderful quote by Grace Hopper, “the most dangerous phrase in language is ‘we’ve always done it this way.’” Rather than valuing outdated knowledge and methods of living as an upstanding quality why not encourage adaptability, open mindedness, and the ability to embrace admitting fault – because admitting fault it is an authentic sign of progression.

Our modern culture encourages our ego to be disproportional to the rest of our being. If ego is our main driver of decision making then we can be easily manipulated to think in specific, and often false, ways. We abandon the importance of acting as a community, of considering ourselves as a piece of the entire human family. When we think individually we falsely believe we are separate from one another and from nature. When ego is the driving force we allow our thoughts to turn selfish and negative, we begin to see darkness in the world where there shouldn’t be. Ego ignites a core loneliness because it creates the notion that it is us against the world, we easily buy into the rat race that turns us against one another. Thinking and acting egotistically lowers our vibrations and we fall out of sync with our higher selves and the universe – we become mentally small.

Then there is a point where ego develops into delusion. Our civilization has reached this point. Now some people are finally waking up and shaking their head in disbelief at how lost we’ve gotten. We’ve forgotten the truth of what it means to be human. Our earth, our home, our spaceship in the overwhelming grandiosity that is our known Universe, is now fully threatened. Well, I should correct that, our species’ experience on this remarkable planet is now being threatened. We are abusing our home to the point that we will undoubtedly self-destruct. Earth will be just fine, in fact, she may be better off void of the inhabitants who refuse to live in harmony with her life giving laws and resources. Our collective egos have forced us to the point of delusion. We hear the science, we feel the worrying changes, and yet we go on in our programmed stupor as if we genuinely believe we are too special to be destroyed.

Our ego creates a desire to be the best. Our current society defines the best as the wealthiest or most famous. For wealth and fame to be the measure of utmost success is a sure sign of a culture deeply entrenched in self-obsession. We have people who are so blindly committed to their disproportionately high wealth that they shell out an unfathomable amount of money to create fake science. In an effort to sustain their material stockpile they use this fake science to refute the factual necessity that we must make major changes to our current paradigm in order to save our species. Are we so short sighted that we are willing to eradicate our entire species, the only currently known intelligent (in question) life in our Universe? Are we so egotistical that we simply cannot see the bigger picture? When you really think about it, it is utterly ridiculous that this self destructive behavior is even plausible, much less our actual reality. I can’t help but feel we are truly living in the Matrix. We are a species gone mad.

It is said that ego is the most detrimental trait humans developed throughout evolution. Ego combats consciousness, it prohibits expansion because expansion is difficult and scary at times. Our ego protects our delicate human brains from the overwhelming truth that we are merely an unimaginably small piece within the grand design. But how could we not be the chosen ones – how could we not be special enough to be miraculously saved regardless of our reckless decision making? The truth is that the Universe is a billions of years old and we are but a fraction of a millisecond in its history books. The Universe will exist long past the demise of the human race, and one day we will be a distantly forgotten memory. Our current collective consciousness can’t comprehend these realities so we shield ourselves with our egos, tell ourselves anything to convince us were important. But deep down were not really quite sure, so we grapple to make sense of everything by assigning false narratives. The truth is that we know next to nothing. When we are surrounded by a culture that supports the drive of ego, we become enveloped in it to the point that our insane and dangerous actions are considered “normal.” We become nothing short of brainwashed. Only once we unplug from our culture of make believe can we turn our desires towards positive progression.

The elite astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson made a speech a couple years ago arguing that we need to make Space a culture. He meant we all need to be astrophysicists, or at very least curious and excited enough to explore these ideas. When Space becomes a culture our understanding of our meaning within the Universe will change, and then our focuses and priorities will change. The sooner we acknowledge how truly miniscule we are in comparison to the vast cosmic web, the sooner we can embrace the unfathomable miracle our planet, our species, and our sentient relatives truly are. We must abandon our false notions of separation, we must shun our collective ego, and we must shake off our delusional fantasy that we are indestructible. Instead, let’s show tremendous gratitude for this unique experience we are living here on Earth. Let’s remember, and let’s revel in the fact, that we are all just cosmic accidents.

We are at a turning point in human evolution. We are at a point where ego must be contained and hopefully one day diminished. We are at a point where reckless individualism must be seen for the undesirable trait that it is. We are at a point where we must work as a collective, as a supportive and compassionate whole working towards the greater good. Our only chance to sustain our incredible species is to see our connection to one another as an integral resource. Earth is our only chance, and we can choose to ignore this knowledge or use it in our favor. We are steadily headed towards our own demise, but we have a choice to halt this progression. A society that learns how to exist synergistically with the nature which sustains it will be the happiest and healthiest one we’ve ever known. Let us use our immense knowledge, skills, and innovation to evolve into the most intelligent and noteworthy species yet.

Rather than shying away from those difficult realities let’s embrace the challenges we face. Let’s fight off our egos and accept that the path we are on is simply the wrong one. Let’s believe that we can forge a better one. We need to stop pretending we have all the answers, but we must cultivate a yearning to find them. Change flourishes within yourself, with a decision to change your own way of thinking. Love and truth spread faster than all of our current negativities and falsities combined. We can unleash their imitable strength by locating them in ourselves and by introducing these ideas into the mainstream culture. Do not be scared to spread the truth and never be scared to make love a universal priority. Let’s learn to make sense of and find peace amidst this beautiful confusion we call life.

“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about everything they are doing in their life.” – Vasudev