Are You Only Living Once?
You often hear people say things like: “You have to make the most of life – after all, you only live once.” But, if you really start to explore this belief, it doesn’t actually stand up to philosophical (or spiritual) scrutiny. Think about it. If you really did only live once, then how could you experience being alive now?
Putting this another way, if I died tomorrow, and that was the end – then how could I have any recollection of my experience now? Do you really think that you are going to remember your life after you have died, in a universe where, that’s it – you do not exist in any form after physical death? Furthermore, if I am not going to remember anything after death, why am I putting any effort into maximizing my time now? I guess that a ‘one life’ approach does to some extent engender a panic for worthwhileness and limited time for completion of any desires.
Life remembered by others
Perhaps the life I am experiencing now, is for the benefit of others. Perhaps it is what I do that affects their experiences of life that is the real purpose for me being here and only living once. In the context of only one life, that could make more sense – although, it still doesn’t answer the fact that I am conscious of my present life and experiences.
Eternal life
Transition into another dimensional reality, at the point of physical death, together with the retention of memory of experiences, makes much more sense. However, the location of my current memory of physical experience (as a living physical being) begs the question: Where is my memory held? Where is the location of my real self and awareness? Science would simply argue that my memory of experience is retained in the physical brain, but then we are back to one life without progression.
From a more spiritual standpoint, the brain is simply a way for us to interface with a physical domain that allows us to explore and make sense of where we have projected our consciousness to and to feed that information back to our real and very much more, expansive personality. At the same time, our expansive personality has access to the bigger picture and if we give it chance, the feedback can be two-way instead of one-way. We can quite literally draw upon information that can help us in our experience of physical reality from other realities that we normally cut our self off from.
Linear Time
Something else we mostly live by, is acceptance of linear time. This obsession with sequential events limits our potential for accessing information that could expand our perception. Take my own simplistic analogy of time:
Drape a piece of string over the arm of an armchair. Place a small ant on the string at the topmost point of the curvature of the arm. The ant may be able to see a little way ahead, and a little way behind, its current position. As it moves forward, it remembers something of where it has come from, but knows little of what is ahead – beyond the point at which the string ahead disappears from view, over the side of the arm. As an observer with a greater overview of the proceedings, I can simultaneously observe the whole string draped over the arm of the chair. I can see much of the chair and also where the ant is heading and what it is going to encounter. As too, can I see where the ant has been and what exists before its original starting position.
As a human being, we are born (or dropped onto the string) at a particular point along the timeline (string) of physical understanding. We are operating at ground level engagement – a position that limits our perception, using only the physical sensors (eyes, ears, nose, etc.) that we have at our disposal. The physical experience is so blindingly “real”, that we soon function based only on this acceptance of our perception.
A Spacious Present
Seth* informs us that we really exist in a “Spacious Present” and engage with this through our “Moment Point”. The spacious present is a non-linear time of no fixed position, giving us access to all perceived past, present and future moments. Our moment point is our every moment of ‘now’. It is where we, as individualized entities of the universal collective consciousness, synthesise all that we focus on to lead us to our next moment. And what we focus on can be drawn from everywhere in the universe simultaneously… although most of us choose to select a miniscule and narrow portion of what can be available to us. And what we access is tied into our beliefs about the nature of our personal reality.
Concluding comments
If you consider all of the above, then perhaps you are closer to appreciating that our perception of only one life is laughable. But then, perhaps you insist on only one physical life. Even if you follow this belief, it doesn’t answer the question of how you can experience a living ‘now’ moment. You have to exist in conscious awareness somewhere other than in your physical body. Perhaps another analogy would be a Skype video call to a friend in another country. You can see and converse with one another quite easily, almost as if you are in the same room together – but you are physically not in your friend’s country. You have merely projected your awareness into that ‘other place’. Taking this example forward, think of the film, ‘Avatar’ directed by James Cameron. Where a replicant body [avatar] of a species is created in the lab, and through a process of conversion in a special chamber, the human hero, Jake Sully’s consciousness, is projected and linked to the otherwise lifeless body of the species. Sully is now disconnected from his human body and sees and experiences through, the body of the avatar. He can physically feel everything through the avatar’s body, but knows really, that he exists safely somewhere else. Eventually, the reality between the two existences blurs and he opts for keeping his consciousness in the avatar’s body and world.
*Seth – See other information in this website
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