Is it worth it all, our lives
There a statement of Hawkins (so called New Atheist) that is stuck with me and I thought rather profound. The gist of the statement is that we should be very thankful for being here on this planet. A few years, one life, yet what a gift he was saying. Now as an atheist he does not believe in any overriding intelligence in the Universe, he does not subscribe to any ‘theistic’ theory, but believes that this is it. If statistics were brought into the mix, then the chances of anyone existing are very small, so to exist, even in a godless universe is a something to be thankful for. I agree with this on most days.
I do believe we only have one life, I just don’t believe it ends in eternal oblivion as Hawkins does. Though there are days when that seems attractive, to just let go and cease to exist. Yet I understand that the non-being is not resting, and oblivion is not sleep, so I do not stay there for long. What gives sleep its pleasure, is in the knowing that there will be a time of waking up. So while I would not fear oblivion, I am glad that my faith sees beyond that.
My horizon is broader than his, yet what he said I believe was important and I took notice. It is easy to take our lives for granted, to not be aware of what we have and what a gift that is. I am often ‘asleep’, even though I may be seen walking around, yet there are moments, hours and days when I can run on automatic and just react or act in a manner that is more unconscious than conscious; dreamlike in fact. When in that state, being thankful or mindful is impossible.
I dream a lot, in fact if I sit down and doze off and wake up five minutes later, I am usually in the middle of a dream. Some dreams are important and actually have helped me make a breakthrough in my life. Others are well, just dreams, a jumble of people, events and ‘stuff’. Some dreams I never forget, others dissipate soon after I awake. In most cases, even in the ‘big dreams’, I am not aware I am dreaming. While in the midst of the dream, for me, it is the real world. However in the dream state if I become mindful I will wake in the dream and continue to stay in ‘dreamscape; it is called ‘lucid dreaming’. So in my everyday life, if I forgo prayer, meditation and study, I tend to fall into this kind of half-awake state, or downright dreaming my way through the day.
When I forget that there is a deeper realm that exists within me, I will simply float on the surface and wear myself out in useless worry and mindless activity. Perhaps one of the reasons I enjoy aging, in some of its aspects, is that my understanding in how little time I have left, say at the most 30 years if I live to be 98, keeps me more or less awake. After all, blink and the 30 years will be over.
I do believe that true faith is not rooted in fear of reality, but allows me to face it without seeking other avenues of flight; false gods so to speak. Drugs, alcohol, and my favorite, food in the form of pastry, along with the will to power and domination are I believe ways of toning done the harshness that can be part of being self aware, highly complex creatures with a very deep interior life. They can for a short time lull the partaker to sleep, yet in the end only make things worse.
Life does get curiouser and curiouser as the years float on a very high fast moving wave; it is the crashing on the beach of a broader reality that we don’t the ‘when’ of.
