'Castles Made Of Sand' and other solutions to the Human Condition.

Hi ATS,

Recent times have had all of us, at some point or another, pondering the great mysteries of life, the injustices & the lies of those who are deceiving us at the current time regarding this social engineering project *ahem* 'pandemic', etc. I've been a long-time believer in certain religious principles which I won't go into here, but throughout my time as a believer I've researched & contemplated frequently, almost constantly, regarding the matter of PURPOSE, and what it's all for, what it means to be a human contributing positively to the development of the human race. We all feel lost & lonely at certain times in our lives, no matter the sort of life we've managed to construct for ourselves, and a part of the Human Condition is that we often wonder if it's all worth it, all the stress, the pain, the suffering that goes along with everything we try to do. I want to share a simple reflection that I hope you will take to heart as a means of continual motivation, in the face of any circumstances whatsoever, whatever the world throws at you.

Our lives, and the lives of all others, see us engaged in a set of key struggles, which all of our endeavours basically reduce down to, when you look at the base principles involved. We spend our time fitfully or consistently working to produce results which drive outcomes that are then measured against the yardstick of these key struggles, and how well we have responded to them, as we find our purpose in the work that we do. The sad thing is, many people get lost in the most imminent struggle of whether it is all worth it, and unfortunately people can come to the conclusion that striving to generate outcomes which seem fundamentally purposeful & worthwhile simply isn't worth it, because for whatever reason it has proven too hard to make a consistent go of things - and whether these people have simply given up because they prefer self-gratification of one sort or another, or whether they have fallen by the wayside due to some sort of tragedy or trauma in their lives, it's a travesty that the simple & fundamental struggles which, when we respond to them appropriately, actually do give meaningful purpose to our lives, have not been codified in a way that literally everyone can then draw understanding from them & apply to their own circumstances, for their eventual betterment & satisfaction.

When it comes to the purpose of life, what gives meaning, the one most fundamental principle which can cause people to abandon the pursuit of the struggle, is the matter of temporality. TIME. When you look at it objectively, absolutely nothing that we achieve or build will ever last forever - every empire rises & falls, kingdoms are sacked, libraries burn, rust & mould destroy & our achievements ultimately turn to dust. "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return". Even our memory, our names, are lost to the tides of history, posterity remembers us for no more than a few generations - only a miniscule percentage are remembered on a longer timeline, and they themselves gain little from that fact, one might consider. So what exactly IS the point of it all - why are we here?

My friends, we can learn from our consciousness, from experiments devised, performed, and results that were obtained & analysed by Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff, two incredible academics who have contributed greatly to the nascent study of the objective consciousness of human beings, in terms of the abstract 'mechanics' of our thought processes, the 'how' of the way our thought processes operate. I will highly recommend their book, 'Shadows of the Mind', which is a tour de force of great inspirational value, incredibly interesting stuff.

One of the key observations made by the academic duo, was that our brains model our conceptions of reality & all calculations associated with our reflective thought processes, in a manner which is quite astounding. Keeping it country simple, they note that when our brains are working on a problem, we are generating what could be considered to be virtual holographic maps of computational relationships which extend in multiple dimensions like sculptures of great complexity, with delicate interrelationships mapped out in ways that our forefront minds can barely comprehend when the concept is explained to us - you have to read the book to get a proper grip on it. As each thought process comes to an end, these massively complex multi-dimensional 'sculptures', or 'architecture' literally disassemble, though not without being mapped in part or in full to the memory storage processors which represent another fundamentally complex aspect of brain/consciousness study, that of course being the fascinating powers of our long & short-term memory.

I liken the building & disassembling of these wonderfully complex computational structures to castles of sand, made by children on the beach.. They are built, with incredible expended effort to achieve their glory - before the tide comes in & washes them away, apparently lost forever, while other processes take over the foreground of contemplation. Of course, as they were virtual holographs, the total detail of the entire sculpture is stored forever in the incredible brain which we are blessed with, to be called up at a nanosecond's notice in the event that the data contained therein is required to resolve a future conundrum. I think that the holograph representing each computational series is actually stored in a sort of fractal virtual library, within a sort of infinite recursive n-space, not represented by biophysical units of storage at all.. The brain stores the information as a projection into this space, within the framework of what might be termed an 'etheric double' of our biophysical template. The idea that information regarding thought, identity & memory (etc) can be stored in this way, could lend credence to the suggestion that we have an 'astral body', which is in fact composed of myriad layers of virtual units of information, a projection into a 'halfway dimension' which shares the base template of the material universe, enabling projection between the material universe & other dimensions of reality, which is precisely the sort of amalgam of real/vitual space apparently accessible in experiences described by practitioners of astral projection.

Following my research & personal experiences in these paranormal realms, it is my firm belief that the informational content of this complicated virtual aspect of our tangible material bodies overall constitutes what we would consider our 'soul', and it is my equally firm belief that the informational content of the soul, fed by the computational calculations of the material brain during our earthly lives, is NEVER lost, not even when the material brain is damaged in life, by injury or by illness such as dementia. The informational content of our earlier lives, every single thing that ever affected our minds & emotional experience of life, is stored & retrievable in our etheric double, which, when we die, is the part of us that moves on into different dimensions & continues to experience all manner of sensory experiences - for real, this is why I am strongly of the opinion that the afterlife is real. Our brain is a tool which we use to BUILD our soul over the course of our lifetime, the accumulation of our personality & experience, a full life in retrieveable form.

Continued...

When we consider the soul's content being built moment by moment with the thoughts, emotions, dreams & memories which are a construction comprising the work of the brain & the imminent spark of life which constitutes our spiritual personal identity as a sentient being, this metaphor of castles made of sand to describe the computational processes which fill our souls with data representative of our life, we can see a correspondence with the thoughts I described earlier, regarding the purpose of life, the reason why it's all worthwhile, the key struggles which amount to journeys we must embark on in order to fulfil our potential as human beings.

Every act we undertake to perform in the world, every cooperative project we commence & complete, all the complex interactions building the experiential civilisation we have created - despite all its failings & the needs which remain when our own work is done, when we are aged & retired, watching the young overtake the duties which once were our own.. The temptation is strong to view it as though we are hamsters in a wheel, rotating around & around in our pathways through life, never actually getting anywhere, seemingly not accomplishing things we wish we could have accomplished. However, we must be absolutely realistic & say that in actual fact, that lack of permanence, that inexorable need to continue to fight tooth & claw to accomplish even half of what we intend for our lives & our communities - that is nothing more than a natural part of the world we have inherited. It is not perfect, and its imperfections will never be perfected by our own efforts. We must make peace with the fact that empires rise & fall, kingdoms are sacked, libraries burn, rust & mould destroy & our achievements ultimately turn to dust. Everything we do is fundamentally impermanent, and it is likely that nothing we do will last more than a hundred years in the memory of anyone who comes after us. But that's okay.

The purpose of our lives is not ultimately found in anything that we build or carry out as functions in the humdrum pursuit of civilisation-building, though of course it is ideal to find something that you love to do, so you never 'work' a day in your life. But even if you're stuck in a job you hate, you can change your response to the experience of that feeling, and decide that you will focus 100% on what is fundamentally important. The relationships we form with others, the generosity of spirit which we demonstrate in response to the needs of others, the commitment to protect others & to improve the fundamental living standards of others around the world, the kind & heartfelt ways that we try to enhance the enjoyment of life which forms the experience of others, and all efforts to increase knowledge & cause enlightenment to spread around the world - these are the most important, and TRULY permanent outcomes of our lives, which will follow us closely as our soul transitions across the boundary at the end of our earthly life. None of the material castles of sand will follow us to the Great Beyond, none of the elemental bars of golden wealth that we were fortunate to accumulate will follow us there.

As it is said: "Where your treasure is, there is your heart"

Nothing we build on this earth lasts forever, and our pursuit of wealth is an illusion... A castle made of sand, or a heart made of gold? Only one will follow us. We can choose.

God bless,


FITO.

A wonderful message, thank you. Consider that our mind can only think in past/future terms. Whereas that which can observe the mind, our seat of conciousness, only witnesses the NOW, Lets label our seat of conciousness as the 'heart'.

If we exists as mind we exist in a state of continually dreaming of past/tomorrow. If we exist as heart we can have no egotistical desires for the self. We exist in harmony with the NOW. Its our heart that breaths in nature when we walk amoung the tree's. Its the mind that wants tear down the same tree's to build a house to quench its egotistical desires.

Our civilization exists 99% as mind and 1% as heart. Destroying the very habitat we need for survival to try quench the minds unquenchable thirst. The mind can be a powerful ally or our greatest enemy. Opening ourselves to our heart is the real message behind religion.

a reply to: glend

Exactly what I was trying to convey here... but you said it so much more elegantly. Thank you.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: FreeOrigin

When I first read your post I was reminded of the book "Zen and the Art of MotorCycle Maintenance". Some minds like your own are highly analytical. Whereas more simple minds like mine prefer an overview of functionaility. Without the analytical minded people doing their thing, the more simple minded people would be lost in the woods.