Existential Musings Has Moved To Facebook

Dear friends and Existential Musings subscribers. This blog is no longer being updated here. For future updates please go to the official Existential Musings Facebook page here and subscribe:
facebook.com/lightbeing1111/

Thanks to everyone who has enjoyed reading Existential Musings throughout the years! We look forward to interacting with you soon on Facebook. :)

We Are The Gods We Have Worshipped

Here's a poem I wrote today about the future of humanity and the journey of each of us to discover our own divine nature... :)

We Are The Gods We Have Worshipped

"In our dreams,

We live as Gods do;

We shape the world to our liking, 

And create not just places but their faces too.

Thus, in our science, 

We do just the same;

We follow those dreams to create,

And believe that those dreams we can tame.

For in our hearts, 

We hear destiny's call;

We know that we will become bigger,

And understand that the Earth will become too small.

So, in our future,

We will blast lightyears beyond Mars;

We can already see we're becoming more conscious,

And how that itself will take us to the stars.

Then...like a star born from other stars,

that will one day explode outward too,

So will we travel the cosmos, 

And seed it with life, as Gods do.

For the universe is filled,

with the the stuff of creation,

And being made from that stuff too,
Means we're also meant to create from the big bang's cremation.

So our dreams are not trivial, 

They are the sayers of sooth;

We need only to listen,

For us to realize our own divinity's truth.

We are the Gods we have worshipped,

As the universe is made from one mind;

So all this time we've been searching,

It's been us that we've been looking to find."

by Aaron Hutchins

(-aka- LightBeing1111)

Death Is Not A Fearful Thing

Before I begin here, I just want to say that, despite the fact that this post is about death that, if you can get around that fact enough to read this, it is actually a lot more uplifting and potentially liberating than you might think and definitely worth the read... :)

The subject of death is something that most of the world puts off thinking about until those fateful last moments when their whole life flashes before them. Most of us live in a culture where death is not talked about or acknowledged as a fact of life until someone close to us passes on or we realize that our own clock is winding down and we have no other choice but to think about it. I've spent a great deal of my life thinking about death and therefore a great deal of my life keeping it to myself, as it's something that no one ever really wants to contemplate. It's generally considered to be too grim or depressing a subject to think about and the very idea of death often generates fear within the minds of many people. Many times, even those who say that they are not afraid of death and that they have accepted the inevitability of their own mortality, find that they had really only done so to tuck the idea away conveniently in the back of their minds and perhaps quietly prevent themselves from having to think about it as well...and therein lies the fear of it all.

In a lifetime of thinking about death, however, I can tell you that there is nothing to fear and that people who think about death as much as they think about life are not dwelling on the morbid side of things, but rather they come to know a great, fulfilling, secret about life and about why death is truly not a fearful thing because they begin to see a fuller, richer, view of what the whole picture of life really is. From birth to death. From incarnation to the grand adventure of life and at last into the great beyond...

These individuals see a more full spectrum of existence as a whole and are therefore often much more aware of the things that are truly important in one's lifetime. Rather than having all those regretful epiphanies in their last moments of how much more they could've loved their life and the world, how much better they could've treated people, how many more places they could've gone, how much more they could've explored and learned about nature and so on. They can apply all those things to their life right now and begin living with much more wisdom and love, as they embrace the perspective of life that usually only comes in those desperate last moments towards the end of one's life when they realize that they may not have much more life to live.

The great philosopher Alan Watts, spent a considerable portion of his life talking about death to people and helping to deliver them from the overwhelming fears that people have about it. I think that was an incredible service to have given to the world as, the fear of losing this existence that we all cling to, is really one of the most deep rooted fears that we can have in life and perhaps the most important one that we have to come to terms with. We like to control our lives as much as possible and the prospect of death is likely the most out of control thing that we can ever encounter or think of. We think that if we can just stamp the idea of death out of our minds that it might not be true and somehow that gives us the idea of having some control over our lives and where we're heading. We can overcome these fears of losing control however, just by remembering that while we may fear death, it is something that we simply have no control of...and never did. Death comes to us all eventually and there is a sense of liberation in that. We don't have to struggle against it now or ever because we simply can't.

 

We're afraid of the unknown...of what might lie beyond the veil...of what awaits us on the other side or perhaps an even more teriffying prospect...what doesn't lie on the other side. The thought of everlasting non-existence. We don't need to fear this though. For, everything that makes us up as human beings...our body, our mind, our consciousness and the spirit of everything we are is made up of energy and even science can tell you that that energy is never lost. It is merely redistributed into the universe, breathing life into other things and creating more of everything that you see around you. Your personality, your life experiences, the feelings you had, the things you created, the people you helped or inspired...they are all energies that you created in the universe and they will never die. Our body may feed the soil one day, which in turn may become a tree that might, in turn, feed the birds and so on and we can live on in this way as well, but you are not just your body. You are YOU...and the essence of everything that YOU are is part of the whole universe and will be absorbed into the universe in one way or another and will most undoubtedly live on forever.

We don't know what comes next, but we can know that we have no need to fear it. The very nature of evolution in this universe suggests that, whatever it is, it will be something better and perhaps far more extraordinary than we can imagine. So, in accepting death and releasing the fear of allowing ourselves to ponder what it is, we can become truly empowered within our life and begin to experience the infinite freedom and joy that comes with TRULY living a life without fear...
 

 



Here is a quote by Alan Watts from the video below(9 mins.) of a talk he gave regarding eastern thought on the subject of death and why we have no reason to ever fear it. I hope you watch it and are just as inspired as I was to live more and to fear so much less... :)

"So, the bodhisatva saves all beings. Not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered...they are liberated...by the very fact of not being able to stop change. You can't hang onto yourself. You don't have to try not to hang onto yourself. It can't be done...and that is salvation..." - Alan Watts
 



Change

Another Image I Made Recently! :)

Would You Kill Hitler?

If you had a time machine, would you go back in time to kill Hitler? I've been thinking about this age old question recently and have come to some interesting conclusions.

At first glance the answer seems perhaps quite obvious to many of us. After all, killing Hitler would perhaps have prevented the 11-14 million some people from being murdered in the holocaust & would have perhaps prevented a good majority of the 70 million some deaths of World War II. So, it would seem that to trade one life for the lives of millions is easy enough math for any of us to do. The fact that it's still murder by the mind(s) that pass the judgement, the mouth(s) that agree to give the order, the hand(s) that deal the punishment and the heart(s) of those who raise their fists to the sky to rejoice that justice has been done, shouldn't deter us right?

In Western culture it seems that many of us would most likely concur that the act be done. After all, we've been breast fed by Western religion and Judeo-Christian values for hundreds, if not more than two thousand, years; ethics which have brought us such visionary concepts as: "an eye for an eye" must be taken, capital punishment must be upheld, penance must be made to atone for one's sins. Toss him to the lions that he might be judged by God for all eternity! (Our brand of)"Justice" MUST be done.

Conversely, many Eastern philosophies and religions, however, might venture to say quite the opposite. That life is a personal journey of one's own consciousness. That one faces the ultimate judgement for their transgressions in life and beyond from one's own self. That the karmic consequences for our actions and our own revelatory realizations of which...and of our connection to all things in the universe...and of the degree to which we loved those things, might be more severe for the soul of the individual than any punishment that could ever be delivered by man.

Western thinking, on the other hand, seems to teach us to strive for one's own, to right the wrongs of others, to intervene in the destinies of those around us in accordance with our own notions of what should be and how this life should be lived. What if it's not our place however, to make such decisions? Did not even Jesus say, "Let him who has not sin cast the first stone"? Was he not saying that no one among us has the right to pass judgement on another? That it is neither our responsibility or our right to punish the wrongful acts of our fellow men and women? If God created man in his own image and we are all children of God, isn't ending the life of another not much different than ending our own?

It is not my intent to discuss religion here exactly, rather more to present the idea that religion has shaped the beliefs and ideals of the entire world since the dawn of time. It's true that there have been many great teachers and enlightened individuals in the past who have taught us a message love, of peace and unity with all mankind, but religion itself has caused great destruction in the world despite those teachings. It has created a great chasm between the hearts of men that has led us into thousands of wars and to millions upon millions of deaths throughout history. It has brought division to a world that has not yet the eyes to see that the Earth and everything on it is in fact one and the same thing. The earth is a celestial body and every organism on it is a part of that body. We and the Earth are one. 

So perhaps, personally, if I were to travel in time, I think I would not use that opportunity to exact vengeance on those who have wronged us in the past, but rather, I would head to the future with a sense of wonder and curiosity and I would seek out true wisdom from the universe with a heart filled with love.

The Mystery of Life & Near Death Experiences

I recently watched this video about accounts of what people have seen during near death experiences and was reminded of a poem I wrote about how, despite all of our differences, death seems to be the one unifying factor that binds us all together in life...

Never Alone

Life is a mystery,
as days become years past.
People come and go;
sometimes to emerge once more.
Our lives, they ride,
on the waves of experience.
With each of us, perhaps,
blind to what this "self" is for.
~
This difficult puzzle
that we've come to call living,
May only yet be
no more than a dream;
But one day soon
we shall again awaken,
To extract true meaning
from all that we seem.
~
Everyone does live;
Just as everyone will die.
To each of us
these things must be,
But in this way
we soon find our connection;
For in this, we discover,
that never alone are we.

- A. Hutchins

Inside The Mind Of The Last Person On Earth...

What if you were the last person on Earth and had been for many years? After awhile, I wonder, would it seem like there was a point to anything? Do people provide 100% of our meaning & purpose for existence? When that last soul passes on, be it animal or human or insect, and no one is left to supply conscious observation to the universe, does all time & space just cease to exist as we know it?