Brimstone Lark

Who put this here? Not the screen and where it was made. I literally mean where did the experience of anything at all – the ‘pixels’ inside your mind – come from? There’s no cameras or screens that I can see. No one appears to be physically creating the experience that I am in, so why am I –

-(full stop), ahh. I have discovered my own consciousness.

Let’s say it was all an illusion; wouldn’t you be pretty upset about that? Wouldn’t you want to get out of that illusion? Perhaps you willingly submitted into the illusion or otherwise knew beforehand but somehow do not remember now.

In any case, we do not have information about what is ‘Out There’ (as I sit and look around, I certainly don’t have any data or evidence, do you?). What I do know is that I am experiencing all of this from a ball of rocks flying through space. On those rocks there is a bunch of matter that somehow materialized into a reproducing animal with a brain complex enough to have my Experience. Great. Now what?

If you keep doing what you’re doing, you will eventually die and based on the information at hand, the whole thing will stop. In a certain sense you’re on a path in life which consists of experiences and actions. <See: “The Present Moment“> This path of yours large determined by what you do. It carries a deterministic momentum – what you have done in the past determines the path.

In the same way you’d be pissed off if this experience turned out to be a deception, you’d be pissed off you didn’t consent into the path and your goals on the path. You have to ask why are you doing the things that you’re doing.

Survival is the highest, clearest objective. This is a problem which people face to varying degrees. For most of the people that I expect to read this, it has largely been solved for. So what then?

We already have a set of pre-existing set of values and ideas about our path. We have a story about where we might go on this path and what we might become. If you tune in, an answer to “Why are you doing the things that you’re doing?” already exists (even if it is only poorly articulated).

This answer should involve ZERO deception to you. If any part of mine was determined by someone else, or a version of me which does not live up to my standards today, I should take a good hard look at it and change it if needed. Immediately.

Answer this question – think long and hard about the external constraints that you are solving for (e.g, survival). Think long and hard about which parts of your answer are truly your answer. Think long and hard about the reality of the future, what it might look like, and how you feel about the various different outcomes.

Tomorrow is like today, except you can change it. <See: “How to time travel” (not yet written)>