The Hard Reset Button for Humans

... is death and reproduction.  The contents of our minds comes from two sources, one being genes and the other being the environment.  When we have children, the genes get mixed around, but generally there are two people who are RE-presented to the environment, but the new mind lives in a brain and body that has to RE-assimilate that environment.

In a recent youtube video recommended to me by Francis Burns, I watched Ken Wilber speak for a while, and then read some comments.  One of the comments suggested that we can use the term "awareness" to refer to something that is shared by all sentient beings, and more shared when those beings are in close proximity.  Awareness is not unique to the creature experiencing it.  What is unique to the creature experiencing it is "consciousness" which is a relationship between a piece of physical reality and intention.  The physical reality, in a macroscopic way, obeys rules deterministically.  This is the "Newtonian physics" we learn, and which needs "Quantum Physics" to work in a microscopic (or, let's say nanoscopic or picoscopic) way.  It is at that level where intention can act, as far as I can tell.

I just heard Brett Veinotte mention the idea of living forever because he was telling his podcast audience about an upcoming discussion wherein the implications of living forever would be discussed.  It got me thinking "well maybe I have been."

In the bible, there is a story of a guy named Abraham who told people that "God" told Abraham his name, and it was "I am". To me, this story is hinting at what I described above as "awareness."  It's not just humans.  It's every physical system sensitive enough to have intention (which might be every physical system).  That sensitivity gives such a system awareness, and if it also has consciousness, then intention can be realized in it.

The game the universe is playing is to see how quickly intention can be realized.  You know that sometimes you have an intention but it doesn't happen until you actually do it.  I like to play this game in bed sometimes.  "I'm getting up now... Ready, here I go!" but I don't actually get up.  I'm playing with the intention but not actually realizing it because that takes more effort.  Also, feeling like I had the intention but nothing happened seems funny.  I hope I don't get Parkinson's Disease (See the movie "Awakenings" about Dr. Oliver Sachs if you're curious). Executing the intention will destroy some things (chemical bonds, probably some microbes, etc.), but it will create new ones.  So I think the whole universe is playing that game.  But what is the point?

The Landmark Forum showed me that life is empty and meaningless.  There is no point. But it's fun.  Why do we tell jokes?  So if the universe is trying to see how quickly its physical contents can be organized into systems sensitive enough to have and realize intention, then why don't we play along?  I don't think we can avoid plyaing along, but recognizing that that's what we're doing is certainly more enjoyable than feeling like life just keeps kicking us.

Given the world as it is, there are some intentions you can immediately realize (like reading the next sentence), and some that require some steps, the first of which is an intention of the first kind.  That's really all there is when we are conscious and aware, but we often let that light go out and we go onto auto-pilot.  Maybe you just did that while reading.  If so, I recommend going back and letting these words get a little deeper into yourself so that maybe our awareness can be shared across time and space and you and I can be together right now, trying to understand each other a bit more.  If you imagine what I'm going through, just from the evidence of the writing you're reading, you might like it.  You might feel like we have been living forever too.