Why?
signed,
Everyone
Dear Everyone,
I had originally just written “why not?” in response to this question, but while I thought it was a brilliant description, I felt it might be a bit ambiguous to you, so I’ll try this:
Imagine you are all-powerful. The entire universe is your playground and you have total control. What does that leave you to do? What is the experience of your existence? If you literally are everything, and everything happens because of you, then what’s the point?
Isn’t it curious that the same question asked by human egos is also the central question behind the universe itself? What’s it for? What’s it do? What’s the point? What causes it to happen?
If everything is one there is nothing to focus on, but the moment there is two –the moment reality achieves duality– now there is a subject and an object. Now there is a relationship between things. These are all new entities in Oneness.
As this subdividing continues, each small difference represents a point of focus and development and, much like a Mandelbrot’s fractals, each little example explodes outward, ever-enlarging what instantly becomes an infinite universe.
Within this scattering of concepts, one of the dualities that forms is acceptance and rejection or, put another way, desire and fear. They form the province of the human being. We use these natural forces to move ourselves through the universe. Much like a fish swings its tail left and right to move through the water, we move from desire to fear as we move through reality.
The sheer existence of the duality creates the movement, and as we undulate between desire and fear, our life is born. This means just as we need the propulsion from what we desire, we also require the propulsion of what we fear. Our life is literally born from this duality.
To not experience duality is to not exist. To exist is to live; to be. This is why Shakespeare said, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Between non-existence and existence, one offers nothing while the other offers all possibility.
Since the universe knows it exists, it only makes sense that it would demonstrate that fact by realizing its own infinite nature. And if that nature is to create opportunity for examination or experience, then in reality, we are quite simply an example of the universe enjoying itself.
If we can relax into that idea, we still get all of the dramas of life but with less of a sense of impending doom, and more of a sense of potential and possibility. And that feeling is a motivation unto itself, and our pursuit of it is the force that answers our ‘why?’ with a lifetime of experience.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
