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Expand your mind!
Cinorjer
Veteran
Several years ago the scientists pointed our Hubble telescope at nothing. They picked a dark, featureless patch of the sky with no lights or stars or radio emissions coming from there at all and just let the space based telescope sit there, gathering what invisible faint stuff might come our way. How small? Hold a postage stamp at arms length at the night sky.
The result is an explosion of galaxies. Every tiny light you see in the picture is not a star; it's a galaxy with billions of stars in it. And this is a typical picture of every tiny bit of universe around us. And now that we can look for planets around distant stars, we're finding most stars we look at have planets. Planets are as common as grains of sand on a beach, it seems.
And life? Life exists on our own planet in deep freeze and super hot steam. Our planet, in its history, has been roasted by volcanic and asteroid strikes, and frozen into a ball covered completely with ice. And life somehow struggled on.
Everything we know tells us that In this one little patch of sky, you are looking at billions of worlds that contain life. Say hello to the distant relatives of ours.
The result is an explosion of galaxies. Every tiny light you see in the picture is not a star; it's a galaxy with billions of stars in it. And this is a typical picture of every tiny bit of universe around us. And now that we can look for planets around distant stars, we're finding most stars we look at have planets. Planets are as common as grains of sand on a beach, it seems.
And life? Life exists on our own planet in deep freeze and super hot steam. Our planet, in its history, has been roasted by volcanic and asteroid strikes, and frozen into a ball covered completely with ice. And life somehow struggled on.
Everything we know tells us that In this one little patch of sky, you are looking at billions of worlds that contain life. Say hello to the distant relatives of ours.
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Comments
You could devote your whole life to learning about space, trying to discover new things, understand time and space and the highly technical theories that exist. But really, what do you get out of it, absolutely nothing. The magnitude of what's out there is ridiculous but the only thing that will ever make a difference to your life is living on planet earth so why waste any effort even contemplating what goes on beyond our own atmosphere?
This is of course just my opinion but one I formed having taken a genuine interest in these things before realising it simply doesn't matter.
Somewhere out there a Dweep is having its ventricles crushed by the High Snorks because it insists the Great Ploof never said crossing a slime trail was a sin.
And perhaps somewhere else a Snark sits under a Jubie plant in meditation, wondering what the meaning is to it all.
It was a very tall Jubie plant.
At a retreat this past summer, someone asked Lama Dorjee how to get over the guilt of driving a car 30 miles to attend Buddhist meetings. The Lama laughed and said it is good to be aware of our actions on our planet and to treat all things with loving kindness in our actions, but that if we destroy our planet, we'll just reincarnate on another one, lol. He got a good laugh out of that one.
Inspiration? Awe?
A sense of something greater than ourselves, that's an eternal mystery?
Mystical experience? A sense of ourselves as insignificant by comparison, and therefore silly in our ego-based pursuits?
A sense of the miraculousness of life?
One person's waste of effort is another person's inspiration for living and reaching for an expanded consciousness that provides the impetus for spiritual service.
I don't know why your world view is so jaded but it doesn't seem very healthy.
Bush, Glycerine
You'll not always feel this way, I promise.
But yeah, speak to a doctor and find out what it actually is. It could be depression in the classic sense or it could be a symptom of something else, a thyroid problem for example. Go get checked out.
But they key difference is between what what a healthy person seeing and what you're seeing. A healthy person is seeing something beautiful, miraculous and awe inspiring.
You're seeing brutality. And I can't really explain it in another way other than what you're seeing is false. While what a healthy person is seeing may not be the absolute truth, it's closer to the truth than what you're seeing.
If you're seeing something positive, you're on the right track. This isn't about wishful thinking, seeing things that aren't there, it's that "truth is beauty, beauty is truth". If you're not seeing the beauty, you're not seeing the truth.
You're confusing being a realist and being a pessimist. A realist will acknowledge and accept the Darwinian theory as being the best explanation we have right now, but only a pessimist will construe it as negative.
So you see, a healthy person is not denying the the things that happen in our universe and our world so theyre still a realist, but negativity doesn't even factor into the equation. A healthy person is not seeing brutality, they're seeing creation and evolution, which is a beautiful and miraculous thing.
Anyway, I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything. Some of the stuff you say just really stood out to me as not necessarily being that healthy, but I'm not a doctor and only a doctor can make that call. I just hope you're doing ok.
Every galazy has a blackhole in the centre of it and ours is fairly small if I can recall, but there are also rougue blackholes that wonder aroud eating things up.
But yea going back to my point, everything that goes on in the world, in the universe goes on as it does, conditions rising and passing dependent on each other. They are what they are and we only give meaning to them which is where the problems arise. If there was a great flood again in Bangkok this year that would be bad for many people, but it would be good for companies who sell boots and waterproof clothing. In reality it is just the universe running like clockwork, neutral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero–sum_game The game is based on a view of self (my cake). Any view of self is limiting (even, 'I am everything', or 'I have all the cake') and thus causes this zero sum game view, where we think there is a limited amount of cake, and fight for it, selfishly, as in the animal kingdom.
When we take apparent risk of selflessness, we are delivered from scarcity and competition.
The key is it what you mean by 'resources'. The body needs food, water, shelter, and so on.
But what do you need?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero–sum_game The game is based on a view of self (my cake). Any view of self is limiting (even, 'I am everything, or 'I have all the cake') and thus causes this zero sum game view.
When we take apparent risk of selflessness, we are delivered from scarcity and competition.
That's super interesting, can you explain it a little more?
Basically, everything is finite and therefore scarce, except love, which isn't a thing.
All unsatisfactory phenomena arise from restrictions the mind places on love, just as the sky is blue because the atmosphere filters out the rest of the spectrum of light.
No, you didn't mean me. Still, I'll leave my response where it is.
It's like... What you're saying is correct in a way, but it's missing something. Love, maybe? I'm not sure. Like I said, it's like a gut feeling
Ok, so this would be a step in the right direction for me then as this is how I have been seeing things more and more lately. I guess I am starting to become a hardcore Buddhist lol, I am adopting the teachings in a very serious manner that is leading me even further away from the lay life way of living.
Like... I choose to become an astrophysicist, so everything that I discover while studying the universe is rendered incorrect because I chose to study astrophysics and the universe?
That doesn't really make sense.
What has been observed is pretty indisputable, it's our interpretation of it that is called into question. That's why we have no laws in science, only theories.
Scientists know that the current theories du jour are just theories based on our current understanding, which is apt to change over time as we discover new information.
If we see am explosion of lights in space, our decision to study space doesn't influence that in any way, and we can say with certainty that there was an explosion of light in space. The only place we might get it wrong is in trying to determine what the explosion actually is and its cause.
If I pinched you, you could say with absolute certainty that I pinched you and you'd be absolutely correct. If someone asked you why I pinched you, that's where you might get it wrong.
Ok, a man locked in a room is going to make a very intense study of lockpicking, but that doesn't mean locks have anything to do with ontological truth.
What we want to know about the universe is based on our suffering. Even the very concept of ontology is based on suffering - 'does x exist' means 'can I cling to it and be safe from harm?'.
Science is useful, but basing science on what is observable and repeatable places a limit on the depth of understanding it can realise, and thus a limit on its potential for making us happy.
Though I absolutely agree that science by its very nature is limited and in turn can place limits on our understanding.
Keep exchanging glances with the universe and eventually what's yours is mine.
Otherwise we wouldn't have vast amounts of data about what happens when you pour cosmetic creams into a rabbit's eye, and no solution for climate change.
In my biased opinion, it's far more interesting than putting cream in anyone's eye