Wednesday, December 11, 2013

12/12/13—Winning the Lottery



Today's Draw: Life is a Gift from the Exner's and Broca's areas of Tierney's Brain. How often do you consider the privileges afforded you simply by being a human? Has it ever occurred to you what sensual pleasures you would lose if you weren't in human form? Do you take your greatest gift for granted?

So I learned today that the Exner's and Broca's areas of the left frontal lobe of the brain are responsible for the expressive aspects of writing. See, I didn't feel like drawing a card. I really just wanted to write about something I thought about recently and wanted to share. 


The holidays are a hard time. Life itself is a hard time...haha. But it occurred to me, what a great gift life as a human is to the consciousness. It's something we take for granted.


If you believe in reincarnation (and most do) then you understand on some level that the soul, consciousness or whatever you call that bit of energy that comes back time and time again, has different experiences. It has a "life" between lives, for example. And it may have lifetimes as critters other than human. In short, there is something common to all states of being that some part of us carries throughout millennia. For the purposes of this blog, we'll call it consciousness.


We really don't know what consciousness experiences when it's not on earth (or for that sake on any planet.) And we can't even say for sure what your cat's or dog's consciousness experiences here on earth. But imagine your consciousness never knowing the sensation of a cool breeze. The taste of a great meal. The thrill of first kiss. The satisfaction of a job well done. The bounce of a happy day. And great sex.


What we were given when we were given life is like a sensory amusement park ride....a ride that goes on for 60, 70, 80 years, if we're lucky. Like a roller coaster, it has ups and downs. Some things will make your stomach drop. Some things will build your excitement. Sometimes you'll feel on top of the world with a fabulous view. And other times you'll be jerked around by a loose track. But each sensation is a sensation that other minds and bodies on this earth don't have the capacity to process and experience the way humans do.


Of the trillions of living things on earth, only 8 billion hold the winning lottery ticket. And you're one of them. Many people with spiritual beliefs imagine that life after death is a release of worldly concerns...that you go to a "place" filled with love and joy and understanding. I do believe that. I believe that the consciousness takes on a whole new way of being when we die or are in between lives.


In some ways the afterlife may be better, but if our visions of that existence are true, we don't have the sensual experiences we have here on earth. First, we don't have a body filled with nerve endings that bring messages to the brain and set off emotions and hormones and all of that. So the fabulous meal? Well, we probably don't even eat. And second, if everything is love and light (or at least more loving and light) then you don't get the high highs or the low lows. And some people swear by those high highs. Some even covet their low lows in the manner of Gollum and his Precious. When you add up all the positives and negatives of different ways of being, there very well may not exist anything near as awesome as being a human.


Anyway, the holidays can be a low time. And so many are pulled down by the busyness, expense and stress of the season. It doesn't even have to be the holidays. Life can just suck sometimes. But returning to this thought about how incredibly lucky our consciousness is to be able to experience a sunset, for example, and on so many levels—aesthetically, emotionally...the loss of heat on our skin and the way it signals ancient patterns of cycles within us—well, it's just incredibly special. Even when I'm feeling down, the beauty of this gift can bring me to tears.


I know it sounds corny and trite. But I think if you can really absorb what I'm talking about, it gets less corny. We don't know how this whole soul/consciousness thing works. And we don't know how many options exist for our soul to take on some sort of shape and form. But when you stop taking the experiences of just simply being a human for granted—forget about rich, poor, pretty, ugly, able, disabled—our sensual experience alone is worth far more than the cost of our bad days and losses. When you see life through the eyes of these "little things", the things that are nothing more than the side effects of being human, you can't help but be grateful to be alive.

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