On a Way Out

Look at your hands.
Move your fingers.
These are your fingers.
Out of the entire infinite expanse of the universe, only YOU, whatever "you" actually is, can control your fingers.

I've always been intensely interested in video games. I'm not all that great at playing them, but the philosophical connotations are neat. I know people that easily spend 3 hours every day playing xbox. When they're done, they get up, put the controller down, and walk away, usually to get food.
Video games are really cool because you can turn them off. And when you turn off a video game, life returns to normal- back to reality.

Descartes wrote a book trying to convince himself that he was alive and that God was real. I don't need to go through that much work. My assurance is this: Ever since I was little, I've never been able to shake the notion that throughout our lives we've been holding a video game controller, and that one day we'll have to put it down. And when that happens, we'll return to reality.

That's what I like about eastern religions- they get that. They understand that we don't live here just to reproduce, but that there is so much more beyond our pale blue dot of a planet. The early Christians understood this too- Judaism loosely shares some concepts with, say, taoism and buddhism. But somewhere along the road, maybe blame the 900-year reign of the Catholic Church that created the western world, we lost touch with that fundamental reverence that There Has To Be a Way Out.

Our bodies are fundamentally foreign. The idea that the jumble of biology in our heads somehow gives us Existence seems impossible. I've heard the body referred to as an "earthsuit" before- a protective layer that allows us to live on Earth, much like how a spacesuit is a protective layer that lets astronauts move around in space. Spacesuits are the very essence of "limiting". They restrict body movement by being big and clunky. In the same way, our bodies limit our ability to think, to move, and to live.