Life is uncertain

Might as well share a post I just wrote for my HinesSight blog. Here's how I introduced it on Facebook.

l'm feeling kind of philosophical. (OK, a common feeling fof me.) Decided to write about how life only is predictable when looking backward, and not even then, really, because the events that seemed to cause our life to turn out a certain way could easily have been different. I use how my wife and I met as an example of how uncertain life can be.

 

https://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2021/09/life-is-only-predictable-looking-backward.html

Comments

[Sonia]

Hmm 🤔

Relationships are uncertain. You can’t predict how long they’ll last. People come and go. We will one day go and leave our loved ones behind. The only thing you can count on in this life is change. We’re born and reborn with every new relationship. My aunt used to get so attached to her dogs. It was pretty extreme. But as soon as one died she immediately got another one. She was very cool—didn’t waste time clinging to the past.

Although most humans are more comfortable with predictability, life can be even more comfortable if you learn not to hold on too tightly.

[Sonia]

I guess the romantic notion of destiny or having “soul mate” is alluring. But it’s false. There are thousands of people in the world for each person to fall in love with. Perhaps that’s how we should approach life. Not one single person can “complete” another person. Just knowing that and believing it makes it much easier to welcome people into your life and then let them go when the time comes. We can’t let the people in our lives become part of our identity. They serve as gifts for a time being. Appreciate the gift but don’t let it dictate your happiness. It’s absolutely foolish to believe in soul mates. No one can live up to that expectation. You are your best mate. :)

[Spence Tepper]

From the Karmic perspective, we have had so many relationships, tens of thousands, that any relationship which may seem incredible and destined (either for the good or the bad), hardly matters from that larger perspective of our total history.

Zoom ahead a few thousand years to the modern science perspective, and we learn life has been evolving for billions of years. And it seems every few million years cataclysmic events take place that destroy most all life on earth and it must start over. There have been civilizations before this one. And not simply in this era. But hardly any evidence.

In both explanations, we have, well, an explanation.

Life is a romance. We are built for romance. But some romances are healthy and others unhealthy. There is higher love, from the perspective of what is healthiest for us, and there is lower love, from the perspective of what harms us, weakens our capacity to love, to give, and to understand.

Perhaps we try to use destination and "soul mate" as romantic expressions of happiness. That's ok. Why not? So long as we understand it is just an expression. Still, a beautiful and romantic one.

Whatever relationships we have, whether of love or hate, they are sacred. They are ours. Every second of our life is a sacred gift from life itself.

In retrospect we can learn a lot. But we are still just viewing the past from today's singe point of vision. Yesterday we stood left. Today we stand right. So?

What matters most?

What are our values today?

Are we making excuses, finding excuses to blame or hate?
Or are we working to make the world a more peaceful, loving place?
And have we found a way to do that within ourselves?

I realize I'm asking questions that most of us can't answer with confidence.

And that lack of confidence may just be the greatest gift of humanity any of us may possess.

[spence tepper]

ie; the knowledge of our own uncertainty is the gift.

[Sonia]

@Spence

Thanks for your perspective. I quite agree other than I don’t believe in karma (or GIHFs for that matter).

It’s true so many come and go and you can never go back. Things will never be as they once were. And in a way that’s really good because the most important thing is learning to live in the present.

You wrote:

“and there is lower love, from the perspective of what harms us, weakens our capacity to love, to give, and to understand.“

Amen. Divine love never brings you down. It never tries to hurt you.

[albert]

Dear Sonia, you are a treasure-trove of wisdom and practical truth. Indeed, change and death will claim all of us...in fact, every life form on the planet is on death row! An MIT researcher was tasked with the daunting challenge of coming up with the approximate number of all individual life-forms (including the microscopic) on this Earth planet. His answer: 5 X 10(35th power). That's a five with 35 zeros after it!

Point is that every single one of these life-forms (including you and me) comes into existence with the burden of inevitable termination...a death sentence. Now, that's a LOT OF DEATH. Nature giveth birth...and nature taketh the life away!

This is one of the many reasons that masters, saints, rishis and yogis have decried this earthly existence as a passing show, a total illusion. As one Saint boldly put it: "Why do you repeatedly take birth in this inn of thieves?"

[Sonia]

Hi albert,

That was illuminating!

“5 X 10(35th power). That's a five with 35 zeros after it!“

Wow 😯 that’s a lot more than 800,000… Lol (not sure where 800,000 came from).

Regarding the question:

"Why do you repeatedly take birth in this inn of thieves?"

Many answers: false guilt, caught up in the illusion, prefer dreams over reality…

Btw, thanks

[Sonia]

Or was 8 million life forms? I can’t remember the number…

It’s like they say, “you don’t know what you don’t know.”

All I really know is kindness goes a long, long, long, long (5x10 to the 35th power) way. 😊

[Ron Elloway]

"Life is Uncertain" Well yes, it is uncertain because it's life. It's not something static - although we would like to 'fix' it and have it knowable. Is it because we are so insecure, so afraid of not continuing after death?

The body knows when it is time to go but the mind, the egoic self wants to continue forever. So it invents some sort of life after death where 'I' continues, or it wants others to keep it alive through fame, through history or family.

Basically, we (alone of all other creatures) find it difficult to live life as it is presented at this moment as we are too busy thinking about the next moment - where we might be happier, more fulfilled, more knowledgeable or enlightened. And of course, such projections carry with them the spectre of uncertainty - which is perhaps why we see life as a mystery to be solved instead of something to be lived.

[albert]

Thanks, Sonia. Saints have estimated the number of SPECIES as 8.4 million. Modern science says about 9 million SPECIES exist on Earth. The 5X10(35th) number is of INDIVIDUAL life-forms. For instance, humankind is comprised of approximately 8 billion life-forms within the human species. Hope that's clear!

Smiles to all.

[Sonia]

Does that number include each blade of grass? 🧐

Regardless, lot o’ life on this little rock hurling through space at 67,000 miles per hour.

Too much too know. Too little time to learn it. Much too much space between us.

[Dungeness]

@ Ron : [ "Life is Uncertain" Well yes, it is uncertain because it's life. It's not something static - although we would like to 'fix' it and have it knowable. Is it because we are so insecure, so afraid of not continuing after death? ]

I agree life is not something static.

However the mystic would counter life's events are themselves static and thus knowable
and certain. Those events were created outside of time and laid out serially in time for
the unrealized soul ("creative force") to experience. It's a metaphoric thrill ride through
duality/time which is experienced as past, present, and future. Uncertainty is shambolic
though because the events are already there and are all being recalled. Just insert an
anticipatory flash like hope or fear prior to each event and presto they're in the "future".
The insecurity and ignorance is is part of the game. The thrills and chills couldn't be had
if you could sneak a peep into the future. Same for no death. Identifying self with a fragile
body which dies makes for a great drama. Arguably the greatest.

@ Ron: [ we (alone of all other creatures) find it difficult to live life as it is presented at this moment as we are too busy thinking about the next moment...such projections carry with them the spectre of uncertainty - which is perhaps why we see life as a mystery to be solved instead of something to be lived. ]

At some point, the thrill ride ceases to be fun. No matter how charmed a life, continual
uncertainty and nastiness -pain/disease/death- eventually has the beleaguered soul
looking for the exit ramp. The mystic turns inside to find it and with a path of mindfulness
retraces his steps out of the fun-house. He dissolves egoic entrapment and, ironically
enough, is finally able to enjoy life "as something to be lived". He's no longer a prisoner
of 'the game".

[Sonia]

What exactly is an “unrealized
soul”? Is it a soul that doesn’t know it’s a soul? Do you think the mind knows it’s a mind? Does the body know anything at all?

I don’t know all the answers to those questions. Although I do know that different belief systems define the body, mind and soul very differently. Some define the body as a soul (traditional greek scriptures). Some define the mind as the soul (mostly New Thought belief systems).

Obviously it’s a Holiday or I wouldn’t be wasting my time asking these questions…

I need to go do something more productive (or is that a trick of the mind to try and get me to focus on more superficial things 🤔).

I loved the existential detectives from I ❤️ Huckabees.

OK, I’m going to go “do something” now… like a good Protestant (I’m not really a Protestant). My grandparents actively practiced and preached the Protestant ethic that it is a big ol’ sin too be idle. Hence the extreme unease or guilt I feel when I’m not working—a good example of “false guilt”.

Maybe that’s why I came into this life with 6 planets in Libra. To teach me it’s ok to be lazy every now and then.

Cheers

[Uchit]

We are FREE so fak karma, fak destiny, fak religion, fak RSSB and the crook Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his karmic dept theory and waste of time satsangs, fak limitations, fak lucifer and his agents.

We are simply FREE, free to make our choices, to take opportunities, dreams, passions and desires. Stop wasting your life in slavery to so called cults like RSSB and sicko mafia judgmental gurus like GSD and Lucifer's puppet agents. Take back your life.

[Ron Elloway]

Forget about spiritual authorities, there influence only serves to make us think neurotically about such things as 'the uncertainty' of life. Our own intelligence can see that life is precarious.

We just need to be with life. Make plans, improve your lot by all means but put abstract thinking from spiritual authorities aside and look to your own intelligence to live life.

It's all around us, we live in and of it. There is 'just this', nothing else.

[Dungeness]

@ Sonia: [ What exactly is an “unrealized soul”? Is it a soul that doesn’t know it’s a soul?
Do you think the mind knows it’s a mind? Does the body know anything at all? ]

Good questions. Many feel we shouldn't bother our collective "pretty little heads"
about such things and just get on with "living".... such as it is. Us Libras call foul
about such an unbalanced approach though . Better to question, probe, poke,
set the world on an even keel. At least part of the time. Now, where was I... oh
bloody hell, it's getting late. As Scarlett would say "I’ll think about this tomorrow.”