Illusory Grains in an Ethereal Desert

Some say that we're nothing more than our bodies. Many profess that we are eternal souls, temporarily inhabiting a physical realm. I suspect that we, as individuals, are more like unique ripples, echoes or reflections of an undetectable and unfathomable impetus. A momentum that's not of this realm, yet interacts with it, and has been doing so since long before our species arose.

Our being is evidence of its being, much the way that excessively bending light waves from distant galaxies are evidence of the existence of dark matter. Or the way we know that electrons are there, because of their affects, even though we can't see or pinpoint them.

It's comforting to imagine that there's something enduring, that is specifically and uniquely us, as individual beings. There are many stories and promises of continuing life after our physical death. Some claim recollection of past lives, and express it as though they were entirely personal experiences.

In the world around us, we can clearly see that events happen, and things come and go, as a natural matter of course. Everything being inter-dependent with everything else, and the cosmos represents a grander example of this same causal process. In theory, the greater world is as much a reflection of a non-physical unfolding as we are. So it makes sense that, from a larger perspective, the individual players are only fleeting wisps of smoke, dwarfed by the scale of space and time. And that our notions of remaining whole and consistent for all of eternity are unrealistic and childishly fanciful.

I, of course, know no more or less than anyone else about such things. From our vantage point, we simply can't see. And since it's so easy for us to be misled or to misinterpret things, we shouldn't assume certainty, even if we could.

Speculation can be a fun and inspiring endeavor. But in the end, if we're truthful, we have no choice but to let the mystery be.