The Faces of the Universe

The Astral Sleep; by Jeroeon van
Valkenburg, 1998; Wikimedia
Commons.

I really believe (and I don’t believe in very much) that there is a benevolent force within the universe that genuinely wants us to live happy and meaningful lives. This force beckons us daily. Even when we aren’t living a happy and meaningful life, this benevolent force of the universe is always throwing us a sort of cosmic life raft if only we are mindful enough to notice it. Often, this life raft comes to us through other people, or sudden and unforeseen changes of circumstance that can sometimes be painful, even challenging to endure, but that ultimately seeks to break us free of our attachment to suffering.

I equally believe that there is an opposing, entropic force within the universe, one that seeks to further a state of unconsciousness and existential passivity. Paralyzed by fear, we slip deeper into unknowing and forgetfulness, forgetting our true purpose and the power of free will. But I think that ultimately, both forces (and the gradients in between) are bound or cradled by a completely neutral and indifferent force—the true face of god who’s only intention is to maintain homeostasis within the universe.

Remember that whichever path you choose in life, whatever experience you unconsciously generate, you are perhaps helping the universe to maintain its existence. Every choice you make is a confirmation of conscious experience. And every conscious experience an illusion manifested by the universe to come to know itself, but to ultimately gain consciousness. Carl G. Jung believed that the desire to achieve consciousness of oneself, to illuminate the vast and abysmal psyche, was more powerful than the desire for sex.

And then like sex, life is a ruse for the acquisition of consciousness. Perhaps every experience, choice, and decision that we make is a trick to get us to wake up. And then sometimes we have to fall asleep, slip into unconscious passivity to realize what we really truly exist for. We exist to confirm our existence and ultimately the existence of the universe. Does the universe really exist? Perhaps it exists only because we choose it to be so. And then perhaps the universe is really a trickster, and the faces of god, merely its pawns in a game that has no purpose but to exist for the sake of existence.