Why Do You Exist?

'This is an important question for all of us. I have been studying off and on my whole life the answer to this question. I suppose each of us has responses to this question. One of the best answers I found when I was studying Tibetan Buddhism which is called, "Spontaneous arisal from Voidness". I had never heard of this idea before. But, as I started to think about it, it answered some of my most basic questions about why I exist. I had already come to the conclusion that both time and space are relative to where and when you are in the universe and that time moves at many many different speeds depending upon where and when you are in the universe. So, I was already looking for some concept that could function in all types of manifesting time and space. The way we perceive time here on earth is only one of likely millions of time and space variations throughout the galaxies and in between galaxies that exist.

So, as I studied this concept of "Spontaneous Arisal from Voidness" I began to experience it in real time. First, I thought to myself, "What is consciousness?" and how did I first obtain it? This took me back to a Human Potential Movement workshop which involved Peer Counseling over weeks of meeting one night or day a week to progress. The exercise was to try to remember before we had been civilized as babies. The instructor said something like, "The type of consciousness you are in now is culturally contrived. To understand yourself better, go back to before you had 'civilized consciousness'. So, as I imagined what consciousness existed before I knew and communicated as civilized human being. Strangely enough, I began to remember myself as a newborn. My mother's breast was to me, at birth as big as a living room and I had no idea who I was or who this big thing with eyes and breast was. What I did know was that I would do literally anything to keep nursing at this breast. It was a very animal instinctive response kind of place. And it gave me an infinite level of understanding about how a baby will do literally anything to get breast or milk to stay alive. Its very survival depends upon this. And through food this child begins to become conditioned to be a civilized human. Its not that this baby wants to become civilized. It is that it either does anything necessary to get the breast or milk or it dies and the baby instinctually knows this in its very basic animal pre-civilized human form.

So, in this sense, its cuteness and lovability is all it has to try to make you take care of it. Otherwise, it is completely helpless to you or any other human or animal. Its only chance to survive is that you feed it and take care of it and protect it from harm.

So, now we have two states of existence for a human. The first one is before human civilized conditioning. And then, we have existence after human civilized conditioning. So, on a purely physical level we exist because a sperm and an ovum got together and came to term either in a mother or a surrogate mother. Then, second, we exist because we accepted the conditioning which was required of us to get food in order to grow up and become who we are now.

And then the third question in regard to all this if you believe in a soul is: "How did I come to exist as a soul?" And at this point, this is where I really love the idea of "Spontaneous Arisal from Voidness". The concept of spontaneous arisal from voidness simply means that: "Where nothing was there before something now is". This works pretty well with sperm and egg for most people because one day the mother is regular and the next week or months later  she is obviously pregnant. i.e. "Something from nothing!" Next, if we take human animal consciousness "Before cultural conditioning" when the baby is born and looking at you again we have "Something from nothing" or "It's Alive!". Then, as the baby is conditioned to do what we want in order to have food, we have, "It talks". And then as it grows up and maybe goes to school we have, "It can think for itself!". And then one day it goes off to college and we can say, "It really thinks for itself!" And what do all these aspects have in common? Spontaneous Arisal from Voidness! Then we might say, "When did I first exist as a soul?" Once again spontaneous arisal from voidness works. If, as I experience a soul is not limited by time or space in any way, shape or form, then a soul has always existed, will always exist, and can live in any heaven realm or physical realm or dimensional realm and goes on and helps other beings and learns new things in the future, present and past on this and other planets, stars, suns, dimensions in this galaxy and universe and many others as well. So, I think if you follow ANY of what I'm saying here, the concept of "Spontaneous Arisal from Voidness" works exceedingly well in all these questions and contexts.