The Core Questions of Existence: Suffering, Oneness, and the Illusion of Separateness

God created the universe because it was bored.

Because it could.

Because it wanted life to enjoy existence.

Maybe because it wanted itself to experience itself.

Perhaps because it wanted a richness of experience instead of a poverty of experience.

Because it wanted to create souls that would have the chance to grow towards it.

It wanted to see what would happen — so in that instance, it’s not omnipotent. That’s probably not the case.

This is all God’s dream. Possible.

It wanted to create souls that had free will beyond God’s control. That’s a kind of religious explanation that Christianity gives. But I think that God doesn’t have desire. And I think this final sentence is the answer:

It needed an earth realm where souls had to grow, learn, and evolve.

Transforming Suffering into Purpose

I think it’s more of a need for us to be here in a place where we have this dynamic experience of life with good and bad, and the chance to transcend it on our own.

That depression, that sadness of feeling like things are meaningless, and that sorrow that we feel in life in general — from life being too short, to losing everything we love, to aging and all of that pain in life, the worries about what’ll happen tomorrow — it would feel like this universe is a cruel cosmic joke, just a trick on us.

Like what’s the point? Why are we here? If we didn’t have the ability in each and every single one of us to transform that suffering into something bigger. And that is something we all have. And that, I would say, is the true purpose of our lives.

It is all one. There’s one life. There’s one consciousness. It’s peering through many bodies. It’s appearing in many forms. At the deepest level, it is us looking back at ourselves. And so we can love each other as ourselves.

Loneliness really comes from separation, the feeling that we are separate individuals that are disconnected from all the other people. And when we truly sit in a space of oneness, when we truly see ourselves peering through to us, we feel a deeper connection to everything. Once we can truly see it, it’s an incredible experience as opposed to a frightening one. It is alone, but it’s all one. And it’s not separated. It’s not disconnected. It’s whole.

Science, Mysticism, and the Nature of Oneness

Oneness isn’t a belief. It’s a realization that anyone will come to when you explore and look closely at reality. You can use science to find it, such as understanding there is the quantum field that underlies all material phenomena, and that every particle, every object we see, is a slight change of frequency and vibration in this quantum field. A specific vibration creates a particle, and everything is just frequency. This is proven science. The leading theory of everything is this quantum field that underlies our physical universe.

Simultaneously, many sages, mystics, ancient monks, and lamas from thousands of years ago came to the same conclusion that science is now coming to. So it has nothing to do with belief. It is when you look incredibly close at the universe. When you look incredibly close at everything in your life, the nature of reality, this realization occurs. So it’s not a belief. You should never, in my opinion, blindly believe something because someone tells you. This is about understanding that all phenomena are connected. And when two things are connected, they become one.

Playing with the Illusion of Separateness

The fact that there’s no individual, and thus no individuality, can only feel sad if we are misunderstanding what we’re talking about here, because we do get the illusion of individuality, the illusion of an individual. And that is what we’re here to explore in this fascinating physical universe that we’re here in for a short time.

The thing to remember is that it’s not real. So we get to play with it. We get to explore. We get to express ourselves. But when we suffer because something doesn’t go our way, we can remember that it doesn’t matter, that we were just playing with an illusion, playing with a magic trick, playing with a toy. We get all the perks of the illusion of separateness. We get to enjoy the variety of things that we get to experience.

Service: The True Essence of Spirituality

I think that spirituality is about not just being happier. It’s actually about discovering that helping others makes you the happiest. And I think that’s the ultimate truth. And I think that’s why the monks have a deeper spirituality, because that’s their purpose. And I think they really live up to that purpose. And anyone who uses it to get a high is not truly reaching the highest level of spirituality. Because all personal worry, all sadness, all grief, attachment, greed and selfishness completely disappear when we are focused on making others happy, serving others. That is the surest, fastest way to dissolve our ego and to feel that connection to the universe. And it’s not necessarily the flashiest thing or the most popular thing, but I do think that’s the true essence of spirituality.

The Experience of Pure Awareness

When we experience oneness, every single negative emotion disappears, and those are anger, hatred, fear, selfishness and greed. We immediately give up the pressure that we carry on our shoulders. We become stress-free. We become focused on the here and now around us, which is almost always peaceful — and if it’s not, we are at peace in the chaos, because we disappear. So our personal worries, stresses, pressures, desires to achieve and acquire, they just go down to about 1% of our awareness instead of taking up our full mental space.

And all that is left is love and happiness. It’s not love for a person or others or your enemies. You don’t have to go there. It’s just a feeling of love that overtakes you because you are everywhere. You are everything. You love yourself. You love life. And you are just in amazement at this magical universe that you are.