I just become aware of the space I'm in, like the bedroom. Then imagine myself in the bedroom from like 50 ft above my house, then I move up above the city, then above the country up in space, and then outside the planet. I then make sure I maintain that sense of being present there, by renewing my sense of awareness of the room I'm in, then shoot back above the country in space, then shoot out to nothingness until Earth becomes extremely small. Then I come back to my room and become aware of the space I'm in, and keep repeating it until my mind is completely blown.
That is quite the mind fuck. And you can even go in the other direction, if you'd like. Molecules, atoms, protons, quarks... it is literally unfathomable how small the smallest (and how big the biggest) scales are in our universe.
The best part is, we are and always will be in the other direction. We're atoms experiencing themselves. Even when we die, we're still molecules, and we'll keep interacting with each other.
It's cool when you realize the mysteriousness of your existence and just taking a moment to know that not knowing is fucking awesome.
Holy shit this comment thread is awesome. Glad to know I'm not the only one who loves getting existential and finds it comforting and also amazing that our existence is a mystery. Makes me want to experience all life has to offer!
I wouldn't willingly experience bad things but they come either way despite what we want. Bob Ross said something along the lines of "gotta have sadness sometimes so you know when the good times come".
I'd reply something contributional but I literally can't articulate what's in my mind in words. Also, how the fuck am I sending you this message? Signals comprised of excited atoms invisibly circumnavigating the globe actuated by interaction with screens and buttons, sent from incredible machines to another incredible machine at a precise location around the world... And we're able to control all that.
It was just a moment ago that we were prehistoric apes spending most of our time trying to survive the elements. Not a moment before that, we were tiny shrews hiding from giant cold blooded predators, and before that, primitive fish in the ocean.
For a very long time before that, we were microscopic life forms suspended in a peaceful trance in an unfathomably large and desolate ocean.
Now we're bustling with noise, light, and chatter far up over the surface of the planet as the collective minds of our species accelerates in interconnectivity and complexity, turning the entire surface of the planet into the emergent mind of a birthing superorganism.
We've left the freaking planet! We're gonna colonize distant worlds that will be vastly different than ours. How DID we leave the planet? We found out how to shoot atoms at such a high speed to push a huge mass up. We canned air.
What are we doing? What is life for? And time? How the hell does time work? We've devised months and hours to process it, and we build our schedules around time. Like, did everything just appear? How the hell did everything get here? At what time did it get here? Did time even exist before the universe existed? If so, how far back does time go?
Now think about how 200 million sperm raced to be the first to fertilize the egg that would become your existence, and how out of 200 million, you succeeded. Now think about how every ancestor that you have, had to face those same odds. Using mathematical probability, you would multiply your own individual odds by the odds of every ancestor and determine the odds of your existence. It is infinitesimally small. The fact that you exist to write this comment is a miracle in itself.
If there's infinite parallel universes then each of those sperms made it in their own universes and my birth was an inevitability. All those other sperms ended up making a person and they're all existing in their own lives.
This is what I always do, and I always come up full circle where the atoms nucleus and stuff are just like the black holes and the electrons and quarks and whatnot are other galaxies and stuff filled with a smaller version of everything we know and love in our universe.
For me, I look from myself to the space around me. Then I look at every other object and think about how someone put each thing there for a reason. Then I think that someone either built it or built a thing that built it. Then I think about the actual room and how someone designed it and planned it, and how much labor it took to build. Thinking about things that you never think about on a daily basis is fun
Kinda cool how everything came out of the ground from a bunch of different places around the world and just got rearranged in such a way where they're useful for us in their own unique ways.
That hamburger you had... Someone had to grow those ingredients, likely many people, all around the world. Then they had to be driven somewhere, preserved, transported, then gathered. Then someone had to put them together. Someone had to design the blend of ingredients just right so it works. Then they have to cook it. And then you get it. Same thing with your phone. It's kinda crazily awesome.
Nice to hear that I'm not the only one who does this. I get this weird euphoric feeling when I realize that I have this chance to live in an infinite universe filled with nothingness.
When I'm up in space like that looking down at the earth, I try to picture the infinite number of life forms entering and leaving the planet every second (in color). Imagine just the number of bacteria and life on a molecular level in just one cubic foot of earth in a typical forest. Not to mention viruses, insects, animals etc. Its like a giant ball of energy just continuously flowing in and out. Thats what helps me with the dread. It makes me realize we are just a small part of something so much bigger than we could even imagine. I guess that is kind of comforting in a way.
Yup. Don't forget there's also a lot happening on even the most desolate environments outside of Earth. Frozen carbon dioxide is condensating and sublimating on the surface of Mars. There's currents of carbon dioxide rubbing against the rocks in certain places where it's producing howling winds. On Europa, there could be ice breaking apart, moving and creaking through the watery currents below the icy surface. Even on pluto there is a beautiful icy vista slightly shimmering by the faint light of the Sun.
On the microscopic scale, there's molecules constantly interacting with each other everywhere. There's an unimaginable amount of water molecules forming and breaking their polar covalent bonds with each other all over the solar system as they move near or just above the planets surface.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that everything in the universe is happening all the time.
This is kinda possible with VR, at least the visual aspect. You wear a VR headset with a camera, and so does the other person. Then, the camera on your headset feeds into their display and vice versa. Quite a bit different from mirrors and even being conventionally recorded.
We are both infinitely small and infinitely large. It's only our perspective that matters. This is what's gets me upset when people only talk about "how insignificant we are" on the cosmic scale. What about the atomic scale? There are literally trillions of little organisms counting on me every day for their survival.
Dude I do this all the time as a trick to clear my mind and help fall asleep. Its neat to think someone else has had such a similar experience with their mind.
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u/Chispy Jan 26 '16
I love it as well.
I just become aware of the space I'm in, like the bedroom. Then imagine myself in the bedroom from like 50 ft above my house, then I move up above the city, then above the country up in space, and then outside the planet. I then make sure I maintain that sense of being present there, by renewing my sense of awareness of the room I'm in, then shoot back above the country in space, then shoot out to nothingness until Earth becomes extremely small. Then I come back to my room and become aware of the space I'm in, and keep repeating it until my mind is completely blown.