Advancing Awareness
To Get More Love In Your Life
The Psychology, Technology, Neuroscience and Spirituality of
Reducing Unhappiness by Becoming Progressively Loving

Why Are We Here?

Do Our Own Life Experiences Illuminate the Answers?

Is it possible that some of the most profound questions about our human existence, asked through the millennia, may have answers which have been discovered through our scientific inquiry over the last 100 years? Does current scientific understanding offer direction and guidelines in answering questions such as:

Why are we here?

What are we supposed to be doing while we are here?

Most of our attempts to understand and answer these deep life questions have been inhabited by Stories that we tell each other, passing them on from generation to generation. Unfortunately, many of the stories are based on that which cannot be proven. The stories must simply be believed. The larger problem, is that all too often the stories are filled with inconsistencies and contradictions which disturb the logical human mind. Consequently, the story one believes requires faith. The following ideas are gathered from observations, the collection of data, and the analysis of that information based on significant numbers of people. In other words, the following concepts have been concluded through some form of scientific scrutiny.

At the beginning, there is a moment in time when there is a flipping of a switch and human consciousness lights up the brain. We are still inside the womb. This igniting of the brain occurs as soon as there are enough cells and neurons, interstitial supports and chemicals to fire up.

In these early months of life, the brain operates primarily from a less sophisticated state of being, operating from the lower and more centralized structural parts of the brain, mostly a temporal lobe and parietal lobe based consciousness.

This earliest state of existence is based on experiencing our senses but having no ability to think about the experiences. This appears to be a brain state of fetal and infant pure awareness – experiencing being alive without thought. Seeking a similar state of awareness

will be the goal of many as they get older and seek a quiet peaceful mind through meditation or prayer.

Starting with birth, our sensory systems are exposed to far more intense stimulation, and the brain continues to make associations and understanding between pain and pleasure. The brain begins to put the pieces of association together. So, when you cry as a baby because there is a pain in your tummy and this same exciting, intriguing face shows up, puts something in your mouth, and your pain goes away, then -- Being Alive Feels Good. And when no one shows up while you cry and cry in pain -- Existence Is Bad. If people don’t show up enough during these early years, when we need constant care and protection, we can easily come to believe that life is painful, scary, dangerous and bad, and that people are inconsistent, untrustworthy and to be feared. This is the heart of fear based, survival consciousness.

As the result of our upbringing, we come to feel dominated by either painful or pleasurable infant experiences. The most profound result is that we either trust or do not trust or are left somewhere in between -- trusting cautiously. The fate of our "ability to love" as an adult may well be sealed by an early painful relationship, which leads to mistrust and then the inability, or if you're lucky, the unwillingness, to love others. Those who struggle with trust often feel like prey animals, who always have to be on guard lest danger befall them. Based on our trust level, we either learn to love fully, or we love cautiously and shallowly. We live a life dominated by survival consciousness. If the fear of getting close is intensely painful enough, we learn to love not at all.

Everything starts with sensations of pleasure or pain. These sensations become feelings of good and bad and it all starts in the womb. Our feelings become more differentiated and refined until we have our full compliment of human feelings as we mature into adulthood. However, there is one feeling we don’t fully experience in childhood. It is the crowning achievement in the development of feelings, culminating some time in adulthood with our ability to experience and express, for the first time, true Romantic Love (especially when it has a touch of physical lust thrown in). We really get splatted with this feeling when it hits. This Romantic Love, in self actualizing adults, can grow to become a soul based connection, which can be experienced together during making love . (See Spiritual Lovemaking)

How do we come to know and experience spiritual romantic love and soul based unconditional love?

As an infant and toddler, our brain is doing a lot of thinking by associating experiences as pleasurable or painful. And you have very little ability to exert any conscious choice over your brain's thinking for you. Long before you could think for yourself, the programming of your brain had it thinking on its own, for you, and on your behalf. Your survival depended on your brain sensing your body and making you do things, like cry when your were uncomfortable. Your brain did just fine without your conscious direction or control. So as an adult, just as your brain unconsciously breathes breath into you, it also effortlessly creates thinking for you, even though now, you have learned to think for yourself. We now understand that letting the brain think for us is actually the default level of natural awareness, recognized as Mind Wander and more appropriately called Brain Wander.

This default state-of-being allows us to seamlessly move our bodies and think at the same time! The limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain, is well connected with the temporal and parietal

lobes to provide a rich network of experiences connecting with feelings. It is here, in the amygdala of the limbic system with these deeper temporal and parietal levels of early brain activity where much of our reactive mind resides. This level of default consciousness becomes exquisitely wired to make sure we are always aware of pain and perceived danger and that we react to it. It is the seat of our survival consciousness.

Towards the age of two, you are realizing that you have some control over yourself and also others. If you control your hand to pick up a spoon and you throw the spoon from your high chair, mom picks it up and puts it back in front of you, and she does it with a snap in her step and a smile on her face. This is amazing! You have just become Superperson, able to move large mothers with the throw of a spoon. Poof a new light turns on. We have just understood the game of "controlling mother". This is the great awakening. All of a sudden: “I have control over my body, and I know how I can influence the environment - at will”.

Eventually we learn what we like and we learn that we can get what we want by using certain behaviors (like whining and crying or smiling and asking nicely using the word “Please”). Knowing what “you like” and “you want” now defines you and becomes the essence of “I”, “me” and “ego”. You have the understanding that you exist, you are different than anyone else, and you want things. The ego does a lot of growing through the years to come. And it evolves to be more defined along with being more dominant and controlling or quiet and passive. If you are taught to regard and respect others, the ego begins to understand empathy and compassion by learning that others have feelings also. One now has the ability to take others into account while deciding how to get what the ego wants.

On that road of growing up, the path of love remains most important. The more love put into a child, the more that child is capable of loving as an adult. The more that love is absent or mutated with emotional or physical pain, the harder it is to express love as we grow older. There are people incapable of being in love and consequently, they cannot give love to another. These people can be very nice and giving. But love is both a feeling and the ability to take another into account while expressing a loving feeling. Love is an impulsion towards connection. It is feeling really really good in the connection, when it is there. And most importantly, Love knows the connection of love with the other, even when that person is not physically with us. It is not only your loving feeling, it is loving your loved one's feeling, also, and treating them that way.

Why is love so important? Because: It makes us feel like we belong!

And, it appears that one's ability to love becomes most critical in the last moments of life. We know now from those of us who have undergone the cessation of their heart and breath before the cessation of their brain, that we will be examined on how we have lovingly conducted ourselves over our lifetime. In those moments before absolute death, we will actually be evaluated in front of a judge. We undergo a Life Review and the judge of such review is YOU!

According the Dr. Raymond Moody, who has been collecting data on this state of consciousness for about forty years, this “Life Review” process will occur when we are very near death. The body is lifeless, with no pulse, but the brain is not without spirit (our full energetic force). The brain continues to think for us in these moments without blood and breath. It appears that we are powerless to the brain's guidance into this Life Review process.

The information about the content of this review process has been acquired through hundreds and hundreds of interviews with those who have “died” clinically but not medically and have been resuscitated. These have come to be called Near Death Experiences.

Regardless of the story one chooses to believe about what happens after death, and what these near death experiences represent, the most common experience is as follows: You have no choice but to undergo this experience. You see your life in a chronological order from birth to death and what you see are your relationships. There is one evaluative question during this Life Review which you must answer in relation to each of the relationships which are presented before you.

“Did you love as much as possible?”

In this review you are watching yourself from a third party perspective. You are then witness to actual life interactions between you and each of the other people in your life. Throughout this witnessing, you are made to understand the nature of this relationship by feeling it. As a witness to your interactions, along with sensing the feelings about this relationship, you are catapulted into the role of Judge. Consequently, if you have caused hurt and pain with another, you must bear witness to the pain that you have created.

And here is the profound thing. Perhaps this has been called Karma in the past. You are not just a witness, but you experience the other person’s pain as they have experienced it.

Consequently, you are left to answer the question: “Was there as much love in this relationship as there should have been?” The analysis and answer is given to you by how you feel. At the end, you are left in a state of being happy and satisfied, or there can be deep suffering within yourself.

Why does this happen to us? If this is a consistent human experience at the time of death, what does it mean? Does it foretell what our life is really about on this earthly planet? It seems that everyone who returns from such an experience undergoes some form of life transformation. They all reset their priorities to either live life and love even more vigorously, if they had a good life review, or if they have a painful life review, they often radically alter their lifestyle and seek to change their damaged relationships to be more loving. Either way they are transformed by having evaluated their life through the lens of love. If you listen to Near Death Experiencers talk, they will tell you what they now KNOW to be the most important thing about living. And that is: To repair the ruptures of love in relationships, and to love fully and vigorously whenever you can.

Given that we will undergo this Review, isn't it interesting that the older we get the more opportunities we have to love? Of course we are also provided more time to be pained by the lack or loss of love in our lives. Also, as we get older we usually have "structural opportunity" to love more fully and deeply. We have the opportunity to learn to love unconditionally if we consciously adopt the structure of what is often called The Soul. After our ego is developed and our empathy and compassion are felt, we have the opportunity to have the soul become progressively more activated. Living fully within the knowledge of the soul and its ability to provide unconditional love, creates another state of consciousness.

This more intense activation of unconditional love can happen when we are young as we begin to love outside our immediate circle of friends and family. It may be activated in childhood by the sense of loving God. But, it most commonly happens or intensifies with the birth of our own baby. If you have been loved well enough as a child, and you then have your own baby, you should have the capacity and hopefully the ability to bond with your baby. A Bond is love from the soul. You love and you care for without any expectation from your child. This is unconditional love. A Bond forms an everlasting connection with that child, even if that child pushes you away. A parent’s loving Bond never completely departs.

It is often after the birth of a baby that the soul begins to expand through loving larger and larger groups of people -- unconditionally. The soul can love people and things it does not know, because it is not based on expectations of love returning. For example, soul begins to love the people who make up your family, then your tribe, then a common cause group and then your country. Those with an expanding soul find that they have a new-found respect, tolerance, acceptance and connection with total strangers, based simply on the knowledge that they are humans who somehow belong with you. With a spiritualizing soul, this love can continue to expand to the whole of mankind, recognizing that we all have similar experiences of survival, love and connection with others and the planet. You begin to see all others as magnificent just because they are fellow human beings. You love and trust them until proven otherwise. However, those who consider themselves love oriented may not always be able to maintain a purely loving position and must protect themselves against those who cannot love and seek to harm.

As with most human qualities, love resides on a continuum of expression, which ranges from loving constantly (the soul based enlightened mind), to living in fear and hate, and not loving at all. Unfortunately, humans without love are often dangerous to those who do love.

As we get older, more mature, wiser, we begin to understand that how much we allow the soul's expansion into our life, depends on how we focus our awareness. In fact, if we want to expand our capacity to feel love, feel the connection with all else, feel the natural flow of planetary energy, feel at one with what many think of as a “Universal Love” of GOD, we must actively seek to enhance and grow this state of awareness. This is often the goal of those in various religious and philosophical practices. Unfortunately, all too often expanding their loving consciousness is not their real life goal. This is another flash point of danger for a loving humanity. When one speaks of love and peace, especially religious leaders, but do not live it, one must be ready to comprehend and handle such situations.

The point is that soul and unconditional love-based awareness can grow through communion, prayer, worship, contemplation, mindfulness, being mindful, meditation, and so on. It appears that our most pleasurable of human states of existence occurs during the condition called enlightenment. This exists when there is little to no self centered based ego and one's actions and perceptions of the world are experienced through the eyes of soul awareness.

So – in this life, we all decide what stories we would like to believe. It seems that the irrefutable story about humans is: We Can Love. Love is on a continuum. Not all can love.

The fact that most people do love has created a force of goodness, a force of love and giving on earth. Our last earthly sense of self will be based on how much we loved, and how much we gave in our life. How far one moves on the love continuum depends on each individual's desire, focus and efforts.

Isn’t it interesting that as we grow, we have greater and greater opportunity to gain a loving perspective through the enlivenment of the soul? And, the longer we live, the more opportunities we are given to engage in loving actions. This accumulation of loving or non loving actions is then examined at the end of life, when we are faced with our life review, during which we must answer the question of the soul, “Did you love as much as possible?”

So-

Why are we here?

&

What are we supposed to be doing while we are here?

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Why Are We Here?