You Are Here.

When life gets too much to handle, a soothing practice can be to zoom out of our weird little lives. It’s easy to become completely embroiled in the tedium and drama of existence, that we forget that the universe is perfectly indifferent to us being here. It’s sometimes called “cosmic insignificance therapy” and it can offer some relief in the moments when we feel suffocated by pressure, stress & expectations. We’re a tiny glimmer in an expansive universe across a vast time line. Who gives a shit if you said that awkward thing to that waiter two months ago?

I also enjoy the equally comforting (if not sometimes confronting) practice of zooming *in*. Thinking about the tiny little molecules that make up who we are (swipe to see chromosomes under a microscope!) 🔬 We can become completely yoked to our sense of being “a self” that we never bother to challenge it.

Alan Watts loves to dismantle this idea, reminding us that “… the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.”