Mystery of existence

Why is this website called Mystery of Existence?

PERSONAL REASONS

Mostly, because I have a visceral experience of the mystery of existence. It’s all a mystery. It cannot be captured by thought. It can only be explored and lived.

And calling it that is a reminder that invites my system to shift into receptivity and curiosity.

MORE IN DETAIL

And then there is a more involved answer.

In a conventional sense, we know some things. We know we don’t know some things. And there is an infinite amount we don’t know we don’t know. In that sense, we are living the mystery.

There is always more data to be collected. Different perspectives that makes as much or more sense than the ones we are familiar with. New contexts that make as much or more sense. And different worldviews that may turn what we thought we knew inside out and upside down. Here too, there is mystery.

Then there is the nature of our mental representations. They are questions about the world. Their function is to help us orient and function in the world. They are different in kind to what they point to. (Unless what they point to happen to be mental representations.) Like any map, they highlight some things and leave a lot out. They cannot capture any full, final, or absolute truth. And reality is always more than and different from our ideas about it. (And also fundamentally less than.)

When it comes to our nature, all the same applies. We cannot capture it in thoughts, just like we cannot capture anything with thoughts. Thoughts differentiate, and reality – and our nature – is inherently undivided. Thoughts inevitably point to something within the content of experience, and not what it all happens within and as.

We cannot know anything for certain. Our experience is limited, and our mental representations are questions about the world. And that leaves mystery. The mystery we are and live, whether we notice or not.

INITIAL NOTES

• mystery of existence
  • Conventional sense
    • what we know, know we don’t know, and don’t know we don’t know in conventional sense
    • always new info, different perspectives, new contexts, different worldviews, etc.
  • nature of mental representations
    • questions about the world
    • different in kind to what they point to
    • highlight some, leave a lot out
    • cannot capture any final, full, absolute truth
  • our own nature
    • all the same applies
    • also, thoughts differentiate and our nature is undivided
    • our nature is what everything – any experience – happens within and as
    • our nature cannot be captured by anything within the content of our experience, even if any content of experience is our nature (our nature takes that form)