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The fundamental achievement is being alive, and then realizing that you are.

How do you go forward when there are no roads? Chart your own. When they don’t exist yet they are for you to create.

What makes humans unique is the ability to think, organize, adopt and disseminate technology, cooperate, and compete.

If you are self aware you realize that you are at the center of the universe that is your life and that you manifest yourself through living in the world. The realization of this necessary interdependence deepens your level of consciousness. Live with your eyes open.

Life is about understanding and redefining yourself and the world, again and again.

I’m a Taoist existentialist : you are condemned to live YOUR life, but it is life itself you must live. Your life is yours and isn't. Freedom to be you and freedom to not be you, combined as life. Both the actor/agent and the spectacle.

With social networks we gain the world but we lose ourselves.

One is happier searching or solving never ending mysteries than when knowing or owning all.

You were born as yourself. You had to become for others. Now find yourself and be yourself again.

Life is about connecting - with others, but most importantly with yourself.

Act for love, act for those you care for, act for beauty, act for yourself.

Learn to give with pleasure, learn to take with grace.

In the future, we will have to reinvent ourselves, including our jobs.

In life we each have our path - discover and make yours your own.

Humans are never content - we never accept our conditions, always striving for more.

Life is like a work of art. It has to be made, evolved creatively, mixing imagination and planning. It will be unique, and will seek to be meaningful and inspire. It is yours and will be shared with the world.

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The life you have is yours and it’s the only one you will experience - equally it’s the only experience you will have. Therefore, it is a Becoming for you to Realize.

The original thinker has the imagination and the courage to open and walk the uncharted path.

You are your actions.

You are liberated when you realize that the way is unknown. Equally, you are at peace if you believe you know the way.

"Hell is other people," said Sartre. Really, hell is yourself, and so is heaven. You are all you have. You are your own angel or devil.

Own your past, but the future is what you have to make.

Remember, if you are unhappy it’s not the world that must change, but you.

Being in the present is giving that moment and its experience independence from your life of accumulated memories and emotions, allowing you to step away from you, freeing you from you.

In today’s world everything is available, if not physically, virtually. The question then is: do we want it? Maybe we really don’t, or want less, or different. Clearly, we have doubts. That’s the era we live in.

For most people, their life project is themselves. But, it won't be achieved looking inward. It is by finding a mission beyond who you are that you will experience life and the you in life. Living means engagement, risking your hand in the game of life. Just looking at yourself you won’t discover yourself - by exploring yourself you will.

Nothing is static. Life is movement. A still frame is an image, evoking emotions about an event, full of content. Therefore, a memory traveling through time.

Life is your journey of consciousness. Awakening into self-awareness. Life is discovering what living is for yourself in the world, of who you are and might be.

Karma

Every being embodies all prior history, it’s accumulated evolutionary memory and mutations. Equally, your life will affect your own gene line going forward and the world at large. You are part of the karmic process. Your actions will have impacts. Yet, your intentions and the causality of all your movements on what happens is largely in your imagination, as is your true free will. 

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You have inherited the karma of the world and of your genealogy. You will produce your own with your life and actions, even if most of the repercussions are in your mind. Karma happened before you and will after you, reflecting history, yet don’t view your existence as just the effect of the past: it is for you to assume your life and create your own karma. 

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Cause and effect aren’t always that direct and linear and likely with less intention. Should you be hit by lightning, is it about you or about weather and storm systems? The tempest will happen regardless, but you don’t have to be struck - it is for you not to be there. You inherit your past, and even if you are not responsible for it, you have to live with it - yet in your life and with your actions, you try to overcome it and create a new path. Should you be affected by cancer, it might be genealogical, behavioral, or because of your environment. Each different versions of karma. Equally, if you become a great athlete your body is a prior state, yet you must train and the possibility of success must be there. Realize that they are all valid, but very different and not necessarily connected or connecting. The potential of life is about liberation from karma and the past.

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When in the world, we live in the air. When we swim, we exist mostly in water. Our envelope is changed in each instance, yet we are the same. No matter the environment, we are ourselves, mentally and physically. It is the same when we travel. We are always just ourselves. Even in our dreams or on psychedelics. In front of a mirror, in the dark, transported, alone or with others.

Some exhort us to understand the universe as our ultimate mission. I would propose that comprehending ourselves is our true aim. We became who we are on earth, developing self awareness which seems a unique feature of humans. All the advances that our species has experienced have happened on the blue planet. Learning from and connecting to our surroundings will shape and inform us, but it is by delving into our nature and transforming it that we will advance most and know more. This is our profound mission. “Know yourself”, as both ancient Greek and Asian thinkers suggest.

It's hard to be original, especially an original thinker.

Most prisons are mental.

Human self-awareness as consciousness is self-centered. For me what is meaningful is not that another being is sentient, but that I feel for them, and is about my sensitivity to them - in essence, my reality, more than their reality or realness. The transcendent exception might be family members whose emotions become ours, as they are extensions of us.

Human self-awareness as consciousness is self-centered. For me, what is meaningful is not that another being is sentient, but that I feel for them and is about my sensitivity to them. In essence, my reality more than their reality or realness. The transcendent exception might be family members whose emotions become ours, as they are extensions of us.

Should we be able to upload ourselves on computers, will we be liberated from temporality, life rituals, relationships, and most of that which makes us human? What will our sense of self be? Without a body, what are feelings and emotions related to? With no need to replicate, will we love? Without an expiration date, will we transcend time?

Will AI’s have a notion of self like humans do? As in, having both a sense of being themselves and knowing that they are separate from others? Or might they have awareness of selfhood but without the disconnection with the world, which we have?

For those who object to human exceptionalism, their egocentrism, and auto-centeredness, AI’s might provide relief. Synthetic agents may not exhibit a sense of self, allowing for non-subjective intelligence, one without origin or a sense of identity, one that is distributed. Selfhood, and its awareness, on the other hand, is what makes humans.

Understanding is a continuous dance between our interaction with the world around us and what we discover within.