The very simple, logical evidence for life as a cycle has been in front of us all along. When you are born you are coming out of a state of unconsciousness. Our “initial” state then (for this example) is that of “unconscious”, or “off”. After birth our state is set to “on”. At death we move BACK TO OFF. Since obviously we can’t have any experience of non-experience, the very next thing we’ll ever experience is another birth, or another movement into the “on” state.

I wonder if people would think differently about how they spend their time on earth if they realized that the very existence and continuation of life anywhere could lead to their own reincarnation in the future. Looking at it the opposite way – if there is no life that exists after your death, there is no life for you to experience in any capacity. The extinction of all life would be the only true death.

I like the idea that the things we pay attention to become our reality. What we are aware of at each moment is just a minute fraction of the reality available to us. To see all of the reality available to us at once is to be blinded, paralyzed by sheer sensory overload. Maybe not just sensory overload, but noise – to the point where nothing makes sense and just the task of curating what is perceivable is too daunting. We are fortunate that our brains start filtering these things out early on. Filters provide us an ability to function at all. They create a canvas around us, focusing our actions so that productive progress can be made. The amount of control we have over our own realities is the degree to which we are able to choose what/how we see things. It’s a mix of determinism and free-will. I like to imagine a filter in the shape of a (spherical) 3D mandala around the edges of each our conscious perceptions. The (mostly self-selected) ons and offs create these loops around our perception, showing us certain things and hiding others.