Window Shopping for Lives

Some people are forever on the verge of changing their lives. They become deeply absorbed in moving somewhere new, changing careers, travelling, taking up a new pursuit, or imagining a completely different relationship or way of living. For a while, the alternative life feels extraordinarily real. Then the interest passes and nothing changes physically.

Perhaps this is not always indecision or failure to follow through. Sometimes the immersion itself may be the experience. Consciousness can explore many possible lives without physically living all of them. We may enter fully into the energy of another reality, gain what we need from it, and then move on. The personality asks, “Did I do it?” Consciousness may be asking something quite different: “Did I experience it?”

—Consciousness Continuing COMING 2027

Sleep Tracking and Beyond

I recently got a small health tracker to wear on my wrist. After the first night, it told me how long I had slept, how much time I had spent in deep, REM, and light sleep, and even gave me a sleep score. Science has many explanations for what happens during sleep: memories are consolidated, emotions processed, tissues repaired, and the brain carries out essential maintenance.

Spiritual traditions often add another possibility: that while the body rests, consciousness becomes less restricted by physical life. Dreams may include ordinary emotional processing, but they may also feel like encounters, journeys, continuing relationships, or experiences in realities beyond the waking world. My tracker can measure what my body is doing at night. What it cannot measure is where consciousness may be going.

—Consciousness Continuing COMING 2027