Self-Awareness: Gift or Curse?

I continually feel as if I am floating above myself-as if I am watching myself from outside of my body. Is this normal? Is it healthy? There are times that I feel as if this level of self-awareness is a curse. How sweet it would be to be on autopilot; completely within the realm of the unconscious. Do most people experience the world on autopilot? Or are all of us predisposed to an experience that requires us to be permanently conscious actors? Are we in control? Or are we at the mercy of our subconscious?

I know that the unconscious mind is a determining factor in our daily lives. I know our conscious mind plays a role in that experience as well. But, to what degree? Are we conscious actors determining our fates with every “choice” that we make? Or are we destined for the hard-wiring of our brains? Is it free will? Or is it destiny?

I come back to that question time and time again. No matter how much philosophizing I take part in, that remains the fundamental question. Am I choosing to press these keys as I write? Or is my subconscious merely playing itself out in a predetermined algorithmic fashion? I like to think that I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul…but so much of my life has come to pass without my choosing.

Maybe it is just part of the human condition. Maybe we are meant to have an idea of both free will and destiny because we are not meant to know. Maybe we are supposed to continually question the meaning of our existence, and the conundrum keeps us in the present. Isn’t that where we are supposed to be? Aren’t we supposed to be in the here and now? We can’t relive the past, and we have not yet experienced the future…the present is all we truly have.

I walk, I talk, I breathe, I eat, I sleep, I experience the world around me through a narrow bandwidth of sensations. Am I experiencing reality? Or am I reality experiencing itself? Who am I? Where am I? What am I? Why am I here? Will we ever know the answers to these questions? Am I merely an intelligent ape on a watery rock cursed to a short, brutish, and finite life? Or am I an infinite spirit having a human experience to further my consciousness, in order to resonate at a higher vibration, so that I may experience a more supreme level of reality? I like to tell myself the latter, but at this rate, either one could be true. Am I choosing my reality, or is my reality choosing me? No answers. Only questions.