The universe is alive.

I'm still in the process of writing a post on my experiences with spirituality. In the meantime, I thought it very appropriate to share my new epiphany with all of you.

Yesterday I was talking with my house mates about what 'awareness' is--is a chair aware that it's a chair?, does a spoon carrying information?, do you need a brain to observe?, etc.

I said something near the end of this conversation that surprised me: "The universe is alive."

I had never put it into such exact words before, but I realized this is how I've always felt. It's the only way I can describe God. It's the only thing that allows me to carefully reject nihilism, or the apathy and pessimism I often feel. The universe is alive.

I was thinking about it obsessively at 2am--I referred to the Google search engine to read other people's thoughts and came across the photograph above.

It would take 300 million light years to travel from one end of this photograph/simulation to the other. The man who posted this picture in his blog mentioned it looked like tissue--a network of cells.

It looks like the nervous system, doesn't it?

This may be a stretch, but it got me thinking: the universe is constantly expanding, and as it does dark energy and dark matter fills the void.

Meditation is known to increase the grey matter in our brain...how is the universe any different in this sense?

It makes me feel very small, but it also makes everything feel so meaningful too.