There seems to be a tendency among people who learn about the mystery of consciousness to also assume that it’s almost like consciousness is something that happens to us. As if the universe (/some higher power) has granted us, as functional beings, a temporary conscious life, after which there is nothing but void. An almost outside-in way of looking at it.

Which, even if true, seems to be a pretty pessimistic perspective. The problem is we don’t know much about ourselves, and as long as we don’t know much, we’re just going to make assumptions. 

Maybe everything is an illusion, maybe things are only made to make sense in this illusion. 

Maybe the people around us aren’t real, simply iterations of ourselves from lives we’ve lived before, a sort of permutation combination of consciousness(es).
What if everything was built from an inside-out approach? What if we’ve been looking at this all wrong, carrying the assumption that we’re not at the centre of the universe. Maybe this giant simulation started from the backbone of – giving our consciousness some sort of meaning, so it won’t just dissolve into the darkness.

Or maybe I’m just being a little too optimistic right now.