Common sense tells us that the universe always existed and will always exist, and that when we were born we were born into it.   Sort of like a stage play that was already going on, and we enter the play when we are born, and exit upon our death.

However, this is incorrect.

When we are born the universe comes to be with us. When we die the universe disappears completely. This is true because the world we experience is just our own perception of the world.   Actually everything in the universe we see, touch, experience is filtered through our own experience, and it is this experience that we use to define ourselves.   There is no world outside of our own perception of it.   Your world and my world never cross.  I cannot see the words that I’m writing now through your eyes, just as you can never experience what I’m feeling as I type them into this laptop.

It is also true that it is the nature of things that when we are kind, gentle, respectful of the things around us (a wooden cooking spoon we are cooking with, the worn-out car we drive, the people we meet) we are only being kind to ourselves.   These things are manifestations of ourselves.  It can be no other way.

When we are gentle with all things, we discover that the world responds in kind.  When we transform how we are with our world, we transform the world itself.

This is my experience.