Why am I?

Do not be amazed at your existence. Because it is the condition for there to be questions at all.

Why aren`t I anybody else? That`s the much more interesting question. Leading to:

What must I do to be someone else? Now useful and less useful advice can be given.

I think there are substantively four different questions in the OP. All of them are extremely interesting questions. I suggest picking on one of them for the topic of the thread. Or make several different threads.

Other related puzzles. Why is the time now? Why is my brother always in a place he can call 'here' and I am also in a place I can call 'here' and yet they are different places? Why must the volume of my body always be the same as the amount of water it displaces when submerged? Why must a fair coin have an equal chance of landing heads and tails? I put these questions to raise the possibility that your questions are not so much about personal identity as about how particular concepts work: "I", "anybody else", "this", for example; and how statements that seem to give information may be about concepts rather than particular facts or states of affairs.

Quoting Monkee

Why am I? Why am I conscious and in this body specifically? Why aren't I anybody else?

You are, because you chose to be. You are conscious because your mind, and that which you consider to be you, needs you to be in order for you to exist as you understand you. You are in this specific body because you chose to be.

Quoting Monkee

Do different people have different levels of consciousness?

Yes. People are at different levels of progression, therefore over-arching levels of consciousness.

Quoting Monkee

Am I more/less conscious then another?

Yes. You are at your level of development, I am at mine, and everyone else is where they are. No two are exactly the same as we are all at different points along the same path.

Quoting Monkee

If everybody else is conscious, are we all just one monistic creation?

We are all differentiations of the same monistic base; everything is one, differentiated.

Quoting Monkee

What is consciousness?!

Consciousness is the occupying force within the mind, created by the soul and powered by spirit. Consciousness allows you to experience your life fully and interact with everything around you while you travel on the path.

Nice eh!

Quoting Book273

You are, because you chose to be.

There was a really nice body I was going to choose to be in but someone else got it first and I had to settle for this second-rate body. If that sounds absurd, it's because the idea of choosing to be in the body you are in *is* absurd. Let's think about what's involved in choosing.

Reply to Cuthbert You have very nicely demonstrated someone at a different point of understanding along the path. Thank you

Reply to Cuthbert

How can you choose which body to be in if you are that body?

Reply to Cartuna You are not in it when you chose. You chose prior to it's creation. Kind of like custom ordering a car, only with more say as to how long it lasts.

"I want to drive a Toyota Tacoma,V6 engine, 4 door, 4 wheel drive, TRD with skid plates, a manual transmission, leather seats, and in metallic forest green" And the dealer, if they are worth shopping at, orders one.

The body you are in is the same kind of thing, not at a dealership of course, but the process is comparable. "Hispanic male, in excellent health until 45, then a long fight with some disease, then recovery and die in my sleep at 87". Then you are born into that frame and begin your journey. The form you choose is dependent on the experience you are seeking. Maybe you need to be a badger the next time around. Or you need a break, to process a lot of information (you had been in Germany over WWII), so you come back as a rock for a few thousand years.

Reply to Book273

Sounds reasonable. But choosing a car already presupposes a body. I don't think we can exist independently of the body and the world in and outside us. I do think we will live an infinity of possible life's. A life like rock seems hard.

Reply to Cartuna You chose the return body during the in between state. Live, experience, die. Process, chose the next form and time, etc, begin the next round, repeat. We exist independently of the body already (we are usually unaware of this until the body begins to dramatically fail), the body is a vessel in which we temporarily reside. Like driving the car around to see the world, you are in the car but not of the car. When it breaks you find another means of travel and carry on. Perhaps a truck, after realizing the limitations of a low to the ground sports car, to see off road areas.

Quoting Cartuna

A life like rock seems hard.

He he he. well played. I don't know, rocks don't talk to me. It could be very relaxing, but then, I am unaware of the demands on a rock, so maybe not.

Reply to Book273

Are there conditions on the things we can choose to life in? Should they be self contained (so not a galaxy for example, which comprises all kinds of other stuff to life in, like bodies, rocks, etc)?

Reply to Cartuna No idea. Again, depends on what experience you would be looking for, although in theory...why not? you would be the sea everything else swims in, or the cosmos, or whatever.

Reply to Book273

Pure poetry! "I am the sea all fish swim in, the cosmos that contains you all"...What state of mind one must have to live that life? :smile:

Reply to Cartuna Not me yet, but one day, maybe. The option seems pretty cool though.

Reply to Book273 That would explain why I didn't get the body I wanted. Too slow of brain to get the good one. Only myself to blame. :cry:

Thanks much for the well put replies. I have a problem of simplifying, I can say, and have much to ask. So this brings me to this question: Can I go against my conditioning? I was very curious about free will.
But perhaps I should make another thread? :grin:

Quoting Monkee

Why am I?

Why are you what?

:gasp:

Why am Monkee?

We're all monkeys, great apes to be precise. You're not alone if that makes you feel any better.