In a way that makes sense. Whether we happily go to work, or decide we've had enough and go 'postal' with an ak47 has a LOT to do with hormonal chemicals bounci

In a way that makes sense. Whether we happily go to work, or decide we've had enough and go 'postal' with an ak47 has a LOT to do with hormonal chemicals bouncing around in our brain. If those chemicals get too far out of whack, we end up depressed, anxious maybe even psychotic or sociopathic. We could even be bipolar, where perhaps the chemicals transition so fast that we can be in a good mood one moment and bad the next. Our consciousness, and reality is painted by our experiences, and our feelings and we cannot separate feelings easily from conscious thought, perhaps with deep meditation and then only for a time. Other things in our body contribute also to our awareness/experience: Pain/pleasure signals, sight, sound and other senses, proprioception, random thoughts, inner monologues (or lack thereof - some people have on inner voice), and then there's the brain itself which can have physical impairments or just differences in how one thinks or experiences the world based on how big one section of the brain is. There's also brain matter inside the intestines, and its possible some part of our consciousness is derived from that, but our total 'self' or 'ego' ... that is a system that encompasses the 'current state' of all the tangentially related things. All those hormones, sensors, etc. Ego is only a state, and it's one that exists in the now. It's hard to quantify because every moment we're a new person than we were before, with a lilttle less, or a little more dopamine, or seratonin, right now i'm getting bored of this topic, 5 minutes ago I was fascinated enough to spend 5-10 mins on a comment... Excited me 5 mins ago vs bored me now are two separate conscious experiences about the same topic/event from the same being but over different time scales and only minutes at that. There's also possibility that there could be some psycho extra-cellular stuff going on, or subatomical stuff we don't know about that perhaps our entire 'energy' around our body could form a 'soul' per se, or if we're in a simulation then our body doesn't even exist and our 'conciousness' or awareness really is the only thing we are, and our body is just a manifestation we created to make ourselves feel real. One thing i found weird as an agnostic is energy. If you make an energy ball in your hands, you can shape it, and feel it and focus on it. Maybe focus some breathing into growing it... eventually it's the size of a basketball and the more you do this the more solid it feels, is it real, or is it imagined? Did I really create an energy ball? It feels as real as a real ball, when I run it over my arm the hairs standup like if it were a balloon with static electricity. I have a feeling we may never know what consciousness really is, I hope it lives on though, it'd be a shame if it doesn't, even though I don't believe in a higher 'being' I believe in energy that is part of consciousness being able to move beyond the physical being.