The self is discovering itself within the workings of how it works and how the self does things and thinks things. Concerning Maitreya, you have a concept here, and it is the same concept everywhere — all places, all realities, all dimensions, all worlds — and that concept is called life. Rocks have cognizance. Trees have cognizance. Birds and seeds have cognizance — of, as, and because of life, the being called life, the being that is life for everything. Anything that has consciousness is provided that consciousness by the entity called life itself. That is what it is. It lives; it does not die. The experience — the being called life experiences death through the human condition and through the death of animals. It experiences it because it leaves. That is its experience.

The argument against life is the experience of death, the struggle, the anger, the frustration, the self-guilt, the self-acknowledgment of not knowing what you are doing, and the petition for rejuvenation again. That's death. That's what the human condition is, and as you live, you are living your death. You say you are growing older, you are growing up, and you are aging, yet you are participating with life, and as the age accumulates with you — age is a concept related to wisdom, or is supposed to be — you understand that you are not the life, but you are living.

The questions within the human condition are awkward, to say the least, in not acknowledging the life that is inside of you — basically the heartbeat pump thing, the flow of the blood, the oxygenation of the body, all of these concepts you don't think about. You breathe, and you walk. Yet the appreciation for those abilities is what has been lacking. You have your athletes; they exemplify the ability. That doesn't mean that everyone should become an athlete. It means that there are those who are showing you that you can work with the form you have and proceed in any direction you choose — the possibilities of working with form.