It’s an ordinary day; a little cloudy, but dry. Of course, every day is an ordinary day, until it isn't, and we never know when the most extraordinary of days will occur; namely our last day. The first of the things we don’t know; the day we will die. Similarly, we don’t know if there is any kind of existence after the death of the body; maybe some kind of residual consciousness. It doesn't seem likely that consciousness persists after the death of the body since even sleep causes a loss of consciousness, and since consciousness and existence are synonymous, there is no existence after death.
It hasn't started very well has it? Some very basic things are unknown to us and no amount of philosophizing will change that fact. Sometimes the fact of existence seems very odd and the question “why is there anything at all” raises its ugly head, and again there is no answer in sight. Our existence in this world is simply a given, with no information that might explain it or why things are as they are and not otherwise.
I’m also aware that the only things I experience are representations formed in my mind. In fact, my mind presents a simulation of the world, and this is what I know and navigate. The world ad it really is is unknown to me.
There is something wrong here. Despite the complete ignorance of my own nature and that of the world, I continue to live and function. Something within me seems to be quite at ease with existence. Obviously, it isn't my intellect, I wouldn't know how to get out of bed if my intellect was in charge. So it's fairly clear that I am much more than my intellect: instinct, desires, emotions, and sensibility come to mind. Now there is something of a conundrum here. My attention is almost wholly consumed by my thoughts, daydreams, and fantasies, to the extent that I think I am my thoughts, and yet these are all phantoms with barely any grip on reality, bearing in mind the things discussed above. Your mind would not know how to calculate all the muscle tensions and balancing dynamics so that you could put one foot in front of another when walking. In fact, it isn't an overstatement to say that your mind has a minor, although key, role to play in your life. Without mind, we would not be able to plan and calculate, but that's about it. The act of living belongs to wholly different parts of us, and ironically we give these parts almost no attention. So we give our attention to the part of us that is not really very important, namely our intellect, and completely ignore the parts of us that are real; our body, desires, instincts. Clearly, we need to be re-educated and especially on where we should put our attention. If we want to live a life of a ghost then we leave the attention to play with images in the mind. If we want to live a life of reality and become real, then we make the effort to place our attention on our body, desires, instincts, sensibility, and emotions.