Be encouraged that cultivating your mind is not a wasted effort, what you think counts .. in fact .. your thoughts CREATE your reality. Change your thinking and everything changes. It's a cosmic law that can be learned, loved and mastered.

The stars we see, the ground beneath us, even the flow of time may be a 'VR headset'-like user interface of a deeper reality, a model of existence where perception continually renders both the quantum and spacetime - a generative mechanism of consciousness that assembles and edits the very stage on which it seems to perform .. where what we see is a species-specific data structure, computed and created by our consciousness for survival, not for accuracy or to see the entirety of reality ('the truth').

All this is centered around the wave function equation .. it's collapse (CAUSED BY YOUR ATTENTION) is the exact gateway that results in what appears in your everyday life, including infinitesimal quantum space all the way to the observed infinite expanse of cosmic space, because they are 'one'. Furthermore it is the expression of 'conscious agents' (you) interacting > causing wave function collpase > causing 'emergence' (ref:Objects of Consciousness), versus physicist's former view that the universe is 'always there'. Essentially'emergence' means the material universe is not the fundamental base of reality, and in Donald Hoffman's view the universe is rendered or assembled .. that is .. EMERGES .. both 'on the fly' .. and only as we need it.

Also, scientists not only posit that space, time and matter are not fundamental (or 'spacetime is doomed') but that our 'universe' is literally manifest only in our mind. They state that only consciousness is the fundamental principle and consciousness is all that fundamentally exists. A 'universe' they posit is a fininte, temporary and relatively tiny data structure .. a data structure that exists merely as an experience of consciousness (similar to the experience of a VR headset). One end of this data structure is the Planck scale in the infinitesimal limits of quantum reality, the other end is an infinite expanse of cosmic space .. and when the data structure reaches the end of it's lifecycle the result is complete quantum decay (evaporation) and complete cosmic thermaldynamic inactivity (ref: How Could The Big Bang Arise Out Of Nothing).

Consciousness doesn't originate from the 'universe', instead, the universe emerges from consciousness and is a grand mental experience.

Recent rigorous scientific work includes mathematically describing how quantum wave-particles manifest ('emerge'), which is thought to be the interaction of the fundamental components of existence: consciousness in the form of ‘conscious agents', YOU AND I THAT IS. Furthermore this interaction of conscious agents is perfectly described by the quantum wave function equation (ref: Objects of Consciousness). Specifically, quantum wave-particles (protons, quarks, gluons, etc) are vibrations of interacting conscious agents .. or, vibrations of you and I interacting with existence and with each other. Physical properties such as position, momentum, and energy are properties of interacting conscious agents and are not there preexisting all the time but instead emerge 'on the fly' and only as we need it.

What's more .. this 'conscious agent' interaction does not include us perceiving the entirety of reality but instead we perceive and experience only that which promotes survival (determined mathematically by a 'fitness payoff function' according to Donald Hoffman, ref: (1) non-technical, Why You Don't Need The Truth To Survive | Donald Hoffman, (2) technical, Donald Hoffman's Fitness-Beats-Truth Theorem Part 1). Meaning, most of existence is outside of our perception and experience, like a tiny bubble in an infintely vast ocean of bubbles and fathomless deep and infinite space above. This is what Donald Hoffman means when he says our 'universe' is a 'tiny data structure' because it truly is. He and his team has derived mathematically that the probabllity of us being able to perceive 'the truth' (or the entirely of reality) is "exactly zero" because it is "infitely complicated".