There should be a meaning to life
Is that true?
Well, no. I’d like there to be a meaning to life, but there doesn’t have to be one, and I certainly couldn’t tell you what it is.
Aside: Who is it that wants there to be a meaning to life? My egoic self, it wants to have purpose and meaning, to justify it’s existence and feel special. I can get a small sense of deeper peace within me that doesn’t require there to be any meaning, that just is.
How do you react when you believe that it is true?
I despair. I get depressed that I cannot find this meaning and purpose within my own life. I feel dread, and this lump of solid, black, toxic goop settle in my chest.
Who would you be without the belief that there should be a meaning to life?
If I didn’t believe there should be a meaning to life then I would be more peaceful. I would be open to life showing me great joy and purpose, but also to never experiencing that. I would be able to accept those times where I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I wouldn’t worry about making sure I was on the right path. I wouldn’t worry about wasting my life. I would be more able to just enjoy what is.
How can you turn it around? And give 3 ways that it’s true for you for each one.
There shouldn’t be a meaning to life.
Without a set sense of purpose I am free to follow whatever paths show up in life. A sense of meaning is a way to feed the egoic mind, the little self, and keeps me focussed in the future on some end result rather than in the now. Searching for meaning is a way to keep the searching mind in charge, rather than accepting what is.
My ego is fighting back
I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking over the summer. It’s led to me digging even deeper still in what started years ago now as a quest to find my perfect job. Having got to a stage where I’ve shed a lot of unnecessary gunk in my head it seems that my ego (aka little self, egoic mind, sense of separateness, false identity) is fighting back against it’s ultimate demise. I got all caught up this evening around having no sense of purpose to life and how depressing that was. It’s fair to say that I haven’t shifted entirely into embracing the possibility of there being no purpose or overarching meaning to my life (by which I mean my external life, rather than my internal or ’spiritual’ life), but at least I’ve cracked the vice-like grip it had earlier on this evening.
It turns out that planning where our dance group is going, and what we want to be doing, will trigger the same thoughts about me. I’ve still yet to fully incorporate the realisation that planning is only useful for the bare minimum of getting things done, and is not useful (indeed is counter-productive) when applied to life in general. This could make it difficult for me to get anything done without freaking out, unless I can keep reminding myself that I don’t need to plan my entire life.
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