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.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and part of that is because I was directing a lot of my energy into exploring a new technique (to me) called Core Transformation. But that’s for another time.
Right now I just wanted to talk about how sometimes I can’t write anything down, because before I’ve even got halfway through writing a post my entire outlook has changed. I can start a rant about something and before I’ve finished the act of bringing my attention to it has changed it.
So what to write about when everything I thinking keeps changing? The answer: I’ll write about the fact that everything keeps changing so fast I can’t write about it!
A change in focus
The parts that are constantly changing are my patterns, or issues, or unhelpful thinking, or whatever term you use. These can change so fast that my thinking transforms partway through forming a sentence. Powerful and also thoroughly confusing when trying to form a post about my thoughts.
So for now I’m not going to write about my thinking. I can mention that I had a panic about rejection again recently, but then realised that I didn’t need to by the time I’d written it down. I can write that I suddenly remember how I judge people with my thinking, or react emotionally to what they do, only to then notice that my thinking is unhelpful and have it stop. But by the time I’m sat down to write about it, or even just grabbed a pen and paper to make a note, it seems like ancient history already. It’s over, in the past, and no longer important enough for me to need to give it more thought and energy.
I need something else to write about. Fortunately, I have some new ideas.
I’ve been watching a brilliant weekly series of videos produced by Cedar Lake Dance on youtube. This weeks was called Where I know and talks about trying to find a new experience outside of what you already know and how difficult that is because it’s so easy to slip into the usual way of doing things.
Oh man does that speak to me. Not only in a dance context, but in all this work I’ve been doing. So often I find myself falling into the trap of using my usual way of thinking to approach this new thing, and of course it doesn’t work.
One way out of it in dance is to work with a partner. You both create something, then you learn each other’s. You can try to really take on their style of movement, to push your body outside of it’s comfort zone. It’s an amazing way to open up your own body to a different way of moving.
An equivalent with the mind? I don’t know, but it doesn’t work nearly as well from books/blogs. I think the most powerful way of trying on new thinking is in that real-time, interactive space. I think that even the telephone is a compromise.
Again, I’m wishing I had people IRL that I could share this with. It’s not that I love you any less, but I want something you can’t give me.
Of course, the responsibility is then on me to go out there and find that somehow. Now that’s stepping outside of my comfort zone.
