A conversation over “What Is the meaning of life?” Part 1 | Sanhia on the Death of Your Story
(Taken from a recent Spiritual Awareness Zoom group. It is recommended that you read the previous message if you haven’t already done so)
Good Now!
Participant 1: If there is no meaning to life, why are we here?
That’s what we’re trying to figure out.
Participant 2: For me I was also thinking that if there is no point to life it doesn’t feel like there is anything to want or to do. There are no interests, no nothing. It feels so empty and pointless.
Is the meaning to have a point and to be full?
Participant 2: Maybe then it feels more joyful or…
What would bring joy or make you feel full?
Participant 2: I don’t even know. At the moment it feels like nothing and it pisses me off because I don’t like that feeling.
So, you wish you weren’t feeling pissed off?
Participant 2. Yeah! Of course!
So, the meaning of life is to not feel pissed off? Is that it?
Participant 2: It’s not the meaning, but it would be nice.
Then what do you do to not feel pissed off? Or do you just wait for that to come?
Participant 2: I really don’t know but I have to find something because I really don’t like it as it is.
Let’s say that you came up with an idea and you said, “Okay, here’s my plan”. You carry out the plan and find that you are no longer pissed off. Will that feeling last forever?
Participant 2: No, of course not.
So the meaning of life is that you are forever trying to get somewhere else, but even if you succeed, it doesn’t last so again you are trying to get somewhere.
Participant 2: Gosh, that sounds bad. Sounds like Sisyphus. Is there any meaning then?
Think of anything that all people would always want to have out of life…. (silence) Let’s say that you get that thing that gives life meaning and then you die. Do you still have that thing?
Participant 3: No
You don’t have the perfect partner. You don’t have the millions in the bank. Maybe we should say that the meaning of life is death, because that is the only thing that everyone shares.
Participant 1: Isn’t it to find out who you really are?
Oh! Who are you?
Participant 1: I have heard that I am divine
He was probably just trying to get in your pants.
Participant 1: (laughing) Are you my mother? (laughing) And that I am not separated. that I am a part of the whole, oneness.
Let me interrupt you for a second. Let’s assume that all of that is true. Then, why do you have this life?
Participant 2: To remember and find that you are all of those things that were mentioned. Because sometimes it doesn’t feel like this at all.
So, you have to have a life to find out that you are one with God? So, is that the meaning of life?
Participant 2: It sounds like it.
But you already are one with God. What changes by finding out?
Participant 2: Another feeling inside because just knowing it mentally isn’t enough. Sometimes my mind just goes “Bullshit”. Maybe truly believing it in my bones would be different.
So, if you are one with God, you are thinking of self as “you” and are then by definition separate from God. How can you have a separate identity in Oneness?
Participant 1: That is the dream we are dreaming. Most of us think that is the truth.
So, let’s come back to this thought that maybe the meaning in life is to come to a place of knowing that you are One with everything and connected to it. Then, of course, there would be no separate you left to be looking for meaning. That might suggest that your life itself has no meaning; it’s just letting go of your separate identity, of your story, of the search. As long as you are looking for meaning, you are looking outside of yourself. You are not looking within nor at what is in front of you now, but into the future. You are looking for what might be rather than what is. Everything you want is not here now, but now is all that there is. The rest is only taking place in the mind, in your thoughts, and has no reality. If you find yourself in the place where all that is real is what is present in the moment, you are now in what could be called cat mind. Animals do not fear death. They have instinctive self-preservation reactions. You could have let go of all fear of death, but would still leap out of the path of a speeding car. That’s simply what the body does. It’s no different than bodies eating or breathing. They just do that. It’s life living life.
If you think, “My purpose in life is to wake up” – as soon as you have that thought you are saying that there is no awakeness now because if there is awakeness now how can awakening be the purpose? The assumption then is “I am not awake to the truth of myself”. Then you bring in a story that goes back to your childhood. “Because of what my parents did, I am still healing. I am a helpless, and perhaps hopeless, victim. My story includes what I was subjected to in school and at church, as well as what my friends, my superiors, and the whole damn mass consciousness has told me.” Some of your story includes successes and spiritual insights, but they are all still a part of your story. The story may include a future where your spiritual growth is enough for you to finally awaken. All of that is part of your story. It is what you focus on and hold on to instead of seeing what is here right now. There can be no awakening alongside an active story. There is just now; there is just life happening…not to you, but all around you. Your story is just a diversion, a game going on in the mind that leaves you asleep and suffering. You think the story is going somewhere. If there is no purpose, there is nowhere to go, there is no destination. There is no Hollywood ending. There is just this. There is no meaning. There is just this fantastic beingness that you are always immersed in, but you usually avert your attention from it by creating a purpose, a goal. Notice that in the story you have created up until now there has been no “ending” that has been fully satisfactory. There is always another goal. The job is never over. It is never enough so, you are back to Sisyphus. If there is no purpose you have permission to stop trying. But that empty feeling, that hopelessness, is just the death throes of the ego, the me that wants to be something special instead of just being.
There was a fun movie some years ago called “50 First Dates” about a woman who awakes each morning with no memory. She has no story. She doesn’t remember the man she had loved the day before, so he has to convince her each day anew of his love. However, the movie wants to pull on your feelings of “poor her” rather than “lucky her”. She starts each day fresh with no story, responding simply to what appears in the moment. Again, I toss out to you the question, “What is the meaning of life?”
Participant 3: It’s experiencing and feeling; being authentic with it.
What does being authentic mean?
Participant 3: Doing my best. Not running away from uncomfortable feelings because they are there now. Instead, I observe if this experience is a part of all.
Who determines what is your best? What is it being compared to?
Participant 3: To running away or not running away.
How do you know if you are running away or not?
Participant 3: If I am feeling my body consciously, I am doing my best. If I forget myself, I am away, so the experience is that I am in my head creating stories.
What is the mind doing when it says you are being authentic or you are running away?
Participant 3: Evaluating? I don’t know.
When you evaluate, are you just looking at what is?
Participant 3: Just was (laughs).
You say you are running away.
Participant 3: If I notice that I was in my head and I catch myself, then I am aware of it.
A bear is running toward you and you turn and run the other way. Are you running away?
Participant 3: No. no, that’s another story (laughs). I mean running away from my feeling which is uncomfortable.
You could not label it “running away” unless you were in your mind rather than your feelings. “Running away” is a judgment. It is an evaluation which means that rather than being in the present you are bringing in your mind which is influenced by forty years of programming to determine whether your action is good or bad. That evaluation is not the same as it might have been twenty years ago as there has been much reprogramming during that space. But the action is still mind directed.
Participant 3: Twenty years ago, I didn’t know that feeling my fears was a thing.
Yes, but forty years ago you did and you just expressed them. Then you learned that it wasn’t a good thing to express them. but now saying that it is a good thing to express them is just the flip side of the same coin. It is still a judgment, an evaluation by the mind. In terms of authentic, it is not authentic. Feelings are just there.
Participant 3: But if I don’t notice them being there half of the day, I have missed all those feelings, for example.
You can’t evaluate missing feelings from this morning because you are not there. You are just in now. Now the mind is thinking about this morning and comparing and judging, saying could have, should have, would have. There is judgment of self, but what is is. In the now, there is a feeling that doesn’t want to be faced. Nothing good or bad, simply what is. As soon as you bring a morality into it, then you are saying something like, “The purpose in life is to express all of your feelings.”
Participant 3: Not express, just notice them. Feel them.
How could you know if you are feeling all of your feelings?
Participant 3: Because of some bodily signs. Getting intense, for example, when I give it attention. Then the body reacts with energetic flow or something.
So that might be around one feeling. Perhaps while noticing that one, you are not aware of five others.
Participant 3: Oh ya.
Oh boy! It’s a never-ending job to notice all of the feelings, especially if you don’t get to use your mind to evaluate how you are doing. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Participant 3: It’s another Sisyphus. I’m just registering the feelings; how many I have (laughing).
There is an enormous difference between noticing what is, which includes noticing you are having a thought and acting on it. You can be aware the thoughts are there, without following them. Come back to now. The thoughts are always related to the past, never to the present. You may be having the thought that you are responsible for handling this, that you have to be sure that you are in touch with your feelings. What a thankless task you give yourself if you pay attention to those thoughts and let them guide you. Again, is the meaning of life to feel all your feelings? How much simpler to just notice that a feeling or thought is here and let it be. There seems to be anger here. There seems to be depression here. There seems to be excitement here. There is a tightness in the heart area here. There are thoughts of hopelessness here. There is nothing that has to be done about any of it. There is just noticing. You are not in control. The you that wants to be in control is the ego mind. The ego mind wants to find the purpose in life and then work to get there. It wants to set goals and strive toward them until they are achieved. In reality there is no purpose and there are no goals. There is just now. If you are not here all you can do is fail. The older you get, the more hopeless you become with your accumulated failures.
Participant 1: So, stay young forever
Participant 3: Stay young, that is a purpose for life! (laughter)
Then we are aiming for not over two years old. (laughter)
Participant 2: My twelve-year-old keeps bugging me with this question, “What is the purpose in life?”
Asking questions that can’t be answered.
Participant 2: That is exhausting.
There is a very simple answer for your questioning mind. Life is. Being is. You see a butterfly flitting around your yard. Is there any purpose there?
Participant 2: Beauty is the purpose.
The butterfly wants to be beautiful?
Participant 3: It just is.
It just is. The mind will go overtime thinking about the butterfly’s purpose being to get nectar and help fertilize the flowers and to be a cog in this whole system. If that is the purpose, why does it need to dance around in the air? That is just what the butterfly does. It has no goals, no successes or failures. That’s why you do things. Because you do them. Perhaps you notice a desire and act upon it. Why? Where did the desire come from? Why did you respond to it? Life just happens. Another time you notice the desire and don’t act. There is no reason here. You act as you act. Life simply is. Life happens. If there is no meaning, it doesn’t matter what you do. That cop that sits in your mind watching everything you do, being ready to write you a ticket for acting wrongly, no longer has a purpose. You can’t do anything wrong. You are free.
Participant 1: That’s kind of scary, to be absolutely free.
Scary to the cop.
Participant 1: As I think of there being no purpose, I feel how empty it would be. It seems there are a lot of things I want to try to get or to get to. Those thoughts seem to give meaning to life. In dropping that there are a lot of different shades of terror. I guess I just have to look at all of that and let the feelings do what they want. In doing that I have been surprised that the terror is so deep. Do we need to accept that there is no meaning? If it is so, then I want to try to face it, not try to create something else.
You don’t need to do that, but it is very easy to face. Wherever you are, whenever you are, you simply look around you. You open your eyes. Look at everything in your immediate environment; use all of your senses. Be aware of what is going on in the body. None of it has any meaning. The mind may come in and make up stories, but they are just thoughts; they don’t exist in the world. There may be a chair sitting in the room. The mind may go into a story about how you got it, but that isn’t happening now. Now, there is just the chair in the room. If you are absolutely with what is here now, there is no meaning anywhere. There is just isness. Meaning comes only from the analytical mind. It is not inherent in anything. The mind’s job is to keep you separate from what is by naming, classifying, or reasoning.
Good Now
Sanhia/Spirit
(This conversation will be concluded in the next message)
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