Spiritual Awakening: Moving Away From Disillusionment to Finding Meaning in Life

As we grow and experience life, there may come a time when we become disillusioned. We may feel like there is no meaning or significance to what we do. We feel like we are running in a hamster wheel, or on a treadmill, always striving to earn money to survive and maybe have a bit of enjoyment. We experience empty enjoyments and superficial relationships. We wind up asking ‘why’. This can be a real turning point for an individual who is ready for taking up the spiritual life. A feeling of throwing it all away and escaping rises up. We call these feelings many things. We may call it ‘nausea’ as the existentialists have been prone to do. We may call it ‘mid life crisis’ or ‘post partum depression’ or any number of things that represent a change in our feelings and emotions away from the exte
al life we have been living. We may call it teenage rebellion as the young person looks at the life path in front of him and does not accept that this is really what life is all about. We may not know why, we may not have any sense of what we want to do or how we can simply change our lives, but we know that we have to do ‘something’.

While this feeling, this experience, can help us to recognise that there is something different, something deeper, something meaningful about our lives, it cannot, of itself, be the basis for a long-term transformation. That would amount to a falling into a state of depression, a tamasic rejection of the life without a new purpose arising. Wallowing in this state may lead to alcohol, drugs, depression, a life of dissipation, and even to thoughts of suicide or self-harm in some way or another.

When we look at individuals who have returned from a near-death experience, we frequently hear that they found a new meaning, a new understanding, a new mission that drives them forward. A similar turning toward a deeper reflection can lead people to a search for meaning in religion, in philosophy, in spiritual practices, and as they deepen their practice, they begin to sense that there is in fact a deeper purpose, and that their life has a meaning and it is worth living to realise that. Some find this as a foundation of solace, some experience a positive sense of joy when they open up to the new vision that presents itself to them once they move beyond the weariness and emptiness of their exte
al lives.

The Buddha was a prince who lived a life of luxury in a sheltered environment, with every desire met. He was surrounded with all that the exte
al life could offer. Eventually he found out that this life was a life of illusion and he rejected it, understood the four noble truths of human life, and set off to find a deeper realisation. He successfully moved from renunciation of the meaningless life of aristocratic luxury, to a deeply meaningful and personal experience of liberation and spiritual truth.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Certainly if one is satisfied with life, entranced by it so that it shuts out the sense of the soul within or hampers the attraction to the Divine, then a period of vairagya, sorrow, depression, a painful breaking of the vital ties may be necessary and many go through that. But once the turn made, it should be to the one direction and a perpetual vairagya is not needed. Nor when we speak of cheerfulness as the best condition, do we mean a cheerful following of the vital life, but a cheerful following of the path to the Divine which is not impossible if the mind and heart take the right view and posture. At any rate, if positive cheerfulness is not positive in one’s case, still one should not acquiesce in or mentally support a constant depression and sadness.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 141