The Deeper Meaning of Life

Life on this planet is but a few moments long, considering the endless eons this earth has twirled around its sun. Long after life has found this planet too unfriendly, and after all of our accomplishments are burned up in that incredible supe
ova that our sun will evolve into just before it dies – the meaning of our lives will remain.

True meaning has no purpose; it just is, as the stars just are. We don’t have to explain the stars away, or understand them; but only look up and feel the vastness, and understand the immensity of everything we are. For the stars and the earth are us.

The meaning of life has nothing to do with the afterlife. Life is where we are now, and the afterlife is yet to be determined. The afterlife is “after." It is in the future, and a life lived in the future, or in the past, is a life lived in concepts, in ideals, and in dreams.

We are here now, and as we touch the earth with our feet, we are reminded that we are made up of the elements of the earth – we actually “are" the earth, and not separate from it. Why do we feel so much wonderment when we gaze at mountain peaks, or across the vast ocean? It is because we have come from the ocean, and because we are a part of those mountains; we were born of the sea, and we will return to the dust of the mountains, places we have never left.

The meaning of life cannot be a goal, or an achievement. The meaning of life just is, requiring no action on our parts – no striving, no bettering ourselves, no successes or accomplishments. The meaning of life is but life itself, and life itself actually has no meaning; it just is . . . and we can just be.

We can create meanings, purposes to make ourselves feel better, but we only distract ourselves from this amazing life itself. Then we lose track of the wonderment of life, replacing its reverence with knowledge. We know what a planet is made of – rocks and gasses, but rocks and gasses are words that deaden our actual experience of a planet. Then, we no longer live life in actuality, but in symbols, and symbols separate us from that which we truly are. When we live by the symbols in our minds, we somehow become much more than what we are, and we become separate from, but as large as the universe itself in our grand delusions.

To think that life has a purpose or meaning sets us on a path to conflict as we strive to fulfill some kind of mental obligation. This is not freedom; this is bondage. If we can’t gaze at the stars without trying to figure them out, or love someone totally without the fear of rejection, then we are not free; we are in bondage.

We have struggled toward our psychologically self- induced goals forever, perpetuating division among us, division from each other, and division from the earth, which is what we are. We have created our institutions and our religions, our countries and our cultures, separating ourselves from each other in ignorance of the fact that we are all part of this earth, this universe. But we see each other as separate entities, ignoring the billions upon billions of beings in the universe that are fundamentally no different from us.

If we can’t live freely, without burden in this moment right now, when will we ever be able to? Can we accept the fact that we are nothing but a part of the earth that will return to the earth? If we can’t, then we must protect whatever contrived thing we create in our minds – things that set us apart from the earth.

And that contrived thing is our “selves," created by an afterthought, after our experience of the meaning of life in every moment. Only when we are fully in the moment, where the meaning of life reveals itself, and only when we are so fully in the moment that even the intrusion of thought, which builds this contrived self, disappears, can we understand the ete
al quality of each moment, the mystical and magical force that sets itself beyond all knowledge, beyond what the human mind could ever hope of comprehending.

Science will never touch this reality. Science will explain and label the phenomena of physical existence, which are things visible and cognizable to our six senses, but the meaning of life has nothing to do with physical existence; the meaning of life cannot be understood.

But the meaning of life can be known. It is there; in each moment that we live, to be known if we are very sensitive, and if we can clear out our busy minds. So, is the meaning of life to live in each moment? No, it can’t be, because trying to live in each moment is not actually living in the moment. Trying to live in the moment is a purpose, a meaning for living, and these are connected to our physical existence. These are connected to the earth and the universe, and therefore subject to the laws of the universe; that all will change, that all is conflict, and that there is no entity behind physical existence at all.

In those rare times when we find ourselves actually in the moment; the accident, the shock, the sudden brush with death, we feel amazingly alive, here and now, touching a reality that we can never have knowledge of. This moment will engage your entire awareness, and ideals, conceptualizations and theories will fade like a bad dream.

The aliveness, the creativity that results will change your entire life. Being completely in one moment is liberating, yet confusing because you will never figure out what happened. You just know that something grabbed hold of your soul with such force that everything you thought yourself to be just went out the window, and you will never go back to what you were. Life has taken on a new meaning.

The meaning of life is not a commodity that can be captured and sold. It is fleeting and different for each of us, changing moment to moment, and just when we become comfortable with what we believe our meaning of life to be, it will change again, unless we doggedly hold on to a concept and refuse to see each new moment as it is; beautiful, free and many faceted. Then we will be as good as dead.

The concepts in our minds developed from years of conditioning, and the multitude of busy thoughts, are simply barriers to seeing things in their entire splendor. The richness of a pastoral landscape, the quietness of a blanket of snow, the whisper of a lover’s voice; these are of the earth, these are what we are, and these are moments of the meaning of life.

To attempt to reach beyond these simple things with concepts will take us out of our precious moments, and our meaning of life. These precious moments are the deepest things we can know, the deepest of all meanings, but we can only know them when the mind is open, stilled, and free from its fears.

Only then does a remarkable reverence seep into our entire being, and only then does the meaning of life become self-evident. nn