The Meaning Of Life

There is so much effort and push to become successful, strive to reach goals, and chase our dreams, and those efforts will serve many of us well.  I have long been an advocate for having somewhere to go in life and having some target to aim at, for otherwise you are simply drifting aimlessly through life.  One that simply drifts through life may not like where they end up because they have let the external world and chance decide where they go.  Based on the current paradigm of life on this planet, it makes sense to strive for something to be considered successful, but what does that mean?  Being successful normally equates to having more money and material things, and there is nothing wrong with having all the nice things while we move through our lives, but these achievements cannot be all there is to this existence.  If all we are here to do is eat, work, consume, and die, then what is the real point of existence?  If we are only here to trudge through life and get nothing out of it besides the mundane, then we are simply someone’s experiment. 

I am one of those individuals who seem to struggle with goals and where I want to go in life; I also find myself wondering about the meaning is for chasing all these worldly things.  I also find myself ignoring the past, although important in forming who I am now, it does not seem important for moving forward.  Living in the present seems to be the only phenomenon that I am comfortable with, but for most people, this is the hardest concept to grasp.  Living in the present does present some challenges because we all need money, jobs, cars, etc. to be able to survive this life, but isn’t the present the only thing we have?  If there is a past and a future, they are not present in our lives when we move from moment to moment; perhaps the past and future only exist through the lens of our consciousness.   Our minds are very powerful and help us make sense of this apparent linear timeline that we exist on, but our mind also has to make up information and fill in gaps so that we can have a normal experience.  When we have experiences that are repeated over and over again, our minds don’t have to fill in many gaps, but when we have a new experience, our mind goes to work quickly to provide a full picture of this new experience.  Our minds rely on the experiences we have had to help fill in the empty holes of an experience; this process also takes a small amount of time to process, so in some ways, we are always living in the past.  There has also been scientific research that supports the idea that decisions of the mind are made as far as 7 seconds ahead of an actual action.  So then are we also living in the future consistently as well?

If our minds are processing past and future information, where then does that place us in this reality?  It seems that we are in a perpetual state of balance, but predominantly in the state of the eternal now or present moment.  If we can only process ahead or behind for a matter of a few seconds, then what is the point of trying to achieve goals that are way outside the bounds of these constraints?  I am not saying we should just sit around and hope for the best, I am just trying to get you thinking about your existence and what you may be here to accomplish.  If we are captured in this tiny space of mind computing power to form our existence, form a brain that is enclosed in a space of darkness, what are these experiences meant to be?  Perhaps we are here as a soul to experience a carmate life and understand what human emotions are about, or maybe we are in some very long dream state that we cannot seem to wake up from.  It is almost like we are in some simulation or holographic state designed to teach us something; the definitions and parameters of our current virtual reality simulations seem to align with our own human experiences.  We seem to be locked in some type of prison that we cannot escape from with established limitations. 

I will digress back to the original theme of this article.  Looking at the past as we understand it, many human beings have existed in this reality, and very few of them are remembered for what they achieved in this life.  A couple of generations from now, no one will even remember who you were in this life, so who are we trying to impress and what difference does it make what others think about you?  Nothing we are doing now will truly matter a couple of hundred years from now.  What then is the meaning or purpose of our existence here at this time?  I truly believe that we are souls, or spiritual beings, here to have a human experience that supports and helps the collective universe learn and grow.  Our part of the equation is to experience everything that it means to be human, for that is what we are now, so why not dig in all the way?  The other major part of this equation is to learn who we actually are, apart from our human form, and to help others learn the same lesson.  We are all part of the cosmic sea, and without the input and experiences of all human beings, there would not be a sea.  If you think about our earthly oceans, it is simply a very large collection of individual drops of water.  Each drop is likely experiencing this sea differently than the other drops, but all these drops make up the collective we know as the ocean.  Without all the individual drops existing and having an experience, there would be no ocean.  Just like the ocean, we are all part of the universal cosmos, and without us having our individual experiences, existence as we know it would not be possible.  We need every single being in this universe to hold together the fabric of eternal existence. 

So yes, chase dreams, chase goals, live life to the fullest and have all the experiences you can while you are here in this reality.  I believe that in the pursuit of these worldly goals is where our true experience as a human being happens.  When we fight and scratch to be someone, to do something, to achieve something, we will find out who we truly are.  If we simply eat, work, consume, and die, what have we learned?  We find ourselves in chaos, for this is where opportunities happen, if we can learn to get through the struggles, there is a reward on the other side.  But we cannot settle on past achievements and sit on the hill that we managed to climb, we must always find the next hill and continue learning and growing.  In the end, we will move on to another existence and have more new experiences; let’s not worry about what other people think, or how they feel about our journey, and get busy working on our own journey.  We are also here to help others realize these things but remember that we cannot walk their journey for them, but we can walk it with them. 

Where are all the answers for your purpose and journey?  We have everything we need within us and we do not need anything external to us to access anything and everything that we need for this life journey.  Most people are too focused on an external savior, quick fix, or something from outside of us to provide us with what we need.  In my opinion, the true meaning of being a slave is to expect someone or something to save us.  It is our job to save ourselves, to find the answers from within, and to achieve the enlightenment that we are here to realize.  I strongly suggest that you don’t rely on an external source to provide you with all the answers; I am not suggesting that you don’t seek guidance from the divine that you may believe in, but realize that you were created as a complete package. 

It is time to get busy being you – after all everyone is already taken – you are all you have and all you need to be who you are meant to be.