Class 2 The meaning of life
Background Notes
Wisdom is simple; it is knowledge that craves complexity.
One of the main sources of stress is not having clear life directions or goals. So often we are caught by the urgent things in our lives – our material responsibilities and day-to-day struggles – that they create their own vicious cycle within our minds. This is what we may know as the 'tension loop’.
The 'tension loop' confuses meaning with movement.
Just like a computer, the mind processes data from many sources. The more programs you run in a computer, the less time it can spend on each program before having to go and process a little more of the next. The time the computer spends switching from program to program makes the computer run slower and slower until it may break down or stop.
The mind works in the same way. Only our programs that run around in circles using up the minds resources are our fears, anxieties, doubts and worries. As we run out of resources, the mind (unlike a computer) speeds up. It becomes so involved by the number of things that it has to do that it spends more and more of its time switching from one to the other, drawing us further into the superficial and further away from the analytical and obviously the intuitive or meditative levels. We find that we can’t concentrate for very long, we’re flighty and scattered and it is self-compounding. This 'tension loop' can be permanently transformed only through calming the mind and allowing a deepening of our awareness. We need to identify the negative thought patterns in our lives and transform them into positives. For example, worries are perhaps the most insidious of all negative thought patterns as within the mind they are like a program that loops or is never completed. They use resources, create stress, and are happiest when nothing is ever resolved or an ‘end-point’ reached.
In the end, however, the real problem is not so much that we may be stressed or sick or having a nervous breakdown, the real problem is that we have confused ‘busy-ness’ with our life meaning. Meaningful goals become less and less clearly identified.
The Meaning of Life
How many times in your life have you wondered about the meaning of life: Who am I? Why am I here?
Most people have stopped asking these questions, as if there is perhaps no answer; or if there is, it must not be necessary to know.
Can you see how absurd this is? How are we supposed to have clear life goals if we do not know why we are here?
We have all listened to speakers who were very complex in their arguments; you probably thought ‘I don’t know what he is saying but it sounds important.’ We have learned to value complexity because in our society it meant increased prestige.
So the natural progression of this is, that the most important of all questions must have the most extremely complex answers. Gladly, for us, the opposite is true.
Have you ever said - ‘I know this is right and it doesn’t matter what anyone says, I know this is something I’ve got to do’. Perhaps you touched your heart and continued; ‘because I felt it right here.’ Or perhaps you were reading a particular book or listening to a person speak and suddenly something they said struck a chord and you found yourself saying ‘Yes, that’s right’. Sometimes these feelings might have even defied logic but you knew they were true as grass growing for you. These are the 'Aah' moments of real wisdom.
Wisdom requires not thought but experience, It always feels very simple as it is a revelation of our real self. It is a meditation experience.
What we need to experience wisdom is meditation. To know the meaning of life, we need it in abundance.
Imagine for a moment that you were the creator of the earth. Would you have made it so difficult for us to know the meaning of life, that we would have to renounce all other attachments and travel on a sacred pilgrimage for years and years until finally arriving at some Himalayan cave, where a holy teacher in a dim, dark cave would proclaim that the meaning of life was 42? - Or would you make it so simple that it would be sitting right in front of us, waiting for the child in us to see? And perhaps we, in valuing complexity are looking for the most complex of all answers to the biggest of all questions, and continually missing the simplest of truths.
It often seems much easier not to know the meaning of life because in not knowing we do not have to change anything. Some of us are subconsciously afraid that knowing the answer might mean a change to our present life-style. Many of us are not happy with our present state but fear changing might make it worse.
So ask yourself if you really want to know. Take a moment if you need to, because once you know it is impossible not to be transformed by knowing. (Wonderful isn’t it?)
Now try this... Instead of asking what is the meaning of life, simply ask yourself what puts meaning into your life? What moments would you like to increase? Take a break to think this over, write some of them down if you’d like, and read on....
Next page: The Meaning of life and our free Guided Meditation exercise