The Meaning of Life

Saturday, April 08, 2017 K.Z. Freeman 4 Comments


How many times have you asked yourself this?

To most, this question seems to have a different “flavor” as questions like, "What will I eat", "what will I wear" or "what will I do with my life."

It is what we might call a metaphysical question, which means its source comes from a deeper layer of reality within us. From an I center that is disconnected from things that are happening and is not seeing itself as that happening, and instead viewing this happening as something "happening to I".

A superficial question of “What will I eat?” can be immediately answered and solved with direct action, yet we think that a metaphysical question cannot be answered with action, but with intellectual thought.

If you ask me, “What is the meaning of life?” I cannot help but answer from a subjective standpoint. 
I will mentally search through my own experiences to give you an answer based on the events that led me to this point. This will take me away from where I am now and force me to perform a mental action.

But if I answer with another question and keep doing it, the answer to, "What is the meaning of life?" may become more apparent.

Let me show you what I mean.

If I answer: Who is it that wants to know?

You might say: Me.

If I ask again: Who is me?

You might say many things, but let’s suppose you answer with either of these four(or something else, it really doesn't matter):

I don't know.

I am all things that you see.

I am this body before you.

I am the immortal soul within this body.

All of these would be valid answers based on personal perception. Yet neither of them answer the initial question about the meaning of it all.

After you answer with any of the above, I can ask you that which may bring you closer to getting an answer.

I can ask, What were you before you were conceived?

After a bit of thinking, you may see that any event preceding the creation of you can be said to have equally contained you. That is to say the possibility of you.

Did you begin when you were conceived?

You could say yes.

Did you begin when your parents wanted a child?

Did you begin when your parents were children and had the potential to make you and carried this possibility inside them? You could answer yes to any of these. Yet at the same time, all of these events needed to have you as a possibility for you to become an eventual physical entity.

This means that in some form, you were present all along. Not in the thinking of all the people who contributed to what eventually became you, but in their doing. In their action.

In the same way, and in the same way as, What will I wear, is perfectly answered by doing, by wearing something, so too the question of what is the meaning of life can be perfectly answered by action.

A person who is doing, a person who is involved in action and doing things, will in the midst of that action rarely ask what is the meaning of this life. He will do and be absorbed in the doing. That doing will have its own meaning. In that doing the experiencer will not be separate from the experience of doing. The doing will be the meaning and the meaning will be  in doing.

In a similar way, you must realize that you should not ask what is the meaning of life and expect to get an answer, but rather realize that when you ask this question, it is you who is being asked.


The question in itself is great. It divides you into that which is asking and that which is being asked. You then project this duality to the answer itself. You make yourself believe that the answer is in something other than what you are doing right now.

4 comments:

  1. But it has to have some deeper meaning, some purpose as to why we exist.

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    1. At some point in our evolution, man became self-aware. This self-awareness would not be possible without the sensation of there being both a Self and Other. And it is this basic split which disconnected us from the reality of existence. Meaning that we feel ourselves separate from the rest of what we see and feel and hear and can touch. We thus operate on the assumption that space between us and other things is empty and void, or perhaps filled with matter.

      But space is empty only of separate existence.

      To illustrate this I can use the analogy of the tree. A tree contains in it the whole.

      It contains air, without which it would die, it contains light, without which it would die, it contains earth, without which it would die, it contains water, without which it would die, etc. It contains what makes up the whole world, and is connected to all of these things and in that connection IS all of these things just as much as it is what you might call a tree.

      We even separate all of these things, light, water, air, … and think that those things are in fact separate things, and not see them as different states of the same movement.

      All separation of the tree from any of these things, water light, air, … is your projected idea of what you think a tree is, but does not reflect the reality of what a tree is.

      You are just like that tree. Completely immersed, at all times, in this movement of what we call energy, but none of us really know what it is or where it comes from.

      Because you are unwilling to accept this reality of yourself, and because you think (THINK) this is not miraculous or special enough (I don’t blame you, since you experience this every day and thus eventually begin to think it’s nothing special) you constantly search for something deeper.

      Because you search somewhere else and not right here, within, you are constantly missing what is right in front of you, now.

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  2. That still doesnt explain what our purpose is.

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    Replies
    1. I would say it is two-fold, just like the purpose of the universe itself. On one hand this energy we call universe wants to experience itself and existence inwardly through the Self. And on the other hand wants to arise outward through its own creative force, which means to play with existence and energy, to create through the outwards expression of the Self in all forms.

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