The meaning of life

[isis.auset5]

I didn't know where else to put this, so I put it in the Off-topic (Occult) part. If you think it would be better somewhere else, please move it

Anyway. I've been having a bit of an existential crisis over the past few weeks, and I finally decided to talk to one of my roommates about it. Long story short, we didn't reach a single conclusion, we just drifted off to different matters.

What is our goal here? What is my goal here?

I'm a Law student. This is my third year of college, but since I failed my first year I'm still in my second year and have another two years left. Now that exam season has come up, I keep having this anxious, panicky feeling that I'll fail again. It's stupid, I know I won't, I'll make it, but I can't shake it. And it's when that happens that I start thinking that maybe I shouldn't insist on it. Maybe I should quit Law school. And that's when I think ... what would I do then? Go back to my parents'? (out of the question) Get a job to support myself? Alright, and then what? What would be the point?

You see, that's it. What's the point? You get a job to survive, but what then? Is there anything else? What's the point of anything?

I don't have a lot of ambitions. I just want to get my degree and a nice, stable job as a lawyer in corporate law or something like that. I drink too much, I smoke too much, and lately, everything I do is on auto-pilot. I go through life like that. Just ... not thinking about what I do. I can't meditate because I always have a trillion thoughts racing through my mind. I can't even define what I believe in.

For people like me, who are basically in this world to survive, what's the point? Is there even any point in existing?

(Yes, I know this post is awful and super random.)

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

The conclusion I'm coming to - we're being processed through something of an alchemical filter which happens to be our lives. Practicing the 'Great Work' consciously as a mystic/esotericist just makes it a more consciously directed process.

The reason I think it files down to precisely that is just how much the inner planes refuse to tell us what it is (or simply can't) and even more interestingly how people who during NDE's find out exactly what their life's purpose was completely forget it on return. It seems like the very point, comfortable or otherwise for us, is for us not to know and rather experience it. That is to say, each trial, each new experience, and each new endeavor is an initiation of sorts.

On a side note good luck with the schooling. If worst really comes to worst you could shift majors but if you do have any remaining interest in practicing law this is probably the point to regroup, get back to the details, and cut back on the things that might be directing your energy away from the goal (eg. taking up more meditation, yoga, and light cardio in lieu of the nuggets and shots). Otherwise if you're really starting to doubt that law is that you want to be doing think about taking some career-path tests as soon as you can to figure out what might be viable alternatives or other roads you can test. It took me six years of part-time at a local 2 year college to figure out what I wanted to do and even then after all the career tests leading me nowhere I had to finally find a book that finally seemed to guide me in the right direction. That said I don't envy your position, it's not fun having your career future up in the air and I really do wish you the best of luck on this.

[manofsands]

I agree with Jazz, but would like to add that... if you were pretty sure Law is what you wanted to do before you started... stick with it. Fear and anxiety are causing you to doubt your route. If you truly Know that This is no longer what you want, switch before wasting too much time in it. Otherwise, hang in there and you'll be happy you did after the trial is over.

[Taeo]

Let's say there were no other purpose or meaning beyond itself. Let's say that the meaning is simply 'to be'. And if that is the case, the only guide-lines that are available are the ones created by people before you and of them, the ones you choose to accept as true but that, once all of the created guide-lines are removed, there weren't any beyond 'Live'.

What then?

[isis.auset5]

I didn't question my Law career path, it was simply an example I used in order to correctly word my question. But thank you for the best wishes!

Anyway, Cybernetic_Jazz, I see your point and I get it, I understand it, I can totally live with it (in fact, it's what I usually do until I stop to think about it). It's just unfair to the people who see no point in it and take tragic measures. But oh well.

Let's say there were no other purpose or meaning beyond itself. Let's say that the meaning is simply 'to be'. And if that is the case, the only guide-lines that are available are the ones created by people before you and of them, the ones you choose to accept as true but that, once all of the created guide-lines are removed, there weren't any beyond 'Live'.

What then?

Then we'd just have to live, I guess. Live to survive. Live to prove a point. Live to learn, most importantly.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Anyway, Cybernetic_Jazz, I see your point and I get it, I understand it, I can totally live with it (in fact, it's what I usually do until I stop to think about it). It's just unfair to the people who see no point in it and take tragic measures. But oh well.

I had a few points in my life where I felt like I was at that threshold and yeah, I'd completely agree that it's more than a bit roughage that people are led to the kinds of agony that lead to either palliating with routine hard drugs or taking their own lives. It can feel like that love and light being inside of us that loves us unconditionally can get on some very gremlin-like behavior and start dunking one's head in the toilet between hugs.

The most bizarre thing I'm coming to consider is the possibility that the conscious and local/objective 'I' that I experience is mostly a tool or means to an end for my greater identity. That can hurt like heck if one really thinks about it on our level but at the same time it pushes me at least to want to know it by whatever set of names people like to give it - higher self, soul personality, Master Within, perhaps HGA, etc.. In a way it's quite likely that most of us have done this hundreds of times, that's even the harder part to comprehend than even dragging through this life with so few answers.

All of that I think fuels my compulsion to 'get it right' to whatever extent I can and make good on what I've discovered so far in this life as well as how much more I know that I can learn, to try to learn from whatever hardship I go through so as to not need to repeat it, and if I can get out ahead of the curve and help people from the other side of the fence by meting out inspiration that would be great. Clearly I'm incredibly novice at least in this incarnation, just started with this stuff really in the last year or so but I realize I'm still reasonably young and potentially have four or five decades to work with if life allows. I suppose that's what inspires me, lol not to plug or advertise as I just like the expression, to build the adytum within myself and volunteer in making the world a better place by starting with myself. That's something that mysticism and magic give as a hope and life mission/purpose that reductive materialism sadly doesn't offer much equivalent to.

[Desecrated]

There is no meaning to life.
For something to have a meaning, it has to be created. A pizza is created to be eaten, it is it's meaning.

This is a question christians use to fool others. If LIFE has a meaning, LIFE has to have a creator.

You are alive.
That is it.
Use it what ever way you see fit.
Use your own will and power to make your own life. Kings are not born, they are made.
Life is not about finding happiness, it's about creating it.

[Taeo]

The meaning of a pizza is relevant to how hungry a person is. Its purpose is to be eaten.

Life does not need a creator in order to have meaning, but does in order to have a purpose.

The meaning of life is not necessarily the same question as the purpose of life, but in order for there to be a purpose, life must have meaning.

[Desecrated]

, but in order for there to be a purpose, life must have meaning.

Please go on. I find this interesting.

My interpretation of the English language, (which is not my native tongue) is that purpose are more along the lines of:

A stone has no meaning, but if I pick it up and throw it at somebody, it has a purpose. Therefore purpose can be meaningless.

[Ramscha]

Well, I guess the purpose of life is to live and to end at some point (=death).
But this purpose itself is rather meaningless (as stated above, I agree with that point), it just marks the the "How" and the "where", but lacks the "why".

As mother nature (or any god or who knows what had its fingers in our evolution) gave us a more or less free will (with restrictions...) I guess we have to give it a meaning by ourselves. Rather uncomfortable, but beeing lazy can also be a meaning [crazy]

[Taeo]

, but in order for there to be a purpose, life must have meaning.

Please go on. I find this interesting.

My interpretation of the English language, (which is not my native tongue) is that purpose are more along the lines of:

A stone has no meaning, but if I pick it up and throw it at somebody, it has a purpose. Therefore purpose can be meaningless.

I wont disagree with your definitions, but I'm sure that if you were hit by a thrown stone, that would be a pretty meaningful event.

[Asurendra]

The purpose of life is to take joy in the play of illusion and discover Who you really are.

[isis.auset5]

The purpose of life is to take joy in the play of illusion and discover Who you really are.

Honestly, sounds good enough.

[manofsands]

The 'Purpose of Life' will be whether we believe in it or not. Whether we understand it or not.

The "Meaning of Life" is left up to the individual. No matter how many "Outside Factors" there are, the meaning is still chosen from the Inner. And the meaning we give things (thankfully) does not require the belief of all.

So tho there is no clear way to debate this, we can share our own special point of view... and hope we are not attacked for doing so.

[Eremita]

If I may pointlessly weigh in:

The meaning of an individual life is entirely subjective - suppose a man's life consists of staying indoors all day painting pictures that very few others will ever see. He may find great meaning in this, whereas an outside onlooker may feel that it is a waste of life, and devoid of meaning. I think, then, that it is only the individual who can experience life's meaning in his own way, as he so creates or fancies it.

As far as the purpose of life is concerned, there are any number of possibilities.

According to the Hermeticists, the purpose of life (that is, why you came here in the first place) is to advance yourself spiritually so that you can return to the source, or origin of all creation, which will apparently result in dissolution of the self or eternal ecstasy of some description. Sounds lovely.

According to the reductive materialist view of biology, the purpose of life is to breed as much as humanly possible and scatter your offspring far and wide. This of course leads back to the question of "But why?", for which of course science has no answer.

I'm definitely no expert on philosophy, but I remember Sartre and some others talked about "anguish", as being that state of realisation that you are utterly free to behave however you want, knowing that there are actually no rules as to what you can and cannot do; there are no standards, no scoreboard, no umpire to give you a tick or a cross based on your actions. The consequence of knowing this - that every material action only provokes a limited material response, he called anguish - and I think that's incredibly accurate. Should I stay in school? Should I switch degrees? Should I get a job and save money? Should I start a family? Should I abandon all of the above, shoot up a bunch of drugs and kill myself? There is absolutely no answer to any of these questions, no right or wrong course of action, other than what you decide for yourself. The Universe frankly doesn't care what happens to us.

One thing I do think this throws into perspective is the futility of the activities most people busy themselves with. We worry so much about the right way to do things; how to get ahead; when in fact in all probability there is no right way. It doesn't matter what career you decide on, how much money you make, how many years you live; we're all sailing on the same ship, and there's only one destination! Hahahahaha.

It seems to me that the only thing I can say with certainty is that the purpose of life - all life - is evolution. Whether that extends to a kind of individual evolution across many millions of years as the mystics claim, I suppose we'll figure out once we're dead. Or not.

I'm going to watch TV now.

[Taeo]

Life is the meaning of life.
Living is its purpose.

That's my take on it, anyway.

[manonthepath]

I didn't know where else to put this, so I put it in the Off-topic (Occult) part. If you think it would be better somewhere else, please move it

Anyway. I've been having a bit of an existential crisis over the past few weeks, and I finally decided to talk to one of my roommates about it. Long story short, we didn't reach a single conclusion, we just drifted off to different matters.

What is our goal here? What is my goal here?

I'm a Law student. This is my third year of college, but since I failed my first year I'm still in my second year and have another two years left. Now that exam season has come up, I keep having this anxious, panicky feeling that I'll fail again. It's stupid, I know I won't, I'll make it, but I can't shake it. And it's when that happens that I start thinking that maybe I shouldn't insist on it. Maybe I should quit Law school. And that's when I think ... what would I do then? Go back to my parents'? (out of the question) Get a job to support myself? Alright, and then what? What would be the point?

You see, that's it. What's the point? You get a job to survive, but what then? Is there anything else? What's the point of anything?

Study for your fucking exams!!!!! Right now that's your reason for being alive.

I don't have a lot of ambitions. I just want to get my degree and a nice, stable job as a lawyer in corporate law or something like that. I drink too much, I smoke too much, and lately, everything I do is on auto-pilot. I go through life like that. Just ... not thinking about what I do. I can't meditate because I always have a trillion thoughts racing through my mind. I can't even define what I believe in.

For people like me, who are basically in this world to survive, what's the point? Is there even any point in existing?

(Yes, I know this post is awful and super random.)