Life is a cosmic joke. Or: The meaning of life.
Aktualisiert: 27. Apr. 2021
I used to think that life is a cosmic joke, like ‘here you go human – you get around 80 years on this planet – you get a body that will age and work less and less well, you get a mind that seems to be guided (misguided) by attachments and wants. You get this time here on earth (and you don´t even know how long you get) – now see what you make of this time – in the end death will take everything that you ever did away from you anyway.’
The big questions spinning around in my head over and over again were: We will die anyway, so what is the purpose of living? What is the meaning of life, when at death everything will be rendered pointless?
I was looking for meaning and purpose, but I couldn’t find them. I knew deep within that there is a reason for being alive, that life has to be good for something, otherwise there would be no such thing as life.
Sometimes I would lie awake at night freaking out about the fact that I will die one day. What would this feel like?! My mind was seeking to comprehend death, make sense of it; but how can the mind understand something that is beyond the mind?! The mind can not truly know death, as it is not part of it.
I was freaking out, and then I was freaking out even more because no one else seemed to be freaking out about the fact that they will die. Are the other people not aware that they will die one day? Are they turning away from that fact? Are they trying to hide it? Or do they know something – some secret – that I don´t know? How can people (myself included) go on about their daily life knowing that it will all be gone one day, that it can all be erased in a split second?
I was resisting death, I was looking for a way to escape it, I was looking for a way to make sense of it, but I couldn’t find one. I was telling myself, that death is okay, that we will all die, that we all face the same ‘predicament’. If no one else is freaking out about the fact that they are dying, maybe then I don’t need to freak out about it either. But this didn’t give me peace. The question about the meaning of life was still lingering inside of me.
I told a close friend of mine about these thoughts, and she recommended me to read the book “Conversations with God”* (a book I would have never chosen myself as I still have an issue with the let´s call it ‘mainstream religious concept’ of God).
A week ago, I have finished reading the book (one of the fastest reads ever) and it has given me some answers and some peace.
I don´t want to give you a summary of the book here (go read it for yourself). But I want to give you my sense of peace that I have taken from the words in the book. Maybe this will inspire you, maybe this will give you a new perspective, maybe this will reaffirm you in what you deep down already knew. Maybe you can´t make sense of this now, maybe this won´t give you peace at this moment in time, but maybe one day you will hear the same message in different words and then it will resonate with you.
So here it goes:
The entire physical world, including our earth, including us humans exists so that we can experience ourselves. This ‘we’ is not the ‘we’ as in you and me as we are here in our physical form on this planet. This ‘we’ is referring to our souls (this is the word I like to use when talking about our light within, the infinite love within every one of us).
The soul, the light is seeking to experience itself. Before the physical realm was created there was only light. How can light experience itself as light if there is only light? It is simply not possible. You need darkness for that. You need the duality of opposites for that. The entire physical world with all its dualities and opposites exists so that the light can experience itself.
Every lifetime is a new opportunity to remember who you really are, it is a new opportunity to remember that you are light, that you are nothing but love.
There is nothing to worry about, there is nothing to achieve. There is only to remember. You are here to experience your true self, your light, your love. You are here to create who you want to be.
I´m still working on integrating the insights from Conversations with God. I know that I understand what I have read. I understand on a mental level, now I want to experience it. I want to create who I want to be, I want to experience my light, my love within in all the moments here on earth in this lifetime.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you struggle with finding purpose in life? Do you wonder what the meaning of life is?
*There are actually three ‘Conversations with God’ books. I´m referring to the first one.