Should you ever catch yourself asking "Why am I here? What's the point?" you may have lost your way; the sense of wonder of being alive has (temporarily I hope!) gone out. A brief reset is required.
The reset should depend on acknowledgement of Consciousness, of the eternal 'I am.'
Not 'I am sad' or 'I am in pain' or 'I am tired' - but simply 'I am'. I exist; I can feel that I exist - and that feeling, on its own - unmodulated by material reality - is quite splendid. Who are really - merely the biological, ego-driven product of your parents' mating? What would you have been had your parents never met? I'd posit that you'd be someone else - an entirely different biology and ego - but with the same essential consciousness that you possess right now. And that's the real you-ness of you.
I have written earlier this Lent about the amazing miracle that is you being biologically alive, given your trillions of forebears going back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most of them single-cell organisms. And every link in that chain - unbroken! With so much peril at every step of the way!
And yet... you are.
Relish that fact.
We age at an ever-accelerating pace. A ten-year-old subjectively experiences a year passing at the same pace as a 50-year-old experiences the passing of five years - both periods equate to one-tenth of their total life lived so far. Should you make it to 100, you'll feel time passing twice as fast as you did when you were 50. And as you feel that life is accelerating you ever faster towards death, there is that encroaching anxiety as you realise there's not enough time to do what is essential.
So what is essential? It is, to me, to understand the big picture. To have meta-awareness - even if it's only an awareness of all that you remain unaware of. Curiosity is a great driver, a spur, a magnet. Wanting to know - wanting to uncover - that satisfaction of the 'click' moment of insight - so many remain as yet unclicked. Even to the most brilliant scientists and philosophers.
As I try to put it all together, I realise that I'm nowhere near reaching any answer - it will take a great many lifetimes! All I can hope for now is to read, listen, discuss, learn, and build upon it - taking it one level up at every turn.
I hope to reach my father's age - he died at 96 and half - indeed, yesterday would have been his 100th birthday had he survived just three and half years longer. What kept him going was a sense of purpose and unquenchable curiosity; I believe that he is back among us, in a new incarnation. That he willed himself back. And this is how it goes; life after life after life after life - from Zero to One [see below].
The path from Zero to One is from being an isolated individual, and Ego out on its own, to becoming part of the Eternal Whole. Small acts of kindness and charity help connect us with others, bonding into a society that's more win-win than adversarial, more trusting than suspicious. If you doubt life's purpose, thinking it merely a random collection of atoms, consider how you could actively help others.
Lent 2022: Day 44
Habit, discipline or obsession
Lent 2021: Day 44
Life after life after life after life
Lent 2020: Day 44
A myriad paths to God
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