What is the meaning of life?
Why are we here?
What is the point of it all?
Who am I?
Perhaps life is a construct of divinity,
A representation of the eternal.
Or perhaps we are little more than self-aware apes on a rock,
Meanlessly circling a ball of burning gas.
I don't know the answer to these questions,
Or even if they have answers that I could comprehend.
But despite this,
I search.
Whether or not these questions have an answer,
Or even if I can discern them,
Is itself part of that search.
I seek the truth so that I can act accordingly.
Because if I do not know the destination,
I may be traveling in the wrong direction.
Thus I take time to ask and answer those questions.
This is,
In a way,
Pascal's wager.
It is better to believe that God exists,
Because if you are wrong,
Nothing happens.
But if you are right,
Eternal rewards await.
Alternatively,
If the atheist is right,
They get nothing.
If wrong,
They face eternal damnation.
Thus to Pascal and his followers,
It is best to believe.
The problem with Pascal is that he assumes the Christian God to be the one true God,
Relegating all others to fiction or heresy.
Yet Pascal's same wager will place him on the losing side with any God other than his own.
By assuming the primacy of his God,
He is potentially dooming himself with all others.
If I were to only believe in God due to the cold logic prescribed by Pascal,
Or out of the fear that his wager purports,
Would God even accept me?
To answer that question,
We need to know the nature of God,
As well as which God is the true God.
Thus we are back to searching.
My wager suggests that we seek truth so that we may act accordingly.
If we are right,
And we find it,
We can adjust our actions to suit.
If there is no meaning to be found,
Then our actions do not matter.
But if we do not search,
There is little chance that our actions will align with our true purpose.
Having thus committed,
Our search now begins in earnest.
This search will take time.
True,
There are stories of instantaneous enlightenment.
Yet for most seekers,
This search takes a lifetime.
Therefore,
It's essential that we prepare ourselves for a long journey.
We need to ensure that we can meet the basic survival needs over our lifetime.
This means having the air,
Food,
Water and shelter necessary to survive,
As well as the time,
Resources and opportunity to commit ourselves to the search.
A priority must be to get functional and self-reliant.
It is unfeasible to rely on another person.
Beyond the practical issues in procuring such a relationship,
There are no assurances of perpetual care.
Investments can fail.
Promises can be broken.
People can pass away,
And relationships can end.
Therefore,
We must work to survive.
This work must provide us with enough income to meet our basic needs,
As well as enough time to commit to our search.
It needs to provide an opportunity for long-term employment,
Or the opportunity to create long-term employment elsewhere.
It must also provide for our retirement,
Either through its benefits,
Or through additional income that we put aside.
Finally,
It must suit our personalities and preferences,
As friction will impact our mental state,
And thus reduce our ability to search.
Our mental state will need to be further managed through active self-care in the form of exercise,
Eating well,
Meditation,
Education and therapy.
We would also need to limit intoxicants,
And remove the negative people from our lives.
Because if we are impaired,
We will not know when we have struck gold on an answer.
If enlightenment is predicated on a chemical,
Or the presence of someone else,
Or it is not self-sustaining,
It is not the true answer.
We will need to reduce interpersonal conflict by acting morally.
The more time we spend contemplating interactions,
Dissecting social anxieties,
Or ruminating on the relationship statuses,
The less time and energy we will have at our disposal for searching.
Therefore,
We need to create and foster positive connections,
While ensuring that we are not doormats to be taken advantage of.
Bruting on perceived wrongs is a waste of time and effort.
But where do morals come from?
This question can and should be contemplated,
Along with all others.
But until we find the answer,
We need a temporary work around.
One that produces minimal interpersonal conflict,
While ensuring our individual status holds within relationships.
A simple approach is to treat others as you would like to be treated,
And ensuring that they treat you the same way.
To live such a life,
We need discipline and willpower.
We need to have the ability to commit to our search when distractions abound.
To say no when discomfort,
Addiction,
Temptation,
Or laziness strike.
We need to establish daily routines and plans of action that will prevent or eliminate their influence.
Morning routines,
The guidance of a mentor,
The support of like-minded people,
Or the services of a paid coach will all help.
Willpower will enable us to say no to the bad and yes to what we need.
It is strengthened by challenging ourselves to grow.
By pushing through pain,
By setting goals and then acting towards them.
And by facing setbacks,
Regrouping,
And going again.
Just be careful not to let the attainment of these goals take precedence over your search.
Time is limited,
Therefore we must act with the correct focus.
Leveraging the wisdom of those who came before us.
Start by reading the thoughts of great people.
Ideally,
Their work will serve to highlight both the important areas,
As well as act as an illumination of previously unknown concepts.
These books should at least initially come from a diverse background.
Chance alone dictated the circumstances of our birthplace and time,
Agenda and ethnicity.
Had any of these dimensions been different,
Our entire upbringing would have been altered.
This would have impacted our underlying thoughts,
Teachings,
Religions,
And worldviews.
It would be folly to assume that the traditions of our birthplace and time happen to contain all truth based on little more than the fact that we are most familiar with them.
With a similar approach to reading,
We need to listen to those who have come before us.
Observe the young and old alike.
Talk and engage with them.
Let their wisdom enter our minds.
Watch the videos,
Listen to the podcasts,
And attend the seminars.
When something challenges all our natural assumptions,
We take offense and our egos flare.
Rather than changing ourselves,
We instead attempt to change the world.
Our feelings come as a byproduct of our upbringings,
Blended with our genetic predispositions.
What feels right to one person will feel wrong to another.
When pressed,
Each person could justify the position,
Citing both statistics and anecdotes as evidence.
Thus,
The common practice,
The one we hope to avoid,
Is to begin with a belief and then fight to ensure that that belief is accepted as truth.
It is hard to step outside our boxes,
But truth is truth regardless of our belief in it.
There is of course a chance that all answers to all of our questions will be subjective.
That is,
Different for each person who searches.
Even if this is the case,
What is the chance that the answer will confirm to the assumptions given to us via our upbringings?
Given that our initial assumptions may be wrong,
We need to ensure the purity of our minds so that we can approach our search from as unbiased a place as possible.
The paradigms that we've been raised on are not necessarily correct.
Thus,
We need to develop a bank of wisdom and thoughts to compare against each other and against those that arise naturally from our minds.
We do this by reading and talking widely,
Contemplating deeply and meditating daily.
From there,
We start our search.
Follow the guidance of the great minds and the detached wisdoms from our ever refined intuition.
When we face loss,
Setback or failure,
We will need to acknowledge and accept those events as part of life,
As well as the feelings that accompany them.
This will involve an embrace of our new realities and a contemplation of what we had,
What we lost and where we are now,
And importantly,
What it all means.
When life goes well,
We need to accept it with equal detachment.
Winning feels good,
But unless we determine that winning is the point of life,
The single-minded pursuit of winning may itself be a distraction from the search.
From an evolutionary perspective,
Silence is natural.
Only recently have we been able to conceivably go for entire days without silence.
Technology has granted us the ability to receive a constant stream of information,
An amazing tool,
But it is one that can quickly become a distraction if left unchecked.
There is a risk of perpetually consuming information and never giving it a chance to set.
Of course,
We will need to consume the words and wisdom of others,
But there is an upper limit to how much,
Both in terms of time and content.
If we leave ourselves no time to think and no space for silence,
Our search will at best be distracted and at worst misguided.
Therefore,
It's advisable to create extended periods of quiet time in which to think,
Contemplate,
And consolidate.
But what if we are wrong?
What if there's nothing to be found and that there are no answers to our questions?
No matter.
The lifestyle and mental state we've cultivated for our search is both wise and nimble.
Our bodies are healthy and our personal and financial situations are secure.
The worst outcome is that we've concluded our search and left ourselves a decent position for the rest of our lives,
Completely free of any underlying guilt or trepidation in regards to questions of meaning.
At worst,
We've freed ourselves completely.
This talk was taken from the book,
Reflections of the Self.
The Poetry,
Insights,
And Wisdom of Silence.
