The feeling of having a meaningful life, or that there is a meaning, gives us a sense of purpose, a sense of direction, a sense of knowing why you get up in the morning, why you’re doing what you’re doing and going through what you go through. Somehow you feel there is this current underneath it all, or in it all, that goes towards something that you have a sense of.
There is a sense of meaning in everything. Not that you can always explain it, talk about it; that’s not what is most important. It’s more like a feeling or a sensation or it’s a knowing. It’s a knowingness that words cannot fully express, a feeling that it means something, there is a purpose. There are times when we may come to a certain place in our life, either through an awakening, or big losses – the loss of loved ones or work or physical illness or something – or we just naturally mature into that state where everything suddenly feels meaningless.
Everything we thought was, is gone. Everything that felt like you wanted to get up in the morning has dissolved. It’s just not there anymore.
However, you turn it and however you’re trying to figure it out or feel it, it’s just not there. There’s no sense of meaning anymore in your life. You don’t even know; you start to question, what is my life? What is this? What is life really? Why are we here? These questions arise, and you can’t find the answers.
You can’t find them, and you start to feel everything is meaningless. You just can’t see any purpose to anything anywhere. Everything begins to feel uncomfortable, painful, confusing. You find yourself grasping, trying to figure out, to speak or be silent, to isolate or stay apart, to meditate. You try all kinds of things, quit your job, quit this, quit that, pull back, go out, freak out – all just to find something that could give you an answer. Why am I here? What’s the meaning? Where can I go?
Then what? I find that these periods can happen more than once, or just once in a lifetime, and you stay in them, or you move through them. Or something happens, something subtle and elusive, but very profound. Meaninglessness transforms, or shifts to, or becomes not knowing. Basically, what happens is you don’t know, you literally don’t know. When you feel everything is meaningless, it’s because you don’t know.
You thought things were like this, life was like that, that you were doing this, you are like this, or they are like that, everything is like this and we’re going towards that – now it’s all gone. You thought you knew something, that knowing something gave sense of meaning, purpose and direction. When that’s gone, you just don’t know. You literally don’t know any more what anything is and why it is or who you are, why you’re here, why were you even born, what is death, what is life, what is everything? Am I even here? How can I even know I exist? What is this? And you don’t know.
You wake up in the morning to the same moment: I don’t know, this big gaping presence of I don’t know. I don’t know why, I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what is here, I don’t know what this is, I don’t know what’s the purpose, I don’t know. I don’t know, and you realize nobody knows!
That’s the thing. I never knew, we never knew. However, even now, we do have temporary feelings of meaning and that’s wonderful. We get a lot done. And yet these feelings, like everything else, are transient.
I see the challenge is to really, really learn and feel comfortable, full and complete in not knowing, because I deeply believe that is reality. We simply don’t know! We really don’t know anything!
How marvelous and truly liberating!