My Answer
About the Meaning of Life
It took a while, quite a while, and I have always been convinced the answer would have to be something grand, and complicated, too. Something which would take a great deal to explain. Something probably, also, beyond my intellectual capacity.
It did indeed take a long time. The answer dawned on me Monday morning, December 3, 2022. I was 70 years old and 298 days. This morning I surprised myself with the answer – to the presumed, and feared, grandness of the question: What is the meaning of (my) life? And the answer is simple.
The meaning of my life revealed itself to me in my morning meditation on this day, I call it my consciousness meditation. In this meditation it dawned on me that what essentially counts for me, that what constitutes the core of my life, is
my ever more growing consciousness of my connectedness with my soul, with my innermost, with the well of my life – out of which connectedness my liberatedness stems.
This paradox, not a contradiction, is the heart: I am connected, and therefore I am free.
This insight, gained not from logical abstraction but from meditation, changes my life. It has consequences both for my experience of my life and for my acting. It finally, and definitely, liberates me from the neediness of the child, which is dependent, for the sake of survival, in a very concrete way, generally on one single person, its mother.
This very first pattern of a relationship is carried through all of life, with some modifications of course, but with only small modifications, as I suspect. How could we otherwise explain the quarrelling, the fighting in relationships, the divorce, and even murder of loved ones by partners, fathers, children?
My connectedness cum liberatedness frees me from this neediness. I hasten to add, of course, I enjoy the presence of fellow humans, friendship, closeness. But I have freed myself from being dependent. Thus, I have freed myself from my previous way of living, which was fighting to a great extend: fighting for love, and at the same time fighting for freedom. By the same token, I have freed myself from re-acting, reacting, mostly, to frustrated expectations. Instead, I have turned to perceiving and assessing and acting in my own right.
Is all this dead serious? Well, in a way it is. But in my connectedness cum liberatedness I have a wonderful experience, always and instantly: Whenever I connect there appears a smile on my face, together with a feeling, physical and immediate, of intrinsic joyfulness, of lightness, of peacefulness; «joyful for no reason at all», as Osho puts it; a feeling of resonating with myself.
This resonating with myself finally guides my way of interacting with my fellow humans: resonating with those, who are open to this resonating. This is rich.
The challenge of course are those, with whom I cannot resonate: who reject me, who are angry with me, friends e.g., who may soon be former friends, because they reject my critical view of covid politics. Well, see above: no re-action …
My connectedness cum liberatedness, unexpectedly, has consequences for my view of morale. I have put aside the word «should». You should not steal, should not betray, should not kill. Well, of course you should not, more, you must not. But the very use of «should not» and «must not» demonstrates things are not so. There must be a reason, why people, seemingly, need to be admonished to do this or not to do that.
My assessment is they are living a «false life», as German psychiatrist explains in his book «Das falsche Leben», «The false life».
In connectedness cum liberatedness there is a specific way of doing things, of interacting with fellow humans: no «you should» or «you should not» needed any more.
I was joyfully surprised when I found the following in my collection of sayings by the Dalai Lama, confirming my own experience:
«The core of Buddhist teaching is connectedness and not wanting to do harm.»
The beauty is:
My soul is ALWAYS there within me.
I can ALWAYS connect.
Whenever I connect, I am ALWAYS free.
This is the culmination of my morning ritual of consciousness meditation. I have been practising this mediation, with great intensity, for a year and half now, consuming the better part of most mornings. I did not set a time limit. I sometimes wondered if it was right to invest so much time.
The answer is clear. This meditation answered my question: What is the meaning of life? I am stunned – I am overwhelmed – I am joyful – I am grateful.
And once the answer has been revealed to me – there may not be the need to continue this prolonged meditation each morning. The answer has become an experience. It will not go away.
