26. Life’s meaning, and your life

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

3:40 a.m. Friends? I don’t have any more questions queued up, so it’s up to you.

[Pause] Nothing coming, I will sit quietly waiting.

Remembering that “Man is the measure of all things,” considering your more far-reaching questions: What is the process all about? Where is it going, why is it this way, how does it proceed?

In short, what is the meaning of life.

Any question you could ask will amount to a variant of that same question. It varies mostly in the details. It is really the only question worth asking, is it not?

To a certain temperament, yes.

We would say to all temperaments. The variants are mostly in manifestation – which amounts to saying, it’s all in the details. You get to the center by many routes, from starting-places far removed from one another. If you will remember that, and if you will dare to follow your inclinations in such matters, you will see that in your very individuality is your solidarity with all others. For as we have said, there are no absolute divisions in reality. Everything shades into its neighbors, every contradiction is part of a polarity, hence part of a sliding scale.

Perhaps you can see now that the universe has neither beginning nor end – not in space, not in time. How could it? “Beginning” and “end” are time-related concepts, space-related concepts, and so do not correspond with anything outside of 3D reality. Does a dream occupy a space? Does dreamtime have a beginning, an ending?

But although things don’t begin nor end, yet clearly they continually change – or do they?

That’s an interesting thought, and I’ll spell it out, as I think you want me to do. Just as we as individuals do not change what we are composed of, but change what expresses, so the universe. Do I have that right?

That’s the idea. How could the “everything” change its composition?

You make it sound like a hamster wheel, all movement and no progress.

The hamster isn’t trying to get anywhere; give it that much credit for intelligence. It is enjoying its functioning. It likes running. The hamster wheel allows it to do so in a safe and convenient space.

So you are implying that not only 3D but perhaps also the non-3D is designed to give us exercise?

Remember that who you are in 3D, not merely where you are or what you experience, is the hamster wheel. Your lifetime of self-development is itself part of the process. The universe doesn’t hinge upon your creating greater awareness, expressing yourselves more fully – and yet, in a sense, it does, in the same way that a play may be said to depend upon its painted backdrops, its rehearsed performances, its attentive audiences.

I think you are merely saying, everybody has a part to play, and one is just as important as the next.

The meaning is slipping out through the cracks, here. Let’s try again.

• The universe – reality – has no spare parts.
• Beginnings and endings are only relative to any given thing being considered.
• The world-dream is one of continuous unfolding of the consequences of everyone’s choices.
• Those choices need not be considered as steps toward a goal. They may be considered that way, but they can just as easily and as correctly be seen as flowerings in their own right.
• If 3D life is a slowing and a constricting for the sake of greater focus, greater awareness, life after 3D may be considered a Venturi effect, spreading and speeding the flow of just the same amount of fluid.
• As to the final meaning of life (in the sense of all life, of all the universe), how could you ever expect to comprehend it even if you could get the data? But as you were told, thousands of years ago, “As above, so below.” Look to analogy to give you the best hints available.

What it boils down to is, of course, the simple observable fact that people don’t do things without reasons. They may or may not be aware of the reasons, but the reasons always exist. Should you expect all of reality to be less coherent than 3D life?

You mean, I think: Trust that life and the world are not meaningless.

If you think it makes more sense, you could think they are meaningless, but we’d be interested to know how that belief served you. More to the point, we’d like to see the evidence for it. Everything you examine makes sense in its own terms and as part of something bigger and smaller, so why would life in general be any different? We would say it requires quite a strong emotional investment to believe that life is random or pointless or disconnected.

It can look that way, but I agree, the closer you look at it, the clearer its unity appears. But what is your practical point here?

Perhaps simply this: Each person will divine a different meaning to life (including, for some, no-meaning) and will be correct, automatically, in that what you see reflects what you are. So don’t be so shy about assuming that you know as much about the meaning of life as anybody else – only, don’t forget, that means “not much.” You “know” what you need to know, to be you. Whether you grow in your questionings all your life, or stay in one place, it is you, and you belong to the dream like everybody else.

So just happily keep the hamster wheel spinning?

Does the hamster seem bored, or tired, or frustrated, or put-upon, as it manically turns the wheel? The point of the exercise is not to turn the wheel. The wheel is to provide a way for the hamster to exercise full-tilt without hurting anybody.

This is an analogy to act as counter to the movie analogy.

Yes. Every analogy has its strength and weakness, and changing analogy changes the light in which you see things. The movie analogy centered on showing how everything works together. The hamster wheel centers on showing reality not as pointless but as constructed specifically to be helpful, once you stop thinking in terms of “getting somewhere” and move to thinking in terms of body-building by exercise.

So, you see, those who think that reality is a meaningless exercise are correct in their terms. Those who say it is suffused with meaning (even if the perceived meanings differ among them, as they will) are also correct. Every view of life is correct until it gets to the point of saying, “This is the only way to see it.” And even this attitude serves its purpose, for as you know, not everybody is able to leave things open-ended. Those who need defined, bounded, certainties will find them. It’s all part of the overall ecology.

I suppose you are saying, “Don’t forget that everything you know is based at some level on faith.”

Of course, and nothing wrong with it. Nothing hinges on your coming up with a Certified Absolutely Correct Summary. Good thing, too, since no one could ever provide it. All you can do – all we can do – is give it our best effort, and that effort itself, as much as whatever result we come to, is part of the perfection of the dream.

It feels a little disconcerting, as if we are happily spinning our wheels. And that expression is going to ring differently now!

Be what you are. Strive for what you are called to strive for. Rest when you feel like it. It is all life, and therefore it is all good. It isn’t a race and it isn’t meaningless. But what it amounts to depends on who you are, what you are. Be a little leery of anybody who tries to tell you, “Life is this.” Maybe so, but it is also all other things.

Enough for now.

Quite a ride. Our thanks as always.