I had a very interesting conversation with my brother yesterday driving back from visiting our dad. We got to talking about meaning and conditional vs unconditional happiness and harmlessness. We covered quite a bit of ground but the main takeaway which clicked for me later on is that thus far one only had the choice of deriving meaning from the various societal beliefs, values, creeds etc or from one’s instinctual programming - and of course the 2 are linked.
But this meaning which comes from the societal/instictual programming can never deliver the goods. One can spend one’s life ticking all the various boxes - career, family, legacy etc and yet one will not have lived a full life. There will forever be something missing, and one will forever be at risk of “loosing what ‘I’ have”.
It clicked as I was going to sleep that actual freedom delivers the goods because the meaning of life is not what ‘I’ have or what ‘I’ earn/generate but rather it is intrinsic to what I am as a flesh and blood body. Which means that this flesh and blood body can never ever get away from meaning, that it is there at all times and in all circumstances - it is unconditional.
So as I was falling asleep I saw where everyone has been going wrong, in that people have been seeking to live the meaning provided by society/blind nature and that this is forever doomed to fail. And that there is another way now, the one which delivers the goods, and that is to live the meaning provided by the universe.
And how silly to have such faith and trust and belief in what was provided by society/blind nature and then to reject what the universe provides, how back to front!?
I can’t really say it any better than Richard has already :
One simply needs to look at the physical world and just know that this enormous construct called the universe is not “set up” for us humans to be forever forlorn and feisty in with only scant moments of reprieve. ‘I’ can realise here and now that it is not and can never be some “sick cosmic joke” that humans all have to endure and “make the best of”. ‘I’ will feel foolish that ‘I’ have believed for all these years that the ‘wisdom’ of the real-world that ‘I’ have inherited – the world that ‘I’ was born into – is set in stone.
So as I was falling asleep there was this solid seeing, that of course the universe knows what it is doing, of course the meaning provided by the universe is actual and delivers the goods. And on the other hand there was this seeing that my whole life I gave credence to the meaning provided by society/blind nature and that this was putting my eggs in the wrong basket as it can never deliver the goods.