Life is the meaning of life.

[Joseph Maynor]

This is all just this or that.

[integral]

27 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

No creator, it just happened.

Life is life, it doesn't require understanding or meaning.

Meaning, purpose and value are all human concepts. 

Believing that all of this just happened feels pretty absurd because this is all very, very, very specific and highly intelligent.

When existence happened, it was the most valuable, most meaningful, and purposeful thing that could possibly have happened at that moment.

It was the only thing that "happened".

and it "happened", Happening is a miracle.

How can this intelligent specific miracle be anything other then the most meaningful thing that could be happening?

Is anything more meaningful happening right this moment? No, this is it.

It's the most valuable thing that there is, It's absolute, so it's absolute value.

 

Edited Wednesday at 04:12 AM by integral

[cetus]

48 minutes ago, integral said:

Is anything more meaningful happening right this moment? No, this is it.

" This" (life) is only the tip of the iceberg. The only place where meaning exists.

Under "This" it's - Let it Fly without any meaning what-so-ever.

What comes to the surface each can deal with it in their own way by giving it meaning, ect.

Edited Wednesday at 04:57 AM by cetus

[LastThursday]

14 hours ago, integral said:

I think your trying to separate meaning and existence, but that doesn't make sense because existence is the most meaningful thing that could ever happen.

Existence and meaning co-arise ontologically. But there is ontological meaning and relative everyday meaning making. And these are different.

It's fine I understand what you mean. I'm just arguing for the sake of it. But for the sake of argument if existence is everything without exception, then of course it has meaning, because everything has everything in it. That's the issue with A is B argumentation, once you make A identical to B the argument is meaningless, because to argue something you have to have distinction so you can compare two things. Anyway pedant mode off.

[Carl-Richard]

6 hours ago, VeganAwake said:

No creator, it just happened.

Life is life, it doesn't require understanding or meaning.

Meaning, purpose and value are all human concepts. 

Meaning and purpose creates your very perception. To say they are "human concepts" like they're something you can just disregard and live without is a bit mistaken. They are more like human mechanisms. Meaning and purpose was required for you to write your sentence.

[LordFall]

8 hours ago, VeganAwake said:

No creator, it just happened.

Life is life, it doesn't require understanding or meaning.

Meaning, purpose and value are all human concepts. 

I think that's an atheistic view of the world and a bit shallow.

12 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

God doesn't want, God is. Wanting implies election, then it's relative. Being is not an election, it's inevitable, it's the synonym of unlimited.

God doesn't need to love itself because existence itself and so called absolute love are not different. There is no graduation, it's total.

The only point is that we are closed to it due out human structure by default 

God could be many other ways if it was a superior mode of living. For example the Gnostics believe in a cruel God that made reality to test humanity. I don't think that's how the universe is fundamentally structured but it could be. 

[Nemra]

17 hours ago, cetus said:

Bingo!

🫶

[Nemra]

What is the primary reason programmers create software applications?

Edited Wednesday at 04:44 PM by Nemra

[VeganAwake]

Anyone can call reality anything they want.

It doesn't make it that, or change anything. Calling reality intelligent doesn't change its functionality.

Reality being intelligent or specific is a personal perspective.

When something has an infinite amount of time to be what it is, it's debatable on the intelligence label imo!

Like a person mastering playing the piano over a 40 year period compared to a person mastering it in 2 days.........I would say the 2 day mastery person is far more intelligent.

But its all just stories and perspectives. 

Is a pack of wild wolves more intelligent than the repo business down the street?

Is a rock intelligent?

Nobody will ever figure out infinity,  because it's infinite. And if you weren't physically there to witness and understand all of creation while it was taking shape, then its just a guess.....just hearsay at best!

Nothing matters because when you die, there will no longer be a you that ever knew it existed in the first place.

Every living organism dies, so for every current living organism, nothing ultimately matters!

So when you get down to the brass tacks.........Nothing matters in any way shape or form whatsoever end of story bottom line period no erasies! 🤣

[InfinitePotential]

On 10/27/2026 at 1:28 PM, integral said:

When you remove all beliefs, all stories like that your mother gave birth to you. If you remove every possible story about your life, about everything, you deconstruct everything and you go back to just staring at your hand or staring at a table, with just with nothing going on. Completely back to a blank slate.

it Is self-evident, that the reason you exist, the purpose and meaning of your existence is to exist.

It seems to me though that you’re saying 1.) remove all stories but then 2.) creating a story of there being meaning. But you’d already stripped things down to just the actuality, the suchness of simply staring at your hand. 
 

if you’ve really stripped everything away down to just the raw experience, what’s left isn’t meaningful or meaningless. 
 

Doesn’t mean there isn’t actually meaning at some level, in some deep sense. But from this perspective of deconstructing everything, it seems hard to include meaning in that. 
 

Also, if indeed the only meaning of existence is to exist, then what about all the particulars of existence? Why not simply a blank screen of existence?

But things are happening. There is flow and movement. Relationships, experiences, meaning being constructed. Not just existence, but this play and dance of particular experience.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the insight that existence needs no purpose beyond itself. I actually find that compelling. But I wonder whether declaring that existence is its own meaning adds another conceptual layer to precisely what you’re trying to appreciate without one.

That said — whatever you posit, it can be deconstructed. And, this is a forum, not a silent retreat. We don’t want to just write empty messages to each other. So, I can be nitpicky, but the a-ha insight you seem to have had — while perhaps not perfectly translatable into irrefutable language — is valid. I think. Maybe. 

[integral]

@InfinitePotential

Integral: nothing outside it, so it’s all value. Infinite, absolute.

InfinitePotential: nothing outside it, so value doesn’t apply. Value needs comparison, so the absolute is neither meaningful nor meaningless.

This is an old split. In theology it’s called kataphatic vs apophatic. Kataphatic describes the absolute positively: it is infinite good, infinite love, infinite being. Apophatic describes it only by negation: it is beyond good, beyond every quality, nothing you can say fits it. Mystics on both sides are usually pointing at the same thing. They disagree about which language betrays it less.

There’s predicate existence (the cup is here, now it’s gone) and foundational existence (the screen everything appears on, which never disappears). Same with meaning. Predicate meaning is ‘this matters to me,’ which can be absent. Foundational meaning is the screen itself, and it can’t be absent, because meaninglessness would have to appear somewhere, and there’s nowhere for it to appear except on the screen. I’m only talking about the second one.
 

[InfinitePotential]

@integral Love it. 

Understood on predicate vs foundational. And I appreciate the kataphatic/apophatic distinction. I don’t think I’m necessarily advocating either position, though.

I’m really just taking the original premise seriously: strip away all stories and interpretations, and attend to the bare actuality of experience.

From that perspective, it’s hard to say anything about what’s left without adding another conceptual layer. Not that those concepts are necessarily wrong. But there’s something prior to all of them.

Clap.

Just that. The happening itself.

I imagine you already appreciate this distinction. For me, though, it’s just so easy to forget.

As for existence being its own meaning, I’m pretty okay with that if we’re granting that there’s meaning in the first place.

But I find it interesting that I can envision existence without meaning (e.g., a material universe without conscious observers. Though, amusingly, that’s being imagined…), whereas I can’t envision meaning without existence. Existence seems prior to meaning, just as it seems prior to learning, or exploring, or any other purpose we might propose.

I think your original point was that any of those other meanings we might propose are missing the mark. It’s just this, existence. I would tend to agree there.

Though perhaps someone with God consciousness will correct us there. Maybe it’s love. Maybe it’s 42. As always, IDK, I think. 

[nothingvoid]

The meaning of life is subjective. In other words, it's what YOU say it is. This is how I've thought about this for a long long time now

[Breakingthewall]

On 28/10/2026 at 1:26 AM, cetus said:

Keep it simple. Drop the word "wants" to make it "God creates itself to Love itself in any way possible".

That's the message.

Everything is born from love.

In my opinion this vision is a mistake because is closed. Implies that god is an entity who chooses and it chooses creating itself for a reason, love. That's relative and ultimately God must be absolute. Absolute means that it's not relative to anything, for example it's desire of love. God is the existence, the absolute being, and the only thing that you could say about god is that God is, because being and God are one, and you are that. You are the absolute being existing. Being open to this unfathomable reality is enlightenment, nothing else. 

[Breakingthewall]

On 28/10/2026 at 0:59 PM, LordFall said:

God could be many other ways if it was a superior mode of living. For example the Gnostics believe in a cruel God that made reality to test humanity. I don't think that's how the universe is fundamentally structured but it could be. 

If god were a superior mode of living would be a god, not God. God is the life itself, the fact of existing, or if you prefer the unlimited. Are synonyms 

 

[cetus]

@Breakingthewall I was on a bit of a high when I said that because I had just been with my grandsons and when I was I was thinking: " Consciousness creating little baby consciousnesses. How cool!

Edited 2 hours ago by cetus

[Breakingthewall]

13 minutes ago, cetus said:

@Breakingthewall I was on a bit of a high when I said that because I had just been with my grandsons and when I was I was thinking: " Consciousness creating little baby consciousnesses. How cool!

Existence manifest in something so incredibly perfect and deep like a human. Seeing a baby is seeing the absolute in it's expression. The creative power without restriction. 

[Willie]

Being is absolute. Meaning is relative.