Values, Meaning and Purpose

[Matt8800]

Sometimes an existential crisis can happen when people realize that 1) the ego/self is an illusion, and 2) there is no such thing as objective meaning/purpose. I've been mulling around a few ideas I wanted to throw out.

 

Objective Meaning

The idea that meaning or value can be objective is a misunderstanding of what objective means. The only “thing” that can attribute meaning, value and purpose is consciousness. Consciousness is pure subjectivity and has no relation to objectivity. The idea of objective meaning and value is logically incoherent. Value, meaning and purpose can only be determined subjectively.

People seem to make the mistake that if value (and/or meaning/purpose) are not objective, then it isn’t valuable. Subjectivity is assumed to be inadequate to attribute “real” value and meaning. This is a false assumption. If it is true that the true Self is infinite consciousness, then what is the difference between subjective values determined by “you” and the idea of objective values determined by “god”?

One could say that happiness is the highest value but I think that is too general to be of any use. After a lot of thinking over the past year, I have decided on what my three highest values are. They are love, beauty and being present.

Those seem simple but if one builds meaning and purpose around those values, it is a never ending working in progress.

 

Love

Some people are predisposed to naturally feeling love and compassion. I am not one of those people. When I was young and Christian, I used to pray that god would give me a heart so I could feel love. In retrospect, it seems odd that I cared that I didn’t care. I have learned, and practice, loving kindness meditation and this has worked wonders. I have also noticed that when I am a more loving person, I am able to perceive beauty that I would have normally missed. I have also found that my trips on psychedelics are more beautiful when I do loving kindness meditation as opposed to other meditation techniques, which seems to confirm this correlation.

If my daily goal is to embody love, that is going to change how I perceive other people and how I interact with them. The things I choose to say, or not say, are different. A side benefit of this is everyone thinks you are the most amazing person on the planet.

Before the ego can be dissolved, it needs to be made healthy and strong. Someone that struggles with confidence, worries what people think about them, etc, etc is going to have a hard time actualizing. I believe that a focus on embodying love naturally fixes much of the problems that arise from a weak and needy ego. Everybody loves a loving person and a loving person loves themselves because they are easy to love. There is no need to go overboard with fake, contrived love. That comes across as weird and desperate. I just try to make sure love is a factor in how I treat and perceive others.

Judging other is the antithesis of love. When I started trying to be mindful of how much I judge others, I was shocked to find that I do it constantly. This is something I work on daily.

 

Beauty

One of the things I learned from psychedelics is this universe if full of astounding beauty but sometimes we get so desensitized to it that reality appears to be dull, grey and mundane. Personally, I do not think someone can be happy if they are unable to perceive beauty.

I believe that the ability to perceive beauty is affected by loving state of mind and being in the present moment. With myself, I have found I have to continue to cultivate love and being in the present moment to perceive beauty in the way I want to perceive it.

 

Being in the present moment

When I refer to the present moment, I don’t mean present moment-ish – I mean this exact present moment that is indivisible into smaller periods of time that can be experienced.

Going for a walk around the block on a nice day can be simply refreshing or incredibly beautiful and profound depending on the degree of being present. I try to be as present in the moment as much as possible with everything I do. Much of the time, I get lost in the dream but try to remember to wake myself up as much as possible. Over time, I find that I am more present/mindful more often. If I am mindful, it is more natural to speak and see through the filters of love and beauty.

 

Purpose

I have a limited amount of time before I die to develop myself to the highest possible potential. That is my life purpose. I have always had a drive to do something huge with my life. If you havent decided to do something profound and huge with your life, maybe you should. There is more to life than just escaping a weak, needy ego. I look at myself as a blank canvas and I am the painter. I want to create myself into the most beautiful work of art possible by the time I lay on my death bed. Why? Because, subjectively I have decided that is the highest and best life purpose I can have.

My purpose does not need to be utilitarian but from a utility standpoint, I suspect that reincarnation and karma are real things.

 

 

[RichardY]

Sounds a bit like Platonism?

[Nahm]

@Matt8800 Mopping the floor from the beautiful truth spilling of the page. Great post and thanks! ❤️