What is a sense of life? Answer: 42! Seriously speaking, this is the most important question that is asked by both the most ordinary people and the greatest philosophers. This is the deepest philosophical question in the history of mankind, and now this article will attempt to find an answer to it. Most surprising of all, the answer you find here is the correct one, and now you will find out why.
How should you look for the meaning of life?
To answer this question, it was necessary to investigate absolutely everything, from science to religion, internal and external reality, logic and the unknown.
And here is the path that was taken to find the answer to the deepest philosophical question in the world.
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Understanding the perception of reality
The first thing you will find when you think about the meaning of life is that your meaning in life is different from the meaning of life for any other person. Accordingly, the answer you find will be both correct and incorrect at the same time. Simply put, your perception of reality shapes your answer to this question. Therefore, we must start with perception.
If we consider the perception of the reality in which a modern person lives, you need to pay attention to three main components: external reality, internal reality and the unknown. It is worth starting with external reality.
External reality
Culture and religion are parts of a person's external reality. Culture is just the environment in which a person grew up, including all the factors that influenced his development. And one of the most powerful influencing factors is religion.
The best way to address this issue is through the text of the British philosopher and writer Alan Watts. His writings are quite controversial for religious people, but you should open your mind and try to understand what it says: “What statements should a person not make? There is at least one thing: if a person claims to be God. Christians dealt with Christ in the following way: they put him on a pedestal and said that this is the only person who has ever been God. Nobody was him before, nobody will be him later. Put him on the altar, worship him, idolize him so that everything he said was emptiness, nothing."
Inner reality
Religion is not the answer to the question, but it plays an important role in influencing a person. It's time to look at your inner reality. External reality affects the internal reality, but at the same time, a person projects his external reality based on his own internal reality. Are you confused? You will understand everything when it comes to the unknown. In inner reality, a person finds passion. In passion, he finds intuition and purpose. Intuition is his guide and is generated by passion. Intuition will lead a person to his goal. Think about those inner feelings that you feel when it seems to you that your gut is trying to tell you what to do. Since the path to the meaning of life is not clear, you should use your intuition as a guide. Follow the directions "gut"when it tells you something.
Alan Watts has a text on this topic: “What do you want? How would you like to spend your life? Forget about money. If you say the most important thing is to get money, then you are wasting your life. You will live and do what you do not like in order to continue living and do what you do not like, which is stupid. It is better to live a short life, full of what you like, than a long one, during which you have always been unhappy. So what does this lead to? This leads to the goal. Life is too short and you probably don't want to live it for the wrong purposes. And then you will understand that your meaning is right next to you. This can be, for example, your spouse, your children, something for which you want to get up in the morning.
Unknown
And this leads to the unknown. As a matter of fact, you will need to dig deeply into the things that you do not know, because they make up 99 percent of the question. And there you can find quantum physics and kabbalah. Here is how Michael Lightman combined these two themes: “There is a certain line beyond which a person is incapable of perception. This point between the tangible physical world and what lies beyond perception is the meeting point of science and Kabbalah."
How is reality perceived from this perspective? This is the point at which the whole world is within you. This gives you the ability to control it by changing your inner perception. Accordingly, the perception of the world is completely subjective, which means that you create your own reality when you understand that reality is a projection of yourself.
Searching for an answer
After you've spent enough time looking for the answer to this question, you should try the simple problem-solving tool that everyone is taught to use at age 5. It's called the Five Whys, in which you ask the Why question five times to get to the root of the problem. Here's an example of what might happen:
"What is a sense of life?" "At least for me, the meaning of life is in the family."
"Why is family the meaning of life for you?" - "Because they are everything to me."
"Why are they everything to you?" "Because they give meaning to my life."
"Why do they give importance to your life?" - "Because I love them."
"Why do you love them?"
The answer to the question
And on this "Why?" you can get stuck for a long time. Each person knows that he loves his family, that family members give his life meaning, but there is more. And that's when Eureka happens! - Alan Watts comes to mind again, and this is what he says: “The meaning of life is just to live. It's so simple and so obvious."
Marina Ilyushenko