The Search for Meaning

I was reading an article in Enlighten Next Magazine about a man named Thomas Berry. He was described as a, “scholar, teacher and sage.” In the article it talked about his expansive studies of religions as well as their adaptive patterns to evolution. He spent many years really learning and understanding how religion aided in human evolution and the similar patterns in the different teachings. At one point it states, “Berry was profoundly aware of the deep alienation that had beset twentieth-century civilization, torn as it was by two world wars and confronted with an existential crisis of meaning. He recognized that religions and their larger spiritual visions have something of immense significance to offer humans in their struggle to manage the demands and tragedies that life presents.”



It's true, people need to have some solid belief, some source of hope and guidance, especially now amidst this ever-changing time.  The thing is, most religion is altered by what society needs to control at that time, so those clinging to strict rules from the past are having a tough time.  People are looking for something that they can cling to now.  You can’t miss all the ways people are trying to look for something they can understand to help them in this search for answers: from meditation, to new age books, to yoga, to Deepak Chopra… spirituality is the new trend. Religions are trying to be more “hip” and open to relate to the new time. More and more self help books are being written, and yoga shops are being opened. People are on a quest for the purpose of their existence, a bigger picture, or just something to help them get through this process.  So the new question is, is anyone finding the answer to the magic question of meaning?


I know I’ve been looking myself, I mean I went all the way to India and thought I found it… until I got back. Things were still the same, I had changed, but not all of my bad habits or selfish desires had. So, I left again to Asia, and again thought I’d rediscovered the truth and that this time I’d be able to live it… until I came back once again. To be honest is I’ve had many moments here since then where I feel this profound sense of knowing, a feeling that’s beyond my physical mind, something my soul shows me. I’ve tried to write it down, dance it to life, remember it, but it always seems to vanish as seamlessly as it came. I still know I’ve felt it, but I have no clue what it smells like or tastes like or sounds like… I did finally realize it’s not meant to be understood by the mind, just appreciated.


Life has become so much more complex, things are always changing, getting improved, faster, younger. There are so many new types of everything these days; clothes, drinks, ways to communicate, places to eat, places to go, ways to get there, prayers to get there safely. There are more and more choices being added to the list everyday, and I’ll be the first to say that choice is the enemy of freedom. We not only become slaves to our choices, but also to the choices of others. People devote their lives to changing the choices people make, fighting for their own, or regretting ones they’ve made. They call things right and wrong, good and bad, blessed or evil… these words are opinions, which are also choices.


In this time, where everyone is trying to find what they're looking for, we need something infinite, something that doesn’t change at the rapid rate the world is. Something that is beyond change, because it flows and evolves as it needs to. That something can be us… Not our mind or our body, but our light. The thing inside that makes us who we are, our truth.  If we can just follow that, we will always be able to see whatever we need.

The thing is, after all the searching I’ve done, the choices I've made, the beliefs I cycle through... I've found I'm grateful to be active in the search, because when you have no more questions, you no longer care.  And in someway, it is this endless search that keeps our eyes open and our souls active...So that even if we never find the meaning of life… we will always be our meaning in life.

Today's Silver Lining:

And I’ve come
To be untroubled in my seeking
And I’ve come
To see that nothing is for naught
I’ve come to reach out blind
To reach forward and behind
For the more I seek the more I'm sought
Yeah the more I seek the more I'm sought
-Hymn 101 by Joe Pug