No Search for Meaning?
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Courtesy of https://www.sacredearthjourneys.ca/blog/5-joseph-campbell-quotes-for-initiating-a-personal-heros-journey/
This is one of many Joseph Campbell quotes that speaks to our innate desire to set forth on a path that, on an outer level, resonates with our inner-realities or souls.
To Campbell, a man or woman’s “search for meaning” is ambiguous and vague at best. He believes, instead, that we should seek out a lifestyle that corresponds directly to the state of the soul. Our life experiences should be nothing short of rapturous while providing direct nourishment for our longings within.
My thoughts…
Is search for meaning just their ‘mind’ – whereas the feeling of coming alive is the flow state, automaticity, intuition coming through?
Eckhart Tolle makes this distinction between our ‘mind’ and our whole sense of Being. Our mind is limited to one part of our body, the brain, but is cut off from a sort-of full body thinking when we over rely on it.
According to Tolle, real thought is not confined to the mind. It resonates with you on every level of your Being, and is felt through your whole body.
Perhaps our search for meaning is just that — the mind, which in trying to justify and validate its existence, creates the ego, which is, our understanding of ourselves, our image of ourselves — and thus looks for meaning. For that significance.
Searching for meaning in the world is like a fish searching for meaning in a pond.
Perhaps our challenge is to overcome it?
