The Meaning Of Life
DISCLAIMER: Like everybody else, I know fuck-all about anything, really. This is just MY interpretation at this moment in MY life about the meaning of us and life and how we interact with each other and how it serves or disserves us. Take what you will from it, discard what you won’t.
Who shares spiritual memes and quotes about how we should behave, what we should believe, in what fashion we should take in this experience called life?
*Slowly. Raises. Own. Hand.*
It’s great, right? We have an “A-HA” moment and we eagerly want to share that moment with others. Or we get to show the other humans that we’ve got this shit all figured out, that we’re in the superior position for doing the figuring, and everybody else should heed our spiritual meme/quote. Whichever camp we’re in, we share the memes and quotes.
Either way, do any of us ever delve into how we ourselves really interpret them?
The whole spiritual business is a slippery slope because what one person believes, another may not. And we’re all correct, right? We all think our way is The Right Way. I mean, since none of us really knows the meaning of life, why we’re born, what our purpose is, or what happens to us when we die…we attach ourselves to things other people say and believe in order to have our answers. Our brains crave total answers in order to make sense of the storms constantly swirling around us. We all seek inner peace, and labeling our beliefs and forming Belief Camps with humans makes us feel a part of something big and deep and wide.
But let’s be honest here. None of us knows shit about shit in a meaningful, real way. We’re all just guessing. We all just have our faiths. And we all know deep in our hearts that attachment to anything is a surefire path to suffering.
My own Right Way started out probably as many people’s did. I was brought up in a faith that I ended up not wholly subscribing to, so I found a situation more suitable to my tastes in adulthood. I like hippie existential stuff, so Buddhism, ancient philosophies, medicinal witchcraft, the practices of Yoga and meditation and collective consciousness? A lot of those ideals fit right in with what I felt my soul personally aligned with.
And because I learned some stuff and dove deep, we’re gonna dissect some things here. Because mystical memes and quoting The Buddha and self-help books are so currently popular among so many humans right now, I’m gonna lay out what I think a couple of them mean and maybe it’ll align with you or help clear some shit up in your head or maybe you’ll think, “yeah, she don’t know nothing about nothing”.
We’re belly-flopping into what everybody wants to know about today with all of this mystical stuff. The Law of Attraction. LOA for short. There are lots of Laws Of The Universe, but LOA is having its moment in the sun, lots of folks think it’s the key to the meaning of life, so that’s what we’re discussing today.
I’ve read armfuls of self-help books and found a lot of them thoroughly confusing in regards to LOA. So, I just make a vision board and open myself up to possibilities and then the Universe rains money and a cruise to Costa Rica on my head? I just think positive thoughts and suffering will bounce right off me like I’m made of some sort of indestructible rubber?
Well, I knew that wasn’t the whole story at all. I was already positive and kind whenever I could be. I already went out of my way to pause and think about my responses to the other humans before I released wrath out into the world. A lot of the stuff I wanted wasn’t completely self-serving, it also would help other people.
And still, I failed. And still, I suffered.
Once I started diving deep into different philosophies on sorting this LOA stuff out, even learning about quantum physics so I could understand vibrational energy and cause and effect a bit better, I think I understand it a little more than when I started at least.
I think the purpose of all that LOA stuff is to lift us out of our survival mode and think in another way in order to get a different result.
Let me explain.
So our brains’ default is Survival. As in, this is who we trust, this is where we are on this planet, this is how we make fire to warm ourselves and cook food, this is how we get the stuff we need in order to keep it pushing along.
But LOA doesn’t “work” if our brains are in survival mode. It doesn’t “work” or “not work” at all. It’s just there. It’s vibrational energy that’s always there and sometimes we can tap into it.
Ummm. Let me explain further.
Have you ever felt like you’re just flowing or jiving with a particular moment in time? Artists feel this way a lot. Dancers just flow with their dance. Painters flow with their inspirations. Guitarists’ fingers know what to do without really hugely focusing on it. Writers flow when they just have to get what’s in their minds out there by the use of words. Artists feel flow a lot because they’re engaged in something that isn’t a means to an end. The whole point is the doing of it, not reaching the conclusion. Not getting the reward. Detaching from outcome.
That’s flow.
When we’re in Flow Mode, our brains fall out of Survival Mode and are just in the moment. There doesn’t have to be a point beyond enjoying the journey. There’s no conclusion. There’s just doing.
LOA is living our lives in Flow Mode. We can’t do it all of the time, we need our Survival Mode brain in order to, well…survive. But a whole bunch of us JUST live in survival. And a whole bunch of us wandered over to the self-help section and subscribed to the notion that within those books was a definitive answer on how to be abundant and never ever have to deal with that bitch Suffering again.
Maybe for some people the books and philosophies are all that’s necessary. For me, it opened a box of worms I’m still digging through.
Let’s define a couple of the most popular zennish quotes we see everywhere on LOA. Once I started unraveling what they really meant to me instead of taking them at face value is when my brain actually started to get it.
“Radiate boundless love towards the entire world”: The Buddha said this, and it seems as though he was trying to get us to just lay down and take our earthly beatings quietly like the good wussies we are. Not exactly. It means our default should be kindness. Not because it’s the right thing to do or that other people will love us more and think of us as special and floating in the clouds, but because we always have a choice to be douchebags or to be kind. To look at other people’s shit with anger or curiosity.
Anger feels awful. And it stops any relating to other humans in its tracks.
It feels better for the CHOOSER…the SELF…to choose kindness. Why would our own selves make the choice to feel terrible? It feels better to be nice to other people end of story. It feels better to gain insight and understanding and connect with others rather than sitting on our high horse knowing all, looking better, and trying to be better than our fellow man.
You don’t think so? You think the greatest feeling in the world is feeling superior to everybody else? It’s lonely up there and other people don’t like when we think our existence is more important than theirs. For me, it feels better to make a little effort to understand that people need to feel seen and heard and it’s up to us to do that for each other. Who will understand us as individuals if we refuse to understand anyone else? Radiating boundless love in my own definition doesn’t mean blindly loving everyone and being the local pushover. To me, boundless love equals boundless understanding.
Yep, even for our worst enemies. They’re coming from a different place in their heads, a different point of view. We don’t have to agree with it to feel boundless love. We don’t have to back down from our own place of power. We just need to recognize that they have theirs and we have ours. We don’t need to fawn over people we don’t see eye-to-eye with. We just need to radiate, SHOW, that we realize their point of view exists and although we may not agree with it, we validate its existence. It’s for us, not them. If they want to be closed off jags who do nothing but judge everybody else, we can see that and make the choice to be curious about their jagoff point of view or to not engage in their clown show. Boundless love doesn’t mean being in love with every jerk. It means choosing curiosity or nodding our heads and saying something like “I understand your point” and maybe sharing our own point of view, then moving on with our lives. Boundless love means not being a judgey jag yourself in response to judgey jagoffs.
“What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create”: Ahhh, another quote attributed to The Buddha. And very LOA-ish.
This all goes back to radiating love/kindness/understanding instead of hatefulness. To serve ourselves by not being negative jerkwads who are known for being haters. Being a hater takes a ton of energy. Less effort to be in flow instead of being closed off assholes.
Because kindness feels better to put out there and because like attracts like period end of sentence. Magnets, mirrors, and forward motion. That’s what this is saying to me.
Thinking about some stuff in a meaningful way will always, ALWAYS mean that a chunk of that thought will reside in our minds. And our minds will always act like a mirror and reflect that shit right back to us. Would we rather have stuff in our heads that attracts shit we DON’T want or shit we DO want? It’s so LOA it’s making my own head spin.
If you really feel everyone around you is a fucker or a loser or wrong, you invite that back to you with the shitty energy you’re putting out there. Other humans don’t tend to like shitty energy. They’ll either avoid you, won’t help you when you need it, or push back because you’re a dick. What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create. If you think that the world sucks and that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, you’ll subconsciously do every single thing on the planet to make sure your thought is validated to prove yourself right. You’ll fuck up your own life in order to feel correct about your thought. Our brains are that ridiculous.
On the flipside, if you really feel like the other humans all have their own reasons for their decisions and you can honor that by either being curious about their paths or acknowledging their path as ONE path and moving along on your own, you’re more vibrationally aligned with that LOA energy. You’re more apt to be in Flow, to attract positive stuff because that’s what you’re putting out there. You’re being kind by letting other people do their shit and freeing yourself up to do your own.
You’re not absorbing or attaching yourself to anyone else’s shit just by saying “I see you exist and I acknowledge that”. By choosing kindness you’re not being a sucker. You’re serving yourself. To throw angry shit out into the universe is bonkers because that shit is gonna boomerang right back to you. You can debate…kindly. You can disagree…kindly. Other people are not stupid or wrong for believing stuff that you don’t. They just believe different stuff.
And if you imagine everyone around you is out to get you, wants to mess with you, and you’ll do nothing but fail and they’ll love kicking you while you’re down…guess what will happen?
Magnets, mirrors, forward motion. What we think, the emotions we allow ourselves to be identified with, and focusing on the things we want out of our lives . It all matters, not in some floaty-hippie-handing-us-a-flower way. It matters in a real, tangible way.
If you spew a whole bunch of hate and opinions out into the world, you’ll get hate and opinions back. If you like that, say you’re one to troll the other humans and ruffle some feathers. Don’t you get negative pushback from other people? Why do you like that? Really think about your answer. If it’s to feel superior or like you’re more “woke” than your fellow humans, you’re relying way too much on the other humans to deliver your adrenaline-fueled drug of choice to you, and once you’re blocked and banned from everywhere because your addiction gets to be too much for the others, then what?
If you’re that person, please detox that shitty behavior. Not for the world, for yourself. The world will benefit by having one reformed asshole who’s nicer now, but it’ll serve you way more. You won’t have as much hate flying toward you at unexpected times. You’ll get help from the other humans rather than them secretly or not-so-secretly reveling in your misfortunes because you’re mean.
What you project, you reflect. Call it karma or poetic justice or whatever you want. If you’re nice you get mostly nice back. If you’re a hater you get mostly hate back. Being nice serves YOU better. You not only get the good stuff back, you’re putting yourself in the position to think better, have better health, have a better life experience.
“Start living the life you keep imagining”: This one’s straight-up LOA. No on the rocks with a twist for this quote.
So I was always confused by the vision board thing. I think now I understand it a little bit more and why some folks use them.
A vision board is what some LOA-ers use to manifest their dream realities. Some feature pics of their dream cars, dream homes, dream vacations. According to many books featured in the self-help section, you stare at pictures of these and wait.
Stare at pictures and wait?
Well, that’s where it could start, at least. You won’t get far with that, though.
What’s left out in a lot of the self-help ideas is your own participation in your own life. Staring at pictures and hoping it’ll fall into your lap is good. But your participation in the manifesting is the key, and sometimes universal energy knows better than you what’s right for you.
I tried to sell my house this year and failed miserably. I did all the right things. I was selling with the intention of buying a bigger house so I could eventually absorb my in-laws into the mix, as they’ll eventually need me to take care of them. We packed, painted and patched, picked a great broker. Slapped the for sale sign on. Our hearts stayed in a good place and we were thinking positive thoughts.
The whole thing was a comedy of errors crescendoing to a plumbing failure that rendered our home unsellable until it was fixed. Since we were trying to sell in a condo building, stuff like plumbing lines are considered shared elements individual owners can’t touch. And our building management was like, nah, and fought us on every fix every step of the way to get it remediated in a permanent way. Now we’ve gotta stay and sue their asses so we can get back some of the money they forced us to hemorrhage toward some shit we already hemorrhaged money toward in the way of monthly assessments that cover stuff like emergency plumbing failures and the cleanup therewith.
Anyway.
See, we did all the right things and we still failed. Some could say we weren’t vibrationally aligned with our desires, some could say maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
Whatever it was, it didn’t happen end of story. In my own mind, I think what was on the other side of what we had faith would be a good move for everybody would have fucked up our lives miserably and we just couldn’t see it from where we were standing.
We still did all the right things in the way that we MOVED toward our goal. The fact that it didn’t happen sucks, but what’s important is we tried to do what we thought was the right choice for us. Sometimes when shit goes off the rails we just can’t see from our juxtaposition the WHY. And I’m not sure the WHY is important. How we decide to deal with failure and disappointment and the unexpected is.
See, it’s not enough in the world of LOA to decide you want something and the universe brings what you order like a pizza delivery. You’ve gotta participate. If you want a pizza, you don’t put a picture of a pizza on your vision board and have faith alone. We do that, then call up the freaking pizza parlor and order our pizza, then have the money waiting for the driver when he arrives. Hopefully remembering to give the driver a huge tip because they’re not working for our asses for free.
We’ve gotta participate. And when we fail, we’ve gotta absorb that failure and keep going with our life.
The life I was imagining for myself…caring for my in-laws, finding a place where my teenager could have a bigger room, that dream life…didn’t happen in the way I imagined it. I had a 2-floor condo still shackled around my neck. I could either let it turn me into a monster or step back and see what I could do about it with the tools I had.
I actually did both.
I came down so hard on our HOA board, building management, and my husband that I’m still surprised at myself when I think about it. The two former entities purposefully stalled and slapped band-aids on the issue and ended up making it a million times worse. The latter entity had a habit of pushing things off onto me or until crunch time which made the whole process infinitely more difficult for me and I had some shit to say about how that felt. I felt and still feel justified in coming down on these folks.
But the shackle of the condo was still around my neck. I had no control over anything but my response to making things nice.
We turned my teen’s room and bathroom into an en suite so she’d have more privacy and room. It just took my husband building walls around that whole area and he did an amazing job and it looks really cool. We’re suing the shit out of our building management and HOA for making stupid decisions and lazy choices. We haven’t figured out the in-law care yet but at the moment they’re doing alright and we’re talking about future possibilities with them.
In other words, we handled the failure the best way we could. We didn’t allow anyone to fuck us over in a huge, more devastating way. We switched it up as much as we could to deliver some of what we wanted within the property we still owned. We acted. We responded. Our imagined life was for sure not happening, so we had to modify those results a little.
LOA is more about taking action and less about the result. More about the journey. If you want to own a Ferrari but currently are in the position to not even buy a beater car, taping a picture of your dream Ferrari and waiting isn’t going to do shit. You know where you are, you see where you could be and what you want. LOA is about that journey between those two points.
We don’t attract what we want. We attract what we are. We have to act in order to get the dream, and if the journey turns into a fucking circus, we’ve gotta discipline the clowns and reassess the journey and maybe even the dream. It’s not about the succeeding. It’s about the action toward possible success. That movement, that action, those emotions of HAVING it…aligns us better with the intentions we have. It gives us a better shot. We’ll never get the Ferrari by a picture of one and hope. We’ve gotta take the journey to make it possible. Nothing is guaranteed. But we can stack the odds more in our favor by doing the shit we need to do toward the Ferrari dream.
That’s the meaning of life in my opinion, friends. Not constant success. Not getting what we want continuously. It’s experiencing it all…the heartaches, the thrills, the failures, the achievements. If we focus on the negative parts of our life experience best believe our life will keep shoveling negativity down our throats. If we start pausing and reflecting on how we can make wherever we are better, how we plot our journeys toward our Ferrari dreams, and focusing on enjoying where we are in our moments instead of railing against how everybody has it better than us, we give ourselves a better chance for life to respond in kind.
It’s why we shouldn’t judge each other. We’re all on different paths to our Ferraris. It’s why we should try to understand and be curious about other people’s Ferrari paths instead of issuing edicts on them. Life isn’t a race. If it was whoever dies first would be the winner. Life is about the experience. Once we get our Ferrari there will always be another dream.
That’s the whole point.
