Dear Sandra,

It seems that life never stops throwing up challenges that plunge us into chaos. Sometimes I feel I could never survive those chaos places and come out the other end, but I suppose we do. It's the loss of meaning I fear most in some ways, meaning of our lives. Could you write a little on that?

R.

Dear R.,

One of the challenges life throws us is its meaninglessness.

What is meaning? It is only what our ego wants - some kind of importance, some kind of assurance that our lives have a purpose, that we are special, that our pain occurs for a reason.

It is my experience that to get meaning, real, lasting meaning - which I would describe as a fullness of experience, where nothing is lacking - we have to go through and then underneath meaninglessness. If we really let oursleves drop into the meaninglessness of life, we become aware of our helplessness. We are helpless to ever know there is meaning. Our mind or our ego will never know, will never, ever have proof of meaning. It's not possible. Whatever the universe provides as proof, the mind will question. The ego won't trust.

Underneath this kind of desire for meaning, is the fullness and beauty and incalculable vast 'meaning' of a single flower. Of your breath. Of a bird swooping in the wind. That is the meaning of the universe, and it cannot be received by the mind.

Once I stop questioning why I'm here, what I'm supposed to be 'doing', I'm more here, simply responding to the moment, and by being more present in the moment, I have less need for the kind of meaning my mind is searching for. I have fullness of experience. That is enough.

From of fullness of experience comes a natural movement - towards love, towards taking care, towards whatever is appropriate, in the moment.

"Meaning" implies something finite and static. We have to read to the end of a novel to know what it was about. We close the book and say, "That was about a man who found love", or whatever. We cannot close the book of the universe. We cannnot close the book of our lives. We are infinite.

Life is movement and change. We cannot jump to some future point and look back and say, "Ah that's what my life meant". Even if we do move to a different dimension after our bodies die in this dimension, and we are able to have a wider vision of our full Selves, our full Selves are always expanding, moving, in flux and change, creating, opening.

The meaning is now.

We are here now, in this dimension, to be here now. This is our job, not to 'know' what it all means, but simply to be our full Selves. Even if we did know what it all means, that there was meaning, what would that do? Make us feel better? So perhaps that is the truth of the question, "What is the meaning of life?" Not so much wanting to know the answer, but wanting to feel better.

I feel better when I'm more present, more in my body and less in my mind. I feel better when I simply appreciate the delight of being, in and of itself. I don't feel good if I worry about the meaning of life!

And, curiously, by not worrying about it, by simply living, I trust deeply in the meaning of life.