The Search For Meaning - ACIM lessons

The inspiration behind this blog entry is a very interesting channel I found on youtube.

The channel is ACIM esstentials featuring Auntie Patricia (Patricia Robinett)

Here's
Auntie Patricia on 'Meaning versus Meaninglessness', ACIM Lesson 004.




People all through the ages have been searching for the 'meaning of life'.

I don't think this 'meaning' has been found. Because I'm not sure there exists any 'absolute meaning' in the realm of the mind.

The 'meaning of life' cannot be some complicated network of mental concepts.

The intellectual route in the search for 'meaning' is not wrong, but will eventually take one to the point where all 'meaning' will dissolve...into nothing...


I believe that the moment meaninglessness is seen clearly.
Is the moment in which MEANING will show itself.
Clearly.

The ACIM route into the realm of true meaning, via the dissolution of the 'meaningless meaning' we attribute to things and events: 1. Nothing I see means anything. 2. I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me. 3. My thoughts do not mean anything. 4. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

I currently believe, that the absolute, self evident meaning, when it is finally seen clearly, will be accompanied by the dissolution of the mind, signifying a total withdrawal from worldly affairs. And the mind that can see to an extent, the meaninglessness that exists, can see, to an extent, the absolute, self evident meaning of it all.

Digging deeper into the ACIM perspective:

A. If thoughts do not have any meaning, it means that INTERPRETATIONS that thoughts give to situations rising in the surroundings are absurd and meaningless.

Further...memories are also thoughts. When a memory comes, it comes as a thought.

If statement A. is true, it follows that mental movies that pretend to be memories are not really memories, but are pretending to be memories. And their content is also the same - absurd and meaningless. And this takes me to my post on CARL JUNG's commentary on 'Time'.

To people who subscribe to the Advaita Vedantic perspective of MAYA, the following statement will ring true:

Meaningless thoughts from the void are projecting or generating the illusion of a meaningless world that exists only to the extent it is observed.

Quote by Ramesh Balsekar:

In the meditation for November 27 in A Net of Jewels (1996), Ramesh Balsekar says,

"Breathing goes on by itself while the deluded individual thinks it is he who is breathing. Thoughts come from outside, arising spontaneously through intervals of mental vacuum, and he thinks it is he who is thinking. The thoughts get transformed involuntarily into action, and he thinks it is he who is acting. All the while, he is doing nothing but to misconstrue the actions of the Totality as his own action."


Update 2011:

Stepping beyond conclusions & intellectual concepts, judgments, straight into the realm of pure faith...this song is very profound christian mysticism...

The Interplay of Opposites

Consider the following situation: Father throws out his two errant sons because they are useless. One son dies in the harsh environment of the outside world. The other son thrives in the harshness, and becomes a successful man. So the question is.... Was this act of the father Good? or Evil? Perhaps it was BOTH Good and Evil? Perhaps it was neither Good nor Evil?

The fleeting, illusory qualities of MAYA are difficult to classify, separate. Because of their inherent oneness.

Here is a beautiful christian mysticism number that tries to instill that there is a deep relationship between opposing qualities of life.


Lyrics
If you believe in light, it's because of obscurity
If you believe in joy, it's because of sadness
If you believe in God...it's because of the devil





This concept can be found in physics, freudian psychology, buddhism, hinduism too.

So if opposing qualities of life are mere aspects of the same unified whole, mere flavours of the same continuum, it would mean that qualities like cruelty, madness, sadness, hatred, disease, death...all emerge from the deepest level of life itself...
just like their opposite qualities.


In his book the "Tao of Physics", Fritjof Capra writes...

"In our normal state of consciousness, this unity of opposites is extremely hard to accept...

But when mystics transcend this realm of intellectual concepts, they become aware of the relativity and polar relationship of all opposites. They realise that pleasure and pain, life and death, sadness and joy are not absolute experiences belonging to different categories, but are merely two sides of the same reality. Extreme parts of a single whole."

And what is this 'single whole'....the answer to this question does not follow simple logic that our minds are accustomed to.

Because over here, we are dealing with nothing but the infinite....

It moves. It moves not.
It is far. It is near.
It is within all this.
And it is outside of all this.
- The Upnishads.

SUMMARY:

OPPOSING QUALITIES OF LIFE ARE NOT ABSOLUTES. THEY ARE DIFFERENT FLAVOURS OF THE SAME CONTINUUM.