The pursuit of meaning has an amazing impact in the life of those focused on finding it. On the positive side, people will discover the things that provide them substance and further enrich their lives with the happiness that comes from it. The proper job, children, philanthropic efforts and artistic endeavors are all examples of this. At the other end of the spectrum the pursuit of meaning can result in harsh conclusions about life and depressing existential crises that envelop the psyche with very little chance for conclusive answers. It all seems to distill down to two opposing questions:
1. Does life have meaning?
2. Is life meaningless?
The confining nature of these two questions can have debilitating effects depending on the severity of your focus. Yet, is there only two ways to look at the issue? Is there, hiding in the chasm between these opposing mountains of thought, another way to look at the quandary? The answer is a Soul enlivening YES. In between these questions is a place that, if inhabited, can remove the tortures of pursuit that the demands of meaning require. It is summed up in one simple, yet powerful word.
INDIFFERENCE
Indifference is the ability to lack concern about the meaning, or lack of meaning, that life possesses. It doesn’t answer the questions as much as it renders them impotent and unable to overwhelm the mind. Indifference is a state of being. It cannot be manifested through acknowledgement or choice. It is the inhabiting of your life without a concern for observable relevance that places your actions into question. You’ll find that inhabiting this state does not in any way negate your pursuits or make them frivolous, but actually keeps you in alignment with a more fruitful mode of living.
Indifference is much more prevalent than you may know; commonly seen in societies outside of the US. There are the coffee farmers of Ethiopia, contented Swiss citizens, hardworking Icelandic families, South American tribes such as the Mascho-Piro, and others. Their lives reflect a common thread of living that seems almost impervious to the questions of meaning. While not everyone avoids contention with these questions, a high percentage of their populace does. Perhaps this is due to the demands their life requires, keeping them from questioning a meaning that is not in alignment with their core daily survival. Maybe the contentment they find in a life of family, work, community, and a healthy similar-class social environment renders the questions moot. Yet, another consideration is the way many societies don’t place a demand for relevance in their social construct, in turn manifesting a homogeneous society of acceptance and satisfaction. The Danes are a prime example of this social construct, resulting in consistently being considered the happiest people on earth.
The beauty of indifference is that it doesn’t diminish your standards of achievement when inhabited properly. All your goals, if anything, are streamlined. Learning indifference may remove unnecessary reasons for some of the goals you possess because you realize they were satisfying the ego’s desire to look a certain way in society. It can reduce un-Soulful desires for relevance while economizing the positive goals that make for a better life. It can also do the following:
• The job you want will be gotten as a natural extension of you seeking to inhabit the nature of your authentic self.
• The efforts you commit to will be more fulfilling because they aren’t done in a pursuit of particular feelings.
• The philanthropic efforts that are an extension of your inner purity and love for society will arrive by a more pure means and not due the stress of needing it to fulfill you.
• It increases the depth of your social selfless behavior, dissolving the internal demands that actually get in the way of behavior that naturally benefits and enriches society.
• It significantly reduces mental instability, emotional disarray, and depression for those who prior focused on meaning, often making an astonishing impact upon the way they feel, view society, and respond to external stimuli.
• It helps increase peaceful behavior and a serenity that may have never been prior known when the pursuit of meaning made its debilitating demand on the mind and body.
• It affects individual relationships and your love for Soulful things in a positive manner, allowing them to ebb and flow with natural progression.
The beauty of indifference, for those who are better served by it than the pursuit of meaning, is that its impact is farther reaching than you may have realized. It is a catalyst for manifold increases in peace and acceptance. Even if indifference wasn’t acknowledged or known as an option before, the revealing of it can still lead to application. Of course indifference is easier for those that have experienced it as a natural component of their character. Yet, even though that’s an overt truth, those of us that need the benefits of indifference to save us from struggles with meaning can still incorporate it as well. Consider the following four observations:
1. The principal means for setting aside your fight for meaning and live in a peaceful state of indifference is to first realize that there have never been any external demands for your search. The meaning of life is found in the living of it, rendering any pursuits as addendums to what you’ve already built. In other words, trying to climb above the natural state of achievement your individual design demands not only inhibits your growth, but can actually stunt it. The search for meaning is actually built into the progress steps of how you live your life. That IS the pursuit and it doesn’t need any help from your misguided conscious intervention. Stop entertaining redundancy and live your life accepting that the componentry necessary for fulfillment are already built in.
2. When the dreaded feeling of meaningless arises it’s best to quell it with inaction instead of feeding it with thoughts that further your state of confusion. Not unlike anxiety attacks or moments of panic, if you just breathe through it and recognize that your life is progressively reflecting meaning by the nature of its existence, the issue will pass. Sometimes it’s hard to hear for people, especially in a capitalist environment, that all positively effective humans are equally valuable, but it’s a truth nonetheless. There is no demand for you to be special and the term is a happiness-consuming illusion that feasts on your ego and desire for self-aggrandizement. You must repel those thoughts through wisdom and a greater love for your fellow inhabitants here. Special is only the result of a herd-created focus on celebrity and wealth; something that is leagues away from the Illumination that you want to dwell in.
3. For those of us whose crisis is consuming, it’s best to consider migrating, even if temporarily, to cultures where the search for meaning is not a prevalent dilemma. If you’ve never seen alternative cultures peopled by contented, hardworking and contributive Souls, it is definitely the best step to take. Such an interaction can be life-altering. By involving yourself in these cultures you’ll see that the one you grew up in is not the standard of society and in many ways lacks the simple joys that living here is supposed to bring. From small French provinces where gastronomy is a social event and small Italian towns filled with family-oriented people who love nothing better than gathering together, all the way to the raucous laughter of the Irish and contented ways of Reykjavic’s populace, there are innumerable cultures to explore.
4. Your involvement in philanthropic efforts will be a tonic. To physically be part of these efforts isn’t just because of the obvious societal benefits, but the act itself is a natural repellant for existential crises and the weakening aspects of meaninglessness. Just as citronella repels mosquitoes, your actions will fill your mind with outward concerns that leave no room for self defeating personal conflicts. That’s the amazing ability of committing to the betterment of others: It is not only an act that contributes to the enrichment of society, but the act itself directly benefits you by forcing out the stinging prods of your unnecessary focus on life’s meaning.
Finally, it’s important to realize that with the arrival of wisdom through your pursuits of spiritual truths there will appear a greater understanding of your place in this world. You’ll see that a demand for meaning is a ghost that moves with every step you make to capture it. It is as unnecessary as “what am I supposed to do with my life”. These questions will fade away when your life is filled with enough responsibilities and worthwhile actions. A life of action dispels the myth of meaning’s pursuit and, in the end, most importantly, helps you realize that meaning was with you the whole time you were here.
