the world ceases to make sense

Thanks C4, Klare, Siona.
Evocative essay C4. Thanks for sharing. I think you are right that “existentialism is a much-needed wakeup call for those of us who continue to slumber in the daily drudgeries of life.” And “that an existential stance is a gateway we must pass through at some point in our lives in order to evolve and transcend, yet fully embody our individuality.”

Especially like how it comes full circle! I know it does sound so existential, eh?

“There is neither creation nor destruction,
Neither destiny nor free-will;
Neither path nor achievement;
This is the final truth.” [10]

Hmmm, Siona, you're so right. I don't need a system, yet I hadn't noticed that I had relied on one and took for granted that you do need one. Yes, the coherency is beyond my finite brain capacity to comprehend.

I went for a run last night and the lavender was in full bloom fringed around the dirt track at the middle school. I noticed that I do not require any meaning or any purpose or any whys for stopping and meeting its fragrance.

I guess I'm being confronted with absolute no meaning, when for so long I've been a preacher for meaning and purpose. Not even the belief “I'm a human being” is gelling much. The other night I saw the movie, ”Music and Lyrics”, and the main character Alex once had a solo CD album titled, “Rhyme and No Reason.” I love that. It's all a symphony, and layering onto that experience and analyzing the causes and the whys that that note played and came before this note, urghh! (Well, when I look at it deeply everything causes everything else, so I give up!) Just enjoy inspiration! Easier when it's a sitback, but this is applying even to how and why I move and act through the world as well. Why? Because, period.

Anyhow, I also notice that it feels authentic that people that aren't just buying everyone's system lock, stock and barrel will move through a period of nihilism or some type of confusion and doubt about the meanings we've placed on the world. I'd love to have it be more out there in the public that periods of deep questioning can be an unsettling time, and that it's normal part of maturation. You're not having a breakdown, and you don't necessary need meds (as a friend confided yesterday her therapist suggested).

When it appears to bothers me that my identity is shifting and beliefs are collapsing. I recall that I always thought this was beautiful:

”We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Thanks everyone.

Hmmm, Julian has a new juicy mysterious post on Mystery.

At the end, he says: “[W]e buy into weak and unscientific explanations for trippy-sounding things, or that we say:I don't know why or how - but that answer is not satisfying?”

“I don't know why or how” eventually is an authentic answer once everything (well, I don't know about everything, it's like a house of cards, just the right card might do it all in ;-)) has been inquired into thoroughly in your own mind (it cannot be a handed down philosophy or belief system either).

I found this no-meaning-no-answers unsatisfactory too. It can send one into nihilistic shock (see above), although I'm witnessing in myself it's only unsatisfactory to imaginary ego/self.

Maybe “I” don't know how or why - but let's call it prajna does know. And prajna informs us.

”There is a perfection beyond what the unquestioned mind can know. You can count on it to take you wherever you need to be, whenever you need to be there, and always exactly on time. When mind understands that it is just a reflection of the nameless intelligence that has created the whole apparent universe, it is filled with delight. It delights that it is everything, it delights that it is nothing, it delights that it is brilliantly kind and free of all identity, free to be its unlimited, unstoppable, unimaginable life…” - Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy

p.s. Katie calls the unquestioned mind one that in where we believe our thoughts without question. She has a method of inquiry that is a flaming sword of discernment where we delve into the truth of our unquestioned assumptions and beliefs with clarity.

Siona, It's fine to presume. You seem to be grokking where I am. (I'm actually not quite now in the same space as when I wrote this, but I can certainly still relate to existentialism and nihilism, though, as the waves come in and out depending on how strong my sense of a separate self is.)

Thanks for sharing Millman's comment. Millman's radical view feels like not a view at all, but a dropping of views. Like radical in its etymological sense: getting the the “root”, “going to the origin, essential.”

That's why I wrote the other day…

”It was the end of believing…”

(and, the beginning of being)

Something about that gap between is a disorienting though ;-) Something in that gap interprets it must be like nihilism, because maybe the 'me' cannot fathom a world it cannot comprehend, a world not needing its meaning layer.

I was aware that the nihilistic, meaningless attitude was a defense (that's why I said I was play-acting), but one I was clenching to lest I have no defense. “..the more elaborate and nuanced my theories must become” Yep, I sense that defenses get more sophisticated as we get close to the ”utter fruitlessness.” I love that. It's that utter fruitlessness that seems to bring into view the ripe fruit ready to drop from the tree (and we wonder how it was ever missed).

Coincidentally, I went to see Adya that evening I posted this. Two people asked about my hot topic: meaning and purpose. (This are from some of my notes, so not precise transcription.)

Q: Once you are 'realized' as what you are, then what next? I mean, how do you know what to do next?
A: There's no ideas, no ideologies, no purpose, no meaning - just a spontaneous movement of the next most obvious thing.
Q: So It creates?
A: Yes, it's totally creative.
Q: And trust?
A: To trust It would give it a form, and implied is separation. When you know God, you don't have to trust.

“I can assure you I have no purpose at all…Purpose and meaning are personal things - they're surrogates for Reality. When I feel separate,  the 'I' needs purpose and meaning… This sounds horrible to the 'me', but in its place are existence, reality, divinity, [couldn't capture entire list].”

Yet I reckon it also includes beauty, grace, ease, wonder, mystery, flow. He later says the next most obvious thing is that simple  when you are still - the next obvious thing.

“Frequently It does not give you the whole plan. Who wants the whole plan? That'd be like living a re-run!”

He spoke about how as you transcend your sense of 'you', how the personal drives like the drive to be noticed, the drive to be first start to subside, and drop away. And he's seen that it is normal that there is a gap between the withering away of personal drives, and the bursting forth of the impersonal, so it's disorienting. He says it's common for friends and loved ones to ask, “What's wrong with you?” And so at this juncture, many people make a U-turn.

Also in my experience at this juncture, you don't know what's 'wrong' with you. You are so far out of the mainstream experience that's talked about or written about openly (that's my wish that this is out there more so that it's normalized). One deeply senses the world doesn't fit the beliefs they told you or you told you.

Like I wrote here, I know plenty of people that grasp a lot of truth because they question a lot of things society takes for granted or just their life experience has shown them so (most claim they are not on a spiritual path, because they aren't going to church or doing yoga or reading Wilber ;-)) that they sense that which others call meaning is all made up.

This is the gap I think the existentialists found, but…. But I don't know why they indulged that so long. It's that final utter fruitlessness that bears fruit (which sounds paradoxical). Though you can't adopt a fruitless attitude for purpose of aiming for fruit. I think nihilism can easily become another identity to possess, another theory, another posturing to defend against the utter fruitlessness. It has its hip factor, even when it's a downer.

Yet I think the “too intelligent” people I was thinking when I wrote this (besides me), aren't posturing for the melancholy hip street cred. They are in the gap, and they can't buy what others are telling them, and they can't buy what they used to believe. Rather than “losing” it, they are waking up to reality as it is,  yet they don't have that felt sense of it quite yet.

Adya also quoted the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra (hmmm, the sutra nearest and dearest to me).

“From the personal we'll looking for an emotional charge [to know what's next] - that's what meaning and purpose means - so we can miss it. Be very quiet and very still. There is a beautiful sutra line, “The tributary streams flow through the darkness.” In that stopping, tributary streams flow. There's a movement there. Don't ask it to be emotional. Don't ask it to explain itself. That which comes from Spirit is a gift. When you relax into it, you'll get the feel of it.”

I cannot speak for anyone else. But what's happening to me is that all views are dropping away. I am not trying or wanting to let go of meaning and purpose, they are simply letting go of me. Falling away. And truthfully, it's sublimely lovely. The nostaglia even I was feeling for them, hmmm, that too dropping away.

One of my blog buddies wrote to me the other day (I'm notoriously bad at getting to my emails, esp since I try to limit my online time), wondering if I'd gotten on the bus with Neil.

Took me a while to catch the reference, but it got me thinking about Ghost World (spoiler ahead). I think Enid was a smart cookie, she could see how the script was already written with all her other life choices (she just graduated high school) and she could see that, getting on the bus was the venture into the Unknown. I was stumped about that final scene with Seymour and his therapist. But I finally think I got it that he actually thought he could go backwards? That he was trying to go back to his “old life”. So Enid was going full steam ahead into the gap, Seymour was trying to do the U-turn.

Per Julian's reminder the other day on his blog, I picked up my copy of Dark Nights of the Soul and read:

“Today, with a therapeutic mindset, we no longer appreciate initiations and passages… Our developmental models of a human life account for progress but not major shifts in being. Linear thinking, so much a part of modern life, affects the way we understand our very lives. We evolve and develop, but we don't transform. We imagine growing like a skyscraper under construction, reaching to the sky, not like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.” - Dark Nights of the Soul, by Thomas Moore

Wow. Anyhow, got me thinking what I can do, if anything, to help to make the cocooning  known about and out in the open.