Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions from people. Why isn’t my blog more exclusively positive? What is the true meaning of life? How do we find the meaning in life? And so on…
As far as the content and context of my blog goes, I just don’t believe that rah-rah feel-good cheerleading blogs have deep value for most people. They simply don’t touch the most sensitive people in this world. They might help a few people and give them ideas, but the people who are truly searching and have the deepest existential anxiety don’t get anything out of them. There are enough of those blogs out there already, I think.
My goal is to elicit transformation and positive personal change in my readers. The longing for meaning in life and the dark night of the soul are not quenched by “chicken soup.” Things are not that simplistic. Life has a dark side and I want to acknowledge that in my writing. There is an ongoing struggle between darkness and light and it’s in our own souls. There is darkness in the midst of joy and light in the midst of darkness.
My aim with this blog is to help the intelligent, sensitive people who want to live consciously and “suck the marrow out of life,” as Thoreau once wrote. I want to help people to overcome their difficulties.
What is the dark night of the soul?
Some of us feel we are different and sometimes we cut ourselves off from the world. We see the pointlessness, the lack of meaning in the daily grind. We need a reason to exist. We need meaning. Without this, there is nothing.
This is why people reach the end of the line, even when they’re doing what they “want.” Usually, they’re only doing what they think they want.
There is no greater truth than this – when searching for meaning in life, we have to seek the meaning in ourselves.
Religions, cults, sports teams, needy relationships, long-term “therapists” who never inspire real change, political goals and isms – all of these are substitutes for true meaning. They just don’t cut it. Why not? Because by filling our inner emptiness with a hollow external “cause,” we are merely covering up our inner emptiness and not transforming it. The emptiness is still there. We haven’t found the true meaning of life. Just some kind of chemical drug or mental crutch.
How can something external fill the hole in our hearts? It can’t.
How many rich Hollywood personalities are mental-emotional basket cases? Lots. How many are on drugs? Plenty. I suspect that it’s because they’re not getting what they really want. They set fame or money as an external goal and when they achieve them, they notice the emptiness.
Happiness doesn’t depend on external achievements. Real happiness depends upon being at peace with oneself. Dropping all of your false beliefs and your ego, letting go of negativity, letting go of excessive striving for possessions, money, people, revenge, etc…
I don’t believe there is a “method” to finding true meaning. First you have to let go of everything external and come back to your own self. Once you arrive at a more peaceful state, being at peace with the world, with the way things are and with your own past and even with negative, anxious and depressed emotions, then and only then can you hope to find real meaning in your life.
What inspires you? Follow that. If there is true meaning in life, it is to be found in actualizing your own potential in something that you love.
If you found these ideas interesting, please take a look around my site to get more ideas on how to help yourself on your new path to self-transformation and a life of true meaning and fulfillment.
Konstantin.
