subject: Does Your Being Here Really Matter? [print this page] I want to invite you to think something through with me. I ask you just entertain what I want to bring up, leaving all contrary beliefs and insights aside, allowing yourself to feel what I am suggesting for a moment.
Suppose there is absolutely nothing more than this life.
Suppose you had no previous existence, and when you die, that will be the end of you. You have no spirit or soul separate from your mortal body. No immortality, no eternity lies beyond the grave, just non-existence.
If there were absolutely nothing beyond this life, would your life be valid?
Assuming you have friends, a valuable job, and especially family, you might see your life as valid even if there is nothing to follow death. We draw meaning from the people and activities in which we engage. Who we are connected to and what we do make us feel worthwhile.
But now let us take a step further. Suppose you were utterly alone in your life. You have no friends, no career that matters, no membership in any kind of club or society or spiritual group that has any significance, and no family whateverall your relatives are dead.
For many years, the only way I experienced any sense of validity was through the people to whom I believed I mattered. I know that I mattered to my mom and dad. But my father died 35 years ago, and my mother 32 years ago. I sense I matter to my brother, to some degree. And I suppose, in some remote sense, I matter to my nephews and nieces (but not in any way that would make any significant difference in their livesthey are all back in Europe, and out of sight is often out of mind).
There is someone to whom I matter: my son. Since he was one, I have raised him essentially as a single parent. He is now 24, in his final year of college, and we are close. My relationship with him is the most important relationship in my life. Still, no relationship, however close and meaningful, is permanent. Life is fundamentally impermanent.
So this raises the central question: Would you experience a sense of validity if this life is all you have, and even if there were absolutely no one to whom you mattered and no activity that gave you a sense of purpose?
This is the acid test, really, of what our being here is all about.
I would have felt a profound loss of meaning if someone had asked me this years ago. Life would have seemed pointless if there was nothing beyond and if I had no meaningful connections or sense of purpose to my activities.
Yet, I have discovered that even if there were no one to whom I mattered, I matter anyway. Even if I had no sense of purpose, I nevertheless have validity. And even if there is nothing beyond death, my life still has meaning.
I have found that my being here has meaning in and of itselfthat simply "being" is packed with meaning.
The people, situations, and experiences of my life draw out my validity and meaning, but they do not create it. They entice it into fuller expression, but they are not its source.
When awareness of my validity arose, it happened rather spontaneously, as a result of the sheer pain life can inflict through loss when you don't know your essential self.
When you are dropped on your head, and there is no escaping the fact of your absolute alonenessthe reality that no one is ultimate "there for" youyou have an opportunity to awaken to your validity.
In my case, as I find to be the case with many, it happened in increments. The loss of a relationship, the loss of a career, the loss of friendsall of these worked together, step-by-step coaxing my real being into consciousness.
And what I discovered is that I have validity, and my existence is meaningful, even if I am totally alone and have absolutely nothing purposeful to do, other than simply to be.
This sense of validity arose quite apart from any sense of personal immortality. In fact, it arose entirely free of concepts of a beyond or anything of that kind. It just began to be there as I allowed myself to really feel the seeming emptinessand discovered it to be a fullness, not an emptiness.
When we experience a fullness of being at the heart of all realityat the heart of our realitywe are content. We stop all searching for our significance. We discover the "rest," the "easiness," and "the peace that is beyond understanding" of which Jesus spoke.
One of the biggest surprises is that there is absolutely no sense of emptiness or boredom in this alonenesseven when there is no one around, nothing to occupy our attention, and nothing to do.
Another surprise is that, without any evidence of a previous life or an afterlife whatever, my deep awareness of my meaningfulness conveys a sense of immortalitythat who I am has eternal worth, and that this life is just part of my journey of "coming into being."
Still another surprise: there is nothing passive about this state of peaceful restfulness and ease. It is a highly alive state. It's from this place of inner rest that our true being, which participates in the divine, begins to stream forth into the world. People, events, situations invite the expression of who we are.
We are each part of a fullness that is seeking to express itselfa love that is trying to happen. But this fullness, this love, cannot be experienced as long as it's still only a concept.
It has to break into our everyday experience as a living reality.
