The Problem of Meaningless

Mar 24

One of the hidden barriers in human life to which you become quite accustomed is the meaninglessness that permeates your daily life. How is it possible that the task of working a job all your life, paying bills that never stop coming and that you can’t pay off, living and breathing in relationships that are not much more than entanglements be the purpose and meaning of your life? Said a different way, how can it be that the purpose of life is not to live?

Blog 12 5.png — The perpetual and numbing habits of each moment and each day consumes your energy, talent, creativity and purpose.

Now, of course, not everyone deals with this but most do. The meaninglessness of the daily grind translates into a meaningless life and comes down to “What do you do?” at the cocktail party. You are not upset about the exponential list of trivial nothings that make up your day. You are upset about the meaninglessness that lies behind it.

Meaninglessness conceals meaning.
Consciousness reveals meaning.

And the veil between the two is none other than your own mind...to start with…and the choking meaninglessness of all of the content that fills your mind. It’s like trying to fill a paper bag whose bottom has been cut out. It can’t be done no matter what you do. Now, the easy part is stating and identifying the limitation. Anyone can do that. Identifying the way out is harder.

The way to transformation, the way to a different life is difficult task…the way to a new consciousness can be a difficult task. I want to suggest to you that in order to do this, in order for you to begin a new path, your database has to be updated, your server has to be updated. What this means is that you have to acquire a different level of knowledge upon which your efforts are based. Let’s call this knowledge consciousness. So, essentially, what I am saying is that your consciousness has to change.

Whatever efforts you make, however motivated you may have, until the consciousness changes, until the knowledge changes, you are doomed to repeat the same experiences over and over. Remember, you attract what you are. Knowledge is a function of being, not doing. Now, to begin, learning starts at creating a strong foundation. The higher you go, the deeper your foundation needs to be. Now, let’s call this foundation your yoga…the yoga of your life… and this yoga can be characterized by your ascent. The ascent is the deliberate and conscious movement above and beyond your mind. It’s not much different that a mountain climber. But you are not seeking a heaven above and beyond this Earth nor are you trying how to figure out how to create an escape from your daily life or a liberation from birth. The mountain climber knows s/he is coming back down…at least they hope to. You are starting an ascent, beginning with the building of a foundation.

Now, what I want to do in this message is to show you how to create a change of consciousness over the next 15 minutes and I promise you that you can do it. So, let’s get started.

Now, notice that much of your life plays out only for the purpose of fulfilling the addictive pleasures of your life, trying to combat the meaninglessness of your life.

Having, possessing becomes the central pivot for much of your effort. Life becomes all about the sensory experience. But you have to admit how delicious that kind of sensory life is…focusing only on fulfilling your sensory desires. But the price you pay is high. Now, behind this pursuit of pleasure and entertainment and seeking meaning lies what we refer to as your knot.

Another word for your knot is your negative-ground-of-being. The negative-ground-of-being contains the negative belief or beliefs about yourself that are negative. It’s your stuff. What I’m afraid is wrong with me is…I’m afraid that I’m…… or that I’m not…

Now, the mind is always trying to make sure that no one else knows this about this part of you, that no one ever finds out what you’re really like underneath your act, underneath your game. So, it does everything it can to avoid coming into contact with that negative belief. And this where the sensory world comes into play…let’s go have fun, let’s get high, let’s buy stuff, have more sex, own stuff…and we’ll feel better…but do anything but have to deal with myself. Own, possess, own some more, work harder, buy some more, get more… And again, the sensory world is so compelling. And from the macro point of view, in the long run of civilization , we end up creating a system of worth that is based on how much you own…some have a lot, some have a little bit, and some have none. I’m sure you know which one you are.

But as the process unfolds, your negative-ground-of-being grows.

The meaninglessness grows.

Overly stimulated by the sensory world, the knot, the negative-ground-of-being remains intact.

Now, simultaneously, the soul is seeking the experience of itself, of the divine in physical form, and now, the knot and the divine are at odds, even at war, each seeking to lay claim to who it considers itself to be.

Blog 12 2 5.png — The battle of evolution is underway.

Now, there are many levels and gradations of consciousness. The yoga that we teach is the conscious union of that which is spiritual and that which is material. It is the merging of the horizontal and the vertical. This, as I said, involves a conscious ascent to a greater knowledge but it also includes the understanding of the descent of the spiritual itself into the physical. But, make no mistake about it, it’s the movement from within. It’s an inner work.

Your negative-ground-of-being…and again to be clear, your negative ground of being is the negative belief of beliefs you have about yourself that you think are true…but they are not…but you don’t know that, so, you assume they are true… was born out of your experiences. Now again, what I’m suggesting to you is that the negative ground of being is something that you made up in response to those experiences you had as a little kid. Granted there were probably a number of people who gave you good reason to believe that you were something other than who you are, but it doesn’t make it true. So, I am outright saying that your negative ground of being is something that you made up. Nonetheless, it feels real and we want to address it.

But instead of going into an analysis of why it occurred in investigating the experiences that served as the source of your negative ground of being, we will move in the opposite direction.

So, what I would like you to consider is moving at first, mentally, to the redemptive ground of being.

You’re going to move the negative ground of being to the redemptive ground of being. Oddly enough, you’re right back in the same spot you were before you made up the negative ground of being. You are having to make up something else. The redemptive ground of being is basically going to cancel out the negative ground of being. That’s what the word means, redemptive, to be redeemed. If you look the word up in a dictionary, it says that redemption is the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.

So, let’s clear the debt. Let’s gain possession of something else.

So, mentally, construct an idea. Keep it simple- maybe even a word or two that is essentially the opposite of the negative ground of being. If you think that you are unloved, then construct a mental thought called “I am deeply loved and cared for.” Now remember, we are adding consciousness to this formula. You don’t need anything from anybody for any reason to be okay see you don’t need to be loved but you are creating the condition of being loved and cared for in this universe. If you are a person who feels like you’re not good enough for some reason, construct a mental thought the cancels that out. For example: “I have always been good enough and now I’m free to act like it.” And then tried to whittle that concept down to a couple words.

A really easy way to go about this is simply by filling in the blank: I am and then fill in the blank.

I’ll take the concept that you’ve come up with, mentally, which is not very helpful, until you begin to incorporate it throughout your mind and your body and your emotions. And now take the thought and move it into your heart.

I am __________.

Don’t play around with this because your mind has no choice but to process and with a little time, pressure, and a little pain, you will change your concept of who you are.

The path to the divine is an upward ascent, crossing many levels of consciousness and gradations of being. It is an eternal movement through lifetime after lifetime.

And it’s perfectly OK if you don’t want to play or if you don’t believe it because it doesn’t care. Oppose all you want…it doesn’t change your process. But the movement from the negative ground of being to the redemptive ground of being is a necessity. You began to unloose the weight and the anchors that held you down and it all begins in your mind. To feel that thought, to feel that idea in your heart. And now began to teach the cells in the body that the negative ground of being is no longer their duty, that they have a new duty, and that that new duty is the redemptive ground of being. You don’t need anyone else’s permission, approval or confirmation. It is simply a choice. The redemptive ground of being is simply a choice as much as the negative ground of being was simply a choice a long time ago.

Breathe the concept in and breathe the concept out, and feel the movement of the redemptive ground of being throughout your body.

I am __________.

The negative ground of being is a concept that is practiced within the cells of your body and that is where the transformation is going to change once again.

I understand that there are plenty of reasons as to why you think and feel that the negative ground of being is real. Reasons explain your past and the experiences you’ve had in the past. But reasons don’t explain your future. Reasons don’t work. And as long as the past is the reason why you are functioning the way you are functioning, your life is not going to work out. Because we attract what we are, the object is to change what we are in order to change the outer world.

It turns out that what you want in life is the same thing is what you get whether you’re aware of it or not. You generate the concept in your mind and then you express it in your body. Then you express it in the world through your actions. So, the object is to change the thought which you can do right now. Notice that you are not using the past as a reference point in moving from negative ground of being too redemptive ground of being. You are using right now as the reference point.

Here is a quote from Durckheim’s “The Way of Transformation:”

“But if we are able to accept the incomprehensible, it may happen that in the very midst of our lack of understanding, we will sense within the situation some deeper implication. The reality which we understand with our reasoning mind is suddenly transcended and penetrated by another. The profound meaning of this reality only begins to resound in us when we have come to the end of our rational understanding. Here, at the point where our hitherto impregnable belief in the sense and justice of the world has been shattered, there will dawn for the first time a new, fructifying faith in life and its significance.
Or something similar may happen when some blow of fate plunges us into utter desolation. We are intended to live in dialogue with other: we cannot fulfill our life in isolation. We need a partner and strive to find shelter in human communion and love. When it happens that life withholds this, or deprives us of it, we are driven to an extremity in which we feel we must perish. If now, we can bring ourselves to submit and accept our situation, we have the chance to break through the tension and rigidity with which our enforced loneliness threatens us.
If we can now yield trustfully to our inner truth, we may experience the sensation of being caught up and embraced by an unknown power which, at the same time, makes us receptive and open to the whole of life. Although we are forsaken by the world, something from beyond the world makes us feel at one with everything and somehow under the wing of love.”

So, change your mind and move to the redemptive ground of being. The negative ground of being has done its job in keeping you alive. But now it’s time to move beyond survival and into the experience of who you truly are in this simple little movement from the negative ground of being to the redemptive ground of being that can change your life.

Try it and see what happens.

Do it throughout the day, reminding yourself that you are this new thought.

I am __________.

You are made and are intended to bear witness to the innate image that lies inside of you but that is your decision.

You must endlessly and tirelessly try to fulfill this new definition of yourself knowing that no matter what else you achieve, that it will be nothing and completely inadequate compared to fulfilling this new idea of yourself. Nothing else matters.

And let me read that again:

You must endlessly and tirelessly try to fulfill this new definition of yourself knowing that no matter what else you achieve, that it will be nothing and completely inadequate compared to fulfilling this new idea of yourself.

What happened to the meaninglessness?

It is not the meaninglessness that was transformed because the meaninglessness never existed in the first place. Meaninglessness is the condition of a horizontal mind that does not understand its relationship to the vertical because if it did, nothing and I mean nothing would ever again be meaningless…much less your life. Said a different way, it is the I that makes up who you really are that does not understand the “am” in I am.

They do not recognize one another yet, because they have been separated from one another for so long. But when they do unite, when they come together as two brothers do, who have been separated by time and space, the recognition of one another will be an instantaneous moment of redemption.

All mistakes forgiven. All sins forgotten. All wounds healed.

And the meaninglessness is transfigured forever.