What is the point of all this?
I am walking through my life trying to do good, trying to grow into the person I know I can be, trying to touch what is divine along the way. I have griefs and joys, I feel the pain of tragic events, I see the suffering of so many. After all the rising and setting suns of a spinning globe, the walking over leagues of mountains and valleys, I ache to know the Why. What is the point? What is the reason for my walking? I can endure and enjoy anything the human tragicomedy can offer if I can fathom a reply to the Why.
I know I am walking through the world of form, and I know there is more behind the form. I’m a multidimensional being with conflicting goals that somehow work together, weaving a cloth so large I only understand it in the small details. I’m drawn to explore these details across the many dimensions of the question, Why Am I Here?
I am here to experience. I’m here to enjoy life’s pleasures, to find physical comfort in a sometimes perilous world, to take care of my self, my body, my interests, to seek companionship, to be uplifted by beauty. I am also here to experience the fear of not having these things, to search for ways to create safety, to soothe my jangled nerves when I’m afraid, to make choices about how I navigate my fears.
I am here to learn. To discover ever more fully the depth of who I am, my talents, my flaws, my unique gifts, my purpose. To nurture my creativity and develop my potential, to express the individuality of this one small sliver of consciousness I call “me,” and tend the petals of his flower as beautifully as I can.
I am here to care for the ones I love, my friends and family, to create the space for them to find security and fulfillment too. And to extend that care to my neighbors, my community, and beyond, to see how far I can expand the circle, to enlarge my perception of the countless ways I am connected. To see that my happiness is joined to the happiness of all. I am here to strengthen our bonds of affection, witnessing and sharing in the joys, griefs, and suffering of the world.
I am here to evolve. As individuals and as humanity, we are growing up. As we mature, our obsession with the separate self lessens and the importance of the larger Self grows. The walk from self to Self is long, crooked, confusing, and painfully slow. Glimpses of my Self are intimate flashes that illuminate me briefly and then are gone. The ache remains.
I am here to align my feelings, thoughts, awareness, actions, and fundamental ground with my larger Self. I am inspired when I see others act from this alignment and I want my life to be a model too. Together, our effect is rippling out, reaching others, our forces gathering, our power accumulating.
I have moments when I am taken by an inner knowing I cannot explain but that feels so elemental I am compelled to say it out loud: the point of my walking is to enter a love so profound, so total, so engrossing, so welcoming, I come undone; a love so vast in its expanse, I might stagger back in disbelief, or fall forever, held, enfolded, embraced.
In those fleeting moments of union, I feel redeemed. Not in the sense that my sins have been washed away. That would be an erasure of the history that has brought me to this shining moment, which is surely as sacred as the epiphany of the union itself. It is more like the universe is redeeming a token I was gifted at birth. It is a redemption that understands I am offering up who I have become through a life of human choices, and acknowledges I’ve taken what was given and created something generous and fulfilling.
Photo by Alin Andersen on Unsplash