Hi everyone,

How do you find meaning in life when there is so much suffering in the world? When I was mentally well, I found this easy because I was happy and I felt a kind of 'flow' in life - I felt that there was a cure for everyone somewhere out there no matter what their ailment was (I now realise how ignorant I was). I felt good. But since being unwell, I realise that even those who live extremely healthily and eat well, sleep well, exercise etc can become seriously unwell. There are children in this world dying of starvation, there are perfectly good people becoming unwell in a multitude of ways and for many of them, there simply isn't hope.

I've read that the world isn't good or bad, it just 'is'. I understand that, but now that I realise even though we can improve our odds of staying healthy by living well, ultimately illness and suffering can happen to anyone.

I don't know what I'm getting at to be honest, or I don't know how to convey it in words. I'm just struggling to find meaning in life at the moment. I'm thinking of people who are seriously unwell who have no quality of life, and it makes my lose hope in my situation. Why should I heal when many others don't? Maybe I should be someone who suffers...

This way of thinking is making me lose fight against my struggles...

Its a rude ball game indeed.
Many reside in the karma thingy.

If unknown this is not cheering either but looking deeper in the wound of life, I think is essential part to find a process with it, to evolve.
Last Days in the Desert

I try to live having contradicting feelings/concepts in the process.

As one of them: Humans doings aside, I don't like animals ripping each other in National Geographic. Seems my ethics, and nature's one have diverted.

for us all.

A friend of mine, who is a therapist, one said:

"You can be happy or suffer terribly - but your soul enjoys both."

This made me think. Some people actually enjoy being grumpy and negative - it's a demonic pleasure, but still a pleasure.

Anyway, I also left the idea of life being a zero-sum game. People can suffer all the time or be healthy and wealthy all the time. A child can be born with cancer, only suffer in pain and then die.

How all this unfairness change when we change our perspective? What does lifelong suffering means when time does not exist? If you focus on the 'eternal now', all the unfairness of the world fades away.



You can try some books from Viktor E. Frankl ("Man's Search for Meaning", "The Will to Meaning" etc.). This man survived three concentration camps and yet kept his integrity and positive outlook in life.

His point is: "The life has no meaning by itself - YOU give life the meaning you want."

Also "The Book" from Alan Watts is quite inspiring in this sense.

I read Frankls texts on meaning when I was searching for what meaning was, it didn't help me one bit. It wasn't an analysis on meaning, it was just him repeating what most people in my society tell me, which is that you give meaning to life. What a load of bogus. By virtue of there being anything at all there necessitates that those substances or properties contain an explanation or meaning otherwise they could not exist. The meaning doesn't necessarily have to be in humanly understandable format fyi, but there is always one however dormant it may be. In other words, in order for there to be anything, anything must always be able to be explained... but... however we will always lack the capacity to understand everything due to the limits of our cognition.

The other definition of meaning people use is like "cosmic purpose" or something which is hard to support, although by the fact that consciousness exists i think that alone gives at least some evidence.

I really like your friends point about how "You can be happy or suffer terribly - but your soul enjoys both."

I am trying to find a way to see beauty in evil, to see if there is a way to see the yin and the yang as one beautiful circle instead of dichotomizing it with my feeble human emotions. Think about it this way, if you were devoid of all emotions for half of your lifetime, if you suddenly got them back you would be quite pleased EVEN IF you felt pure heartbreak. As alan watts says, we always strive for one over the other and this blinds us to seeing the beauty of both.

I don't know if there is meaning, a lot of people who don't suffer greatly and live happily are lost in this, everyone is actually, it's more of a philosophical problem.. it's fine if we are lost, we are put into this infinite world and we know absolutely nothing about it, we should be lost or else we will be lying to ourselves but there is "understanding" which is beyond knowledge and it can make us feel good and full of meaning


About suffering, i believe a lot of our suffering is not real and just made by us and our ignorance of how things really are, we don't know what's really good or bad, so we suffer when we think what's happening is bad, but who said it is? Like if someone is dying or someone is sick why do we perceive it as a bad thing? Who knows what comes after death maybe it's something much better, and maybe when you get sick is a chance to start changing and living a better life even if it was for a short time, we really don't know but i don't understand why we chose to believe things are bad and cause ourselves more suffering


We don't know what's good or bad we just fear the unknown

nice to read this !!!


I got to carry some pain in my life - even thou i cannot really explain it, it's really abstract, i don't know where it comes from, i tend to blame the outside world, my wife, my friends, Babylon... - but when i'm lucid i know it's in me. Many times my pain transform in anger, stress, ... it get psychosomatic, my shoulders, my back hurts. I try to heal it but trying to heal it doesn't really work, it just focus more on the problem.
It's so unrelated to my life (i live better than a king, i'm a white priviledge man, i got a wonderful wife and child... ) ! So unrelated that i got to surrender and stop looking outside!
So what's the meaning of this pain? Well, since i experience this, i also learned empathy. And this is now a key element in my life, i now can look in the eyes of the others in a new way, and eventually connect wit them. My pain made me a dedicated, careful person. I feel much more connected to the world like this. I understand better humanity. I'm even surprised the world is not WORST than that sometimes - because little things can make me freak out when i'm weak - then i think of people goin throu so much worst than me, and i'm surprised the world is relativly peaceful (yes there's somewar, but i traveled a bit everywhere and most people are non-violent, most people don't freak out. That's amazing ! I honored the strengh of humanity.

One of these days you should ask a Gnostic of their opinion on this.

I don't think that suffering itself has any meaning at all. You have to try to give it some kind of meaning yourself.

Maybe it can teach us a little empathy. Maybe it can help us in putting things in perspective...our own ego, the value of life. It could maybe help us to appreciate things that we would normally take for granted.

But all of that is ofcourse easy to say, but very hard to actually practice.

I believe looking for meaning or answers can be counter productive.

I believe the human soul thrives best on what is generally agreed to be "good"; Love, laughter, kindness, gentleness, bravery, positivity, tolerance, acceptance, of ourselves and to others.

Then there is the other side, the bad things, the malign tendencies. Why do they exist? Nobody reaslly knows. Explanations generally seem like hollow platitudes, especially to those who suffer.

What I believe the best course of action is to strive for the good, reject the bad. It can be hard to do. Fortitude and practice perhaps make it easier, and while I believe that ultimately there is no reward, it is perhaps better to strive for the good for good's sake, rather than for hope of reward?

A bit like the negative side of life, there is perhaps no reason why good exists. It just happens to be the wavelength on which we do best, and the best we can do is to struggle onwards, and hopefully upwards.

There is this idea that people NEVER suffer more than they have too. In other words – the suffering any individual experience is the correct amount for that persons “growth” or w/e.
This idea can be extracted from various sources, for instance the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

As for myself, I just went on a 3 day without any food experience. My idea was to test to see how much I would suffer. To my surprise, I did not suffer at all. I guess, either my body is wired wrong or the “suffering” associated with such event was not for me to be experienced at this point in time.

Worth mentioning is that we seems to be suffering from different variables in life. For instance, Person A might suffer tremendously from a divorce while person B might handle it – for the circumstances pretty good. In other words, what suffering is – varies from person to person – hence the idea – we NEVER suffer more than we have too.

Just an idea tho

Best Regards
Limbol

I wish there were a kinder way to say it, but that idea is utterly vapid.

first learn, then detach from meaning

^^^^^^^^^^^yup^^^^^^^^^^

Suffering, IMO, is a means by which biological entities can determine that they are engaging in behaviors, or are in an environment, that is not conducive to survival, and nothing more.

I think, in circumstances such as these, it's important to take raw brain infrastructure into account. Neural pathways can be viewed in the same way as roadmaps. Thoughts of a particular nature can lead to highways where cities of a particular type of thought, can carry us.

If we were to broaden this metaphor, it's not difficult to see the neural network as analogous to what some have proposed as a map of the universe. Continuing with this line of thinking could logically lead us to the idea that accessing a different neural motor structure is not dissimilar from moving to a different plane of existence/"universe".

As others have mentioned, your compassion for others may be a route out of the universe you're finding yourself in. Maybe work on yourself could lead to putting you in a position to help those without hope.

I would just like to thank you all for taking the time the respond to my post - I really am grateful. Sorry I haven't responded to each of you individually but I'm pretty limited on my mental resources at the minute and can only handle so much - even tiny things feel very stressful at the moment. I've been feeling good this last week but I feel that I'm quickly deteriorating. Anyhow, your comments have provided much insight and I feel better about the nature and meaning of reality, even if I don't have one iota of understanding...

Thank you again <3

Wow, first of all I just have to say that there is so many great answers that I 100% agree on. It is nice to see so much wisdom and profound knowledge being shared here.


I have been in a similar position when I had a severe depression that almost brought an end to my life. So it is out of pure luck I'm still alive and I'm so grateful that I still are alive because now I have the answers to all my questions and I have found my meaning with my life.

What I did during that period of my life, that gave me meaning, was to take the quest of finding the real meaning of my life as the meaning to carry on and live through that.
During that period I blindly accepted the fact that suffering is a part of life and it is what it is. No more, no less and I was suffering hell of a lot so it was a very dark period for me.

It was not until much later when I had overcome my depression that I stared to dig deeper into what suffering really are and why we are suffering. BUT, that was not something I needed to know to live, what I call, a meaningful life.

Other things that have helped me a lot was mindfulness and meditation in combination with a curiosity of my mind. How does my feelings works and can I change the way I'm experiencing them? And what is a thought and who is it that is thinking? Etc. etc.
The best way for me to learn that was to sit down and turn my attention inwards and observe myself.


I see my life as a journey and I'm taking one step at the time, always trying to live more skillfully according to my beliefs. And what I have realized is that my life doesn't need to be a struggle anymore, even if it contains a lot of pain and suffering.

So hang in there, it is totally worth it. Trust me

The cold hard truth is... life hurts really bad then we fall apart slowly and die. Or have a car crash or a heart attack maybe we live to be 120 and die peacefully in our sleep.

The silver lining is its absolutely spectacular. I wont even start LOOK AROUND. Dont think so much... youre not going to get struck by meaning like a bolt of lightening.

Life is play, its a ride one hell of a ride. Dont forget that all those sick people do have hope because theyre all going to die. Its just a bad dream it will be over for them soon... and then? who knows man.

I don't know if I dwell on it more than most but I always find it hard to be laughy and cheery knowing no matter what I do or accomplish it all leads to this death thing. Thinking about it adds all different views to life.

One strange thing is the magnitude of change when you think about the fact that life doesnt tell you when, where or how (usually) you're going to die. If you knew, it would take a whole lot of 3ness out of the 3-Dness of how you view your life. Just hiding that one part opens up all the potential possibilities, scenarios etc. Just that one little thing changes so much about life.

I sure hope there's something to this afterlife thing, assuming it is drastically different than this one.

For me, I don't find any true meaning in suffering. At most I recognize it's an inevitable part of the human condition, probably even the animal condition as a whole. I feel without it I wouldn't have true appreciation for the other tricks the mind produces.

-Korey

"I felt that there was a cure for everyone somewhere out there no matter what their ailment was (I now realise how ignorant I was). I felt good. But since being unwell, I realise that even those who live extremely healthily and eat well, sleep well, exercise etc can become seriously unwell"

I don't think this is ignorant at all. Eat well, sleep well, exercise well... Those all cash into your bank account of well being... But there's more to it. One has to consider collective health as well and have to be willing to go to very great lengths to find their healing. Our bodies are not our own but extensions of all that is around us. And illness does serve a purpose. I can go down a very convoluted explanation of this but illness is a result of the flux that drives evolution. You can’t have beautiful things without pain and loss. When cyanobacteria invented photosynthesis they produced highly toxic waste (oxygen) and killed damned near everything. But that lead to the usage of oxygen as one of the most efficient fuels in existence and is directly responsible for the development of “multicellular” life. So the very fact that you can wake up everyday and engage a world of color and complexity suggests that death deserves as much honor as life. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect existence than this one built off the polarities of change and preservation. Even though it can be painful to be caught in the wrong current.

As for suffering… Pain is not always a choice but suffering is. I’ve been battling Lyme disease going on nearly three years now so I know just how much it sucks to be unwell. But I chose to stop suffering long ago. And don’t get me wrong this is a painful freakin illness. But in my life this illness has forced me to advance my awareness further and observe deeper workings of myself and the life I live in ways I can’t even begin to feel I deserve. It’s taught me a lot about myself spiritually and physically, a lot about the world I live in, and more than anything it’s brought everything else back to life. When doctors failed to fix me up I had to look elsewhere. I sought out plant medicines and in doing so gave so much more significance and personality to the life around me. Suddenly I had relationships I never could have dreamed of before. The same goes for psychedelics and mental health. Depression drove me to them and now I get immense joy growing my cactus’s because I know the bond we share. In a way illness has plucked me out of consumerism and forced me to reconnect with the world beyond human society. It’s made me less lonely. I have allies everywhere and a whole life to get to know them. It’s not much different than having a rough trip and coming out the other hand having felt you have gained something. In fact my attitude towards Lyme is a direct consequence of a trainwreck experience with Ayahuasca a year before. Except, illness is every day. One thing I can say though is that I don’t give much credence to the western view of illness. And I say this as someone who graduated with a biochem degree. Illness is not some straightlined biochemical failure that will only be fixed with drugs. It’s not a mistake. It’s a multifaceted living expression of life itself. Illness can a teacher and healing requires devotion. And a healthy expectation of what healing is. We can very rarely if ever go back to the people we were before. But we may find that that is not in our wishes. Don’t get me wrong, I plan on nuking this infection to oblivion. But I admire the damned spirochete for all it’s given me, and for what it's taken from me. Even though I am eager to move on I would never have asked for anything different than what i've been through.