03/01/2024
My wish is that everyone gets to die living!
"Most people tiptoe their way through life hoping to make it safely to death."
Earl Nightingale
Several days ago I was speaking with a friend of mine and the topic of "what is the meaning of life" came up.
I've spent a lot of waking hours alone, either sitting in the middle of, or working for, a critter. To some, this is one of the most profound places to connect with not only the earth but also whatever is higher than us.
I've chewed on the idea of the meaning of life many many times. My meaning has changed a few times but one of the meanings that I held for quite a long time is that life is about pursuing what makes you happy.
The pursuit of happiness! A movie or an idea? Whatever it is I believe it has inspired hope in many. To me though this is not the meaning of life.
Happiness is a choice, it's not something we get as a reward for toil. To me life is the pursuit of life. Choosing to be and find happiness, and then going after a life in a way that aligns us, with us.
Carl Jung developed the modern idea of our "Shadow." Which are the things we try to hide and disown within ourselves. Shadow work has a lot to do with removing the ego (death of the ego) so that the spirit might integrate, and become the highest version of itself.
What is spirit though? The best way I've heard it described is to imagine all the water in the ocean and then a cup of that water. All of the water is all of everything. The cup itself is our body. The cup and the water together form our soul, our unique character and personality. The water inside the cup is our spirit which even inside of the cup is still one with the ocean.
The Lakota teachings believe that anything with a shadow has a spirit... Now, that comes as an exert from a deeper idea and I'll leave you to decide your own meaning... But all life comes from the light!.. And it comes from the darkness.
Many many people go through life trying to fill their cup with things that are not them. We do jobs that we hate to support our families. We pour energy and intention into things that steal away from our happiness. Doing and owning just enough of ourselves to keep us living just enough to make it to death. Living to die.
When we start filling our cup up with ourselves again, that ocean water. When we start "Becoming" authentic to who we are, we find this alignment with self cleans the water again and we align with everyone. The displacement of what is not us, displaces the ideas that we should not be seen, that we can't all succeed.
This displacement is created by and replaced with... the idea we're all uniquely the same. For any of us to live we all get to (maybe even MUST) live.
I spent years living to die. After my body all but died from the way I wasn't living. I then chose to have the ability to allow who I wasn't to die so that I can now truly live. Only as myself can I truly serve.
Our biggest fear in life should not be the loss of things or even others. Our biggest fear in life should be the loss of ourselves.
If you've made it this far... I trust this has given you at least a little permission to own more of who you truly are and what you want so you may serve others by serving yourself. So that you might die living!
