Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about meaning in life. Is meaning necessary in life? So that's a very interesting topic. But before we get started, if you're watching this on YouTube, please consider like sharing and subscribing as you know that that helps trip the YouTube algorithm and gets our content out to more and more people. And please consider sharing with your friends and family as well. So today we're talking about meaning. Now, it's going to be a little bit of an interesting talk. I know that we talk about what is the meaning of life. And, I actually did, I don't know if any of you did the landmark program. So there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff from the seventies. They had a lot of, I didn't do it in the seventies, but there was a lot of spiritual programs in the seventies that talked about how there is no meaning in life. Like there is no objective meaning in life, but I think that we are looking for meaning. I think that we are like, for instance, a simple example, would be if I had a dream and I would be thinking to myself, what does that dream mean? There's always a desire for. something to be significant. I want it to be significant. I want my life to be significant. I want my life to mean something. So today we're going to talk a little bit about meaning and what is it all about? So I'm thinking that meaning actually means that I feel something as real or significant in relation to myself. I wrote a couple of things down. So I wrote here meaning versus experience. So let's do that for a second. Let's say that I'm looking for meaning, the meaning in my life. I don't feel like I have any meaning in my life, but I definitely have experiences in my life, right? Sometimes we use meaning in a way that it kind of negates my experience. Like I say, life doesn't mean anything. Nobody cares. This kind of stuff. But I'm not paying any attention to my experiences. I'm having experiences. I'm living and I'm having experiences. Sometimes we make that mistake. We don't. Let ourselves experience what we experience and we're looking for something else or we're looking for an external reference. I have another example, sometimes going to an astrologer or going to a psychic or something like that could be a way of looking for meaning. Like I go to the psychic and I say, you're telling me about myself and I feel like, wow, that means something. She told me that I was going to meet somebody or she told me that she figured it out, that I was, struggling and she said that this was going to happen. And she knew that this and this and this what's happening when that happens. What does it mean? Does it mean that the person is psychic? Well, maybe they are. I mean, that's fine. But what are they reading? They're reading me. This is such a short episode because it's really just like trying to distinguish out this thing that we have, like I'm looking for meaning, but what about my experiences? Am I in touch with my own experiences? It's almost like I'm ignoring myself and trying to find somebody else that'll tell me who I am or tell me what I feel. That sounds like I'm smiling, like it's funny, but it's not funny. It's really painful to feel like lost that I need to find meaning. And I don't know who I am, or there has to be some meaning. There has to be some reason. In the next episode, we're going to talk about nature. So I'm not going to talk about it now, but nature gives us a clue about this. There's a whole realm of experience that's beyond these ideas of meaning and significance and stuff like that. It's not to say that it doesn't exist, but I'm saying attach it to yourself. I'm shortcutting now to the answer. The answer is attach it to yourself. Look at your own feelings, your own reactions, your own thoughts. I was thinking about this meditation commentary that we have and it's Anthony Strano. Stepping Inwards is what it's called. It's really good. I can put it in the link below. But it's a very good, 10 minute meditation. And in the meditation, he talks about how when we begin to meditate and we begin to feel peaceful and I start recognizing that I'm a peaceful soul and who I actually am eternally, then the way I look at life begins to change. Life automatically has new meaning, let's say, because I'm different, who I'm considering myself to be is different. I wish I could just say this straightforward. It's like, I'll say it as best I can. Straightforward. We're looking for meaning outside ourself, but the meaning is the self look at yourself. We've been told that, Oh, maybe this will make me feel better about myself, or this will make me feel better about myself. I know you've heard this in psychology too, but I'm saying that the word meaning itself needs to be connected to the self, not outside. How can anything outside me make me more meaningful or make me Feel more significant or more valuable. Think about that for a second. How can anything outside of me make me feel more valuable? It really doesn't make any sense. My goodness, we've been living this way for so long that we don't realize that it doesn't make any sense. We're sitting here having experiences, having feelings, having life go on. It And I'm thinking, no, it needs to be this way. I need to have this in order to have it mean something. That's not to say that we shouldn't look for new experiences, but it's not the experience that gives you the meaning you attribute meaning to it. I'm laughing because it's so simple, but we've been thinking in, in such a way that we never, ever reach that feeling of self satisfaction, right? We never reach it. It's like everything is spinning around me and I'm here in the middle, but I don't know that I'm in the middle. So I'm out there spinning, trying to say, am I here? Am I here? Am I here? Am I here? Am I here? Am I here? No, you're here. You're already there. That's why meditation is so powerful because the first thing we're doing now is I'm trying to figure out what am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I experiencing? I'm stopping paying attention to the outside. And I'm paying attention to me. I'm the one that attributes meaning. I'm the one that creates memories. I'm the one that has emotions. I'm the one that says this is right for me, or this is wrong for me. This is good. I like this. I'm the one that says it. Isn't it funny how we want other people to tell us what we like? I tell you, advertisers and merchandisers have no problem doing that, right? But a life of meaning means that I attribute meaning, but the trick is I have to find out who I am first. I have to get my attention. Let me say it this way. I have to get my attention out of the outside and towards myself so that I can experience myself as the center of my own life, of my own universe. And get my power back, right? Here I wrote, we have external references like memories or family, education and so forth. I was in a class the other day, I was, talking about the soul and it was a college class and one of the students said to me, Well, why do I need to forget everything? When I can't really forget because the meditation we were watching said forget the world to remember the soul. Okay, obviously it's like a meditation technique, but he was like, how can I forget myself to be myself? How does that work? And he was right. Like it logically that doesn't make any sense. So I'm going to say it's not about forgetting anything. It's about bringing my attention towards something that maybe I wasn't paying attention to like myself. I'm paying attention to that and I'm saying I need that to be this way for me to feel good. But I don't even know how I feel now because I'm so focused on that. So is meaning necessary in life? I'm going to say it's not that it's necessary. I'm just going to say that you're the one that creates it. You're the one that attributes meaning to something. One more thought and then it's going to be a short episode. Just because it's really a short concept. But it slips away. You know, it slips away from our, Awareness, the intellect doesn't want to hold it because we're so used to focusing on everything else and believing that that thing is going to make me feel valuable or make my life meaningful. If I get this job, my life will have meaning. If I have a relationship, my life will have meaning. It's amazing how we gave our power away to everything, right? So. Back to the self. We have to get back to paying attention to what I'm experiencing. That's the first step. So I guess the first step would be focus on what you're experiencing and then begin to feel like that experience itself is significant, is meaningful to you. I mentioned before about dreams, like people having dreams, right? And then they say. What does it mean? And then maybe a psychologist would say, what does it mean to you? And the way I'm talking right now, in my opinion, that is correct. It's what it means to the person. That person is the center of their own universe. So I'm going to leave it there, but, maybe you can think about this. This is, this episode is a short episode, but it's for people who are searching for meaning, searching for something. And maybe I wrote down the word belonging, which is another topic. But I'll leave that for another episode, but it's the same principle. Like I'm looking to belong. I don't belong. So let's talk about meaning. Oh, let's finish that up. So the meaning is I'm looking outside myself, not realizing that I'm the one that's going to attribute the meaning. So the best way to handle this idea that I have to find meaning is to start focusing on your experiences. And understanding that you're the center of your own life, of your own universe and your own experiences. You're the one that attributes meaning. So I'll leave it there. I hope that was a little interesting for those of you who are the intellectual types. And remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And so until next time, take care. Um, uh,
