Bernard explores where meaning comes from, the difference between the narrow meaning of the thinking mind and a deeper, embodied meaning, and the order that runs through health, life and the cosmos.
This article is not about the meaning of life but more about meaning itself and how it flows into our life. The word meaning immediately conjures up ideas of purpose and the way one constructs one’s life for future growth, future work and the way the meaning we give to each endeavour becomes the fragrance of what we do.
Two questions come up immediately. Firstly, where does the idea of meaning come from, and who drives this meaning?
I am very much aware from years of introspection that a great deal of what appears in my thinking mind is actually arising from some deeper intelligence, which we refer to as intuition. I have learnt over time to ask questions and allow my awareness to sink down, or as I call it, deeper. I say sink down because it does feel as if I sink below the level of thinking into the ‘heart’ and then wait for an answer to arise into thinking. I sometimes also use words like ‘going deep’ to describe this process.
It ‘feels’ deeper than thinking, which has a more floating upward feeling to it, as if it is happening in the head region. This deep feeling is sometimes referred to as an embodied experience.
So where does this meaning or embodied experience come from. if thinking is not the initiator of this process.
Clearly there must be another intelligence at work here and this intelligence seems to operate in a very ordered and specific way.
Max Planck, one of the early fathers of quantum science said the following: ‘I have been investigating matter all my working life and I can say one thing about matter, there is no such thing, there is just energy and information and behind energy and information is some intelligence we don’t understand.’ We don’t understand it, and it is as if that intelligence can feed into our embodied knowing and communicate with us. That is my personal understanding of what Max Planck is saying.
That intelligence is universal but feeds into and passes through the filters that make up my unique beingness, so that the embodied feelings I have are still unique to me. This is deep meaning that arises, as opposed to a more superficial meaning that is the working of the thinking mind. Thinking can also then create meaning, but this is generally self-centred, driven by past experience, judgement and conditioning .
Superficial narrow meaning
Thinking is a function that when encapsulated within the sense of ‘I’, together with emotions and imagination, becomes what is generally referred to as the ego. When the ego looks around and asks about meaning in life, then that meaning will depend on what the ego wants and expects from life. Generally, what the ego wants is to be happy, have great experiences, have lots of money, good jobs and health … mostly all the time. Meaning from the perspective of the ego is very self-centred and narrow minded. If life does not meet these expectations, then the person can become depressed, bored and even suicidal. Life without meaning and purpose seems unbearable and meaningless to the ego, so it tends to manufacture meaning and purpose.
