The purpose of life

I don't know if there is another topic about this but i'm way to wasted to find out, so forgive me if there is.

Lately, i'm wondering what the purpose of life is, i can't find a clear answer, i can only make speculations, but these speculations don't give any satisfaction.
So what do you think the purpose of life is?
Simply living life at its fullest? or maybe finding answer? extend the consciouness?
I don't know, i hope i'll one day find any real happiness and satisfaction in life, but everything seems so meaningless without a purpose.
People told me that i have to set my own goals, but how can you find satisfaction in that if everything seems so fake and untrue.
I want to know the answer, and if there isn't any answer, why would you spend our lifes being a slave of society? Wouldn't we be better of with suicide then?

 

sometimes, I think we were all just born out of the universe's necessity to know itself.


but no, I dont see how we would be better off with suicide. As of right now you are alive. It makes more sense to continue being alive, rather than changing that fact just because you kind find an answer to the meaning of life. Maybe it will hit you later on. Search for it.

 

there is. and my answer to it is in "how do you find purpose as an anthist/agnostic, in the athieism and agnosticism section.

rather then repeat myself here.
though if i hadn't be so hasty as to put it there
it might better have been served for me to have put it in this one.

in brief, it is only our ego's that coerce us into imagining there needs to be such a thing as purpose on the grander scale.

though it is, both possible and desireable, to live in such a way as to cause more bennifit then harm. if only because, as long as were still here, we all have to live with the resault.

=^^=
.../\...

 

I had always thought that understanding this universe is the ultimate goal, but the more i start to understand the more i am stunned by reality, the less i begin to think that there actually is something to life for.

Yes, maybe it is the ego that wants a purpose, i guess that is a part of our wicked minds and instincts, alot of people want to be rich, want to be famous, yes i guess that is the ego, the drive for the individual to be of a meaning.
But the drive for satisfaction, once you see that fame, money and all that stuff will never give real satisfaction, where do you find satisfaction, in love?
Is there real love, the mystical melt of 2 individuals in one, or is it just a instinct that drives us to have love and reproduce?

I guess one can live the life and take it as it comes, but without a goal, without something to achieve, is it really worth then?

I believed that by disintegrating the ego and all other instincts one could achieve total perception and then at last understand all, but during my spiritual journey i have only began to realise how foolish we all are, how that we all live in our own little reality, how we all have miscomprehensions, all the irrationality, and the meaninless rules, everything is shit.

I don't say that i'm better by realising it, more like the other way around, i have began to realise how wicked my own mind is.
For a while i had thought that by being a purist my mind could find satisfaction, but i only found more and more abstractism, and wickedness.
I think that all this is a dead-end with insanity, i don't know anymore, maybe i don't care about everything anymore, maybe life is one big waste.

Drugs seem the only way to escape from myself and all around, low blood pressure, fast beating of the heart, hard to breath, at the edge of totally spacing out of this world, i don't even know anymore if i will see the next sunrise. if it does have a matter at all.

 

Perhaps you've just reached a kind of negative phase in your journey. Maye something like what the Buddhists call 'the trance of sorrow', where everything is seen as negative. If so, they also say that it represents the dark before the dawn.
Maybe if you continue on the spiritual quest, you will find the purpose you are looking for.
Yoy say you have realized 'how wicked your mind is' - well, the potential for evil is no doubt present in everyone, but also, there is huge potential for good.

Perhaps you are making the mind too central a thing. There is also the heart, and the Soul. If you can find your own soul, you will find meaning.

 

this goal or purpose u speak of,

its a human invention

isnt it?

 

I think to give purpose to life is to limit it. It's like making empty promises based on foundations that don't even exist yet, and constantly change, that road can only lead to dissapointment and suffering.

That said, It is very hard to stay in that frame of mind for any long periods of time, in the society that we live in. So I guess my motto would be to live, and love, and preserve the world as much as possible. Environmentalists have got the right idea

 

Do you play video games? Or go to the fair and ride the rides?

Life is exactly like that.

You've paid your dime to be here, now enjoy the ride. All that you see around you is a part of that. If you don't like the scenary, play the game a little harder.



x

 

Xexon always has good things to say, listen to him. You aren't even reaching the surface of what you will eventually know in your life, you're still quite young. Your perspective should shift several times in a short period, but know one thing: Life is worth going through, if only to say you tried to understand it. You won't know your peace by death.

 

Maybe that is indeed so,

in both cases, if there are answers wich can be found in the life, then death won't solve anything.

In the other cases, if life plainly is like it is, then it is here to be enjoyed, one defines how he experiencesses life himself, he can look at life with joy, or he can only look at the negatif things in it and don't see what life offers.

I'm going to stop all the hard drugs, maybe all the pot and psychedelics too, maybe i'm gonna get deeper into this budhistic stuff, maybe it can help me straighetening my mind, and find a deeper meaning in life, or atleast find satisfaction.

 

that's an interesting statement. how did you come to that conclusion?

 

simple!


To be happy.

 

To each his/her own purpose.

 

someone once asked me if life has a purpose. I don't know I said.... but you can create one. whats wrong with that?

 

Yea, i guess you could do that, but ofcourse, you can make up a purpose and believe in it, but what if, after a while, living for that purpose, you realise that your purpose was fake.

Well, maybe you have some truth, maybe one can only find satisfaction by making up his own purpose and his own goals, and by living for that purpose and trying to reach the goals you have set.
So if i say, i want to better society, and i will live for that purpose, so i guess, it won't harm if i then can find satisfaction in trying to better society.
But then again, what if your actions seemed to have done nothing?
OK, i guess, you can then, atleast say that you have tried, and that society is just to stupid to change. and atleast you can die then, having said that you lived for your purpose, but that the world isn't ready yet, and that common persons just need more time to realise that there is more then just forfulling self-needs, that it's not about the ego, not about instincts, but that our life, the universe , all the magic in the world, is more then just the individual needs, that it is a bigger whole that is more important.

 

Wow, actually that's fucking true, i have been thinking to much so that i couldn't see the beauty anymore. Life is a individual experience, i think that people like you xexon and like timothy leary got the message of what it is to be alive.
I think i foud rejoyce, and that i found a way out of this deep thinking that just made me get deeper and deeper in these deep thoughts that only lead to disappointments.
We are here on earth, we walk the plains, we do what we do, it's all very beautifull. It's life in society, the pressure, my own life at school, my own social life, for my own mind, it is all way to fast this life, and because of the fast pace i get all this weird abstract stuff in my brain. Man.. lets all pull the breaks before we screw ourselfs up.

 

This is a really great thread!

What am I living for? The question is so important for us right now. In my opinion one of the most important things we should ask ourselves at least once is, Why am I living? What is the purpose of life? Well, we have an opportunity to choose what we live for. It's up to us to decide what we want to do now.

Here's a quote from a really inspiring article I found called 'What is Life ? ',

'Is life really the question which nobody can know ? Some people say that life is a never ending task and some people say that life is the secret which only god knows. We do not understand the fact why do we have to live by forgetting the pleasure of life which is in ourselves and why do we have to live our life by throwing away the value of life. We should understand the tremendous crisis of the world of human beings from the deteriorating or loss of value of life and we should feel fear of the fact that these things prevail in our surroundings already. As long as religions do not know what life is and universities are the authorities of promoting position it is bound to be difficult for anyone to teach the truth of life and people who have already abandoned themselves will not want things in truth to be revealed.

The duty of his era is how do we know about life and to choose what we have to live for. The most important thing for you to consider is to love yourself and to create a good self from you. The reason why I am talking about these things is because there is a principle in the world and all the answers are in the principle. Life is the whole process from birth until death and we have the result in us through what happened in ourselves. When we know life we can see the real value of life and when we know life the real love can come out of ourselves. Unless the world of human beings cannot open their eyes to life the real value of life will disappear forever. When your life cannot bless yourself the life is not yours anymore.'
The article is continued at the link, What is Life ?.

I hope this helps!

Paul

 

Paul,

In the simplest of terms...you are a dolly that a creative consciousness plays with.

You have a limited awareness here, but literally no limits on advancement. You can even merge with that which gives you life. Because once created, there is an inevitable attraction back to the source.



x

 

there is a lot of literature on this. Solomon wrote his share and put it into the book of Ecclesiastes. If you don't believe in the Hebrew G-d, it's still an interesting read and I encourage you to read it for inspiration and great thought on this question.

 

Pellinore

the purpose of life may be indeed something as simple as
'finding the purpose of life'

sounds easy
But we have no idea how to do it.
[all religion IS this.But their stories are just that...stories, and there are hundreds of them..lol ]
Unlike science the method.. Which is about knowledge.
It proclaims no understanding of 'purpose'.
Use science to gain wisdom through imagination..
And the 'meaning' of life comes one step closer to being seen.

We have the tools.
What we dont have is the skill
[its like asking a 3 year old to design a light water reactor]

Occam