You Want A Life Of Meaning - Education - Nairaland
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| You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 1:10pm On May 01, 2020 |
Chaos and Order Reality unfolds before us as chaos and order. Chaos is the things and situations we neither know nor understand. We neither know nor understand them because we have not been there, we have not explored the territory. It is the domain of ignorance which extends without limit beyond the boundaries of all ideas and disciplines. Chaos is where you find yourself when things fall apart, when your relationship ends, when you lose your job, when your business shuts down. You find yourself in chaos when you are confused. Chaos is where you are when you don't know where you are and what you do when you don't know what you are doing. Order on the other hand is explored territory. It is the structure of society. We have a hierarchy of place, position, and authority. That is order. Order is the traditions we have. It is our home, our religion, our country. You have order when the world behaves according to your desires and expectations. Order is when you are aware what you are doing is producing what you want to happen. It is order because you can predict it. You do something so that something else happens and it happens. You know where you are, you know what you are doing and things are working. There is nothing to be nervous about so you are calm. You feel competent. Why? Things are working. The nature of reality is order and chaos. We experience both. You want some level of certainty in your life. You want stability. You want things to go according to your plan. You have order when it happens that way. Order is a place you like to be in. In order you can make long-term plans. What you may not have noticed is what is lurking beneath the order - chaos. Your position at your place of work is order. Chaos is when you lose your job. Order is the stability of having your partner in marriage. Chaos is that stability crumbling under your feet when you discover your partner's infidelity. Order is driving the car you have owned for years on the road. Chaos is when the brakes fail. Order is when you enjoy health of mind and body. Chaos is heart failure or cancer. So look out even when you are enjoying order, you can land in chaos in a second. Could one say that reality is made up of order and chaos? Let us see. You have two brain hemispheres - left and right. So it looks like reality must have two elements otherwise why would we need two hemispheres? A good question to ask then is, "What are they specialized for?" It turns out the left hemisphere is specialized for those places where routines work. And the right hemisphere is specialized for those places you go when you don't know what you are doing. So the left hemisphere is specialized for order and the right hemisphere is specialized for chaos. Order and chaos are not the domains of matter but they matter. Order and chaos make up the nature of nature. Support BTC: 1FcxY1mGXj8UVFFaDuCVrHrmVvq3b4wD1u ETH: 0x52c6ed3031a9fadcac416ca4bdc1a4ae4249dbe2 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by amrichy(m): 3:34pm On May 01, 2020 |
What is your point really? |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 4:35pm On May 01, 2020 |
amrichy: Good question. Upcoming posts will make things clearer and answer your question. So consider this post just one out of a series. |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 12:16pm On May 03, 2020 |
Order from Chaos Order, the known, appears to be symbolically associated with masculinity. Maybe it is because the primary hierarchical structure of human society is masculine. Men are and throughout history have been the builders of towns and cities, the bricklayers, the operators of heavy machinery, the engineers. In its positive guise, order is stability. However order can be pushed too far. When this happens, an imbalance manifests itself. Order, when it becomes extreme, is terrible and destructive. Extreme order leads to forced migration and Nazi concentration camp. Chaos, the unknown, is symbolically associated with the feminine. This is partly because all the things we have come to know were born, originally, of the unknown just as every being we encounter was born of a mother. Chaos is mother, origin, source. It is the substance from which all things are made. In its positive guise, chaos is possibility itself, the source of ideas. Chaos is the realm of gestation and birth. As a negative force, chaos is the lioness who in trying to protect her cubs, marks you as a potential predator and is ready to tear you to pieces. All our life, we inhabit order surrounded by chaos. We are always occupying a known territory surrounded by the unknown. We see and touch objects but in the deepest sense, we are not adapted to the world of objects but to the meta-realities of order and chaos. Chaos and order as they coexist make up the eternal, transcendent environment of the living. Why am I talking about chaos and order? Because many things start to fall into place when you begin to consciously understand the world in this manner. Wonderful things happen when the knowledge of your body and soul falls into alignment with the knowledge of your intellect, and understanding reality as chaos and order aids this. This is the kind of knowledge in which you know not only what but how. It tells you how to act. In fact you find a way, a way that is narrow with order to your left and chaos to your right. "How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14). Do you want to have a balanced and meaningful life? Then one of your foot has to be firmly planted in order and security while the other is in chaos, possibility, and adventure. Life will no longer be dull and boring. Life will become intense and gripping. When you are so involved in what you are doing that you give it your full attention and do not notice time passing by, know that there and then you are right there on the border between order and chaos. There is a subjective meaning you will encounter there which others will likely neither see nor understand. That meaning is coming from your deepest being. The good feeling you have then is a sign that you are occupying a space and time that is proper for you. In every sense, this is the right place to be. You have lived through many situations and every lived situation has the two fundamental elements of chaos and order. Regardless of where you are, there are some things you can identify and make use of, and there are some things you neither know nor understand. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, whether at Aso Rock or at your village, some things are under your control and some things are not. The president can therefore have an understanding with the farmer. We find ourselves in places we can master, surrounded by things and situations that make us vulnerable. I know you want to be stable and secure. I know you want order. But order is not enough. Why? Because there are many vital and important new things you have to learn. Chaos is necessary although chaos can be too much. You have a limited capacity hence too much chaos can overwhelm you. But you don't want too much order either - you won't grow. So what do you do? Place one foot in what you have understood and mastered and the other in what you are currently exploring and trying to master. Then some things are under your control and you are secure, and at the same time some things are unknown to you and you are alert and engaged. Then you have positioned yourself for something to move from the potentiality of chaos to the actuality of order. Support BTC: 1FcxY1mGXj8UVFFaDuCVrHrmVvq3b4wD1u ETH: 0x52c6ed3031a9fadcac416ca4bdc1a4ae4249dbe2 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 1:11pm On May 10, 2020 |
Why God Made You Is man a biological accident? Is the human race just another stage of evolution that is purposeless? Am I just a meaningless being in the universe? Is there a plan to life? Any significance? Where did I even come from? For heaven's sake, why am I here? An intelligent person who is old enough and capable of thinking will find himself asking these questions at a point. If you believe God created you, then the question, "Why am I here?" is in essence, "Why did God make me?" The answer to that question can be presented in two ways. An answer can be presented either looking at the question from God's perspective or from ours. From God's perspective, the answer is, "God made us to show forth his goodness." That answer may not be clear, hence, some explanation may be necessary. God is a perfect Being, an infinitely perfect Being. The reason an infinitely perfect Being does something, does anything, must be an infinitely perfect reason. Now, there is only one infinitely perfect reason for doing anything, and that is to do it for an infinitely perfect Being - God. Hence, it will be contrary to his infinite perfection, it would be unworthy of God to do something for a reason less than himself. If I do something noble for another person, like giving him food when he has none, I do something imperfect when I do it just for that person without referring it to God in any way. What I did is surely not a bad thing, but it is something less perfect. That would be true if I did something for my sister, my mother, or even an angel, and left God out of it. For us humans, the highest and the best reason for doing anything is to do it for God. There is no higher motive for doing anything than to do it for God. That is not just true for the things we do, it is also true for the things that God does as well. This brings us to the first reason God made the universe and us - to give glory to himself, by showing forth his infinite power and goodness. How is his infinite power shown? By all that exists including us. How is his infinite goodness shown? By the fact that it is his will to share his own infinite love and happiness with us. Thinking like humans, it seems egotistical for God to create things just for his own glory and honour but that would be us thinking of God as a creature like ourselves. If we had the mind of God, it would be clear that there just is not anyone else or anything that is more deserving of God's thought and God's love than is God himself. When we say that God made the universe and us for his own greater glory, we do not mean that God needed any of it. This glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is something outside of God. We may call it "external glory." It does not add anything to God. If a talented artist paints beautiful images on a canvass for people to admire, the admiration of the people does not add anything to the artist himself. The artist is still who he is. People's admiration of his work does not make him a better artist. We come back to our question, "Why did God make us?" The first answer, looking at it from God's perspective is, "God made us to show forth his goodness." As human beings, we feel that a person's goodness is shown in the generosity with which that person shares himself and his possessions with others. It is something similar with God's goodness shown in the fact that he made us with spiritual and immortal souls capable of sharing his own happiness. This leads us to answering the same question, "Why did God make us?" from our own perspective. And the answer is, "To share with us his everlasting happiness in heaven." The two answers from God and human perspectives are like the two sides of the same coin. It is God's goodness that makes him to share his happiness with us, and it is God's sharing his happiness with us that shows forth his goodness. Support CEP BTC: 1FcxY1mGXj8UVFFaDuCVrHrmVvq3b4wD1u ETH: 0x52c6ed3031a9fadcac416ca4bdc1a4ae4249dbe2 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 10:32am On May 12, 2020 |
The Snake in the Garden Adam and Eve do not seem self-conscious when they were created and placed in paradise - the garden of Eden. The serpent appears in the third chapter of Genesis. God did not just create the serpent, he placed or at least allowed it in the garden. The garden represents a paradisal order while the serpent represents chaos. The serpent therefore means the possibility of the unknown and revolutionary suddenly manifesting itself where everything appears calm. Obviously God made room for chaos along with the order he established. No space and time in reality is completely protected from the unknown. Not even the most assiduous of parents can fully protect their children. Get your child and lock him in a room away from internet porn, drug, and alcohol. This is an extreme case in which the too-cautious parent has substituted him or herself for the other problems the child might experience. The question for the parent is: do you want to make your children safe or strong? It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them. If everything threatening, everything dangerous, and hence everything interesting and challenging were banished, another danger will arise - the danger of human infantilism and uselessness. How else would the nature of man reach its full potential without challenge and danger? What would we be good at if we have no reason to pay attention. How come God did not keep the serpent away from the garden? Maybe God in his infinite wisdom thought it better to allow the snake in the garden than to exclude it. Maybe God considered that his new creation - man - would be able to handle the serpent. And if man had handled the serpent, who knows what he may have become? The snake in the garden was probably an opportunity for Adam and Eve to grow and transcend themselves. But anyway, there is a snake in the garden that is cunning. The serpent decides to play a trick on Eve. He tells Eve she will not die if she eats the forbidden fruit. "God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad," says the serpent (Genesis 3:5). The serpent being deceitful was not completely honest with Eve. There are consequences for knowing good and evil but he was silent on that. Eve, being human and wanting to know more decides to eat the fruit. She wakes up. For the first time, Eve was self-conscious. Now, an awakened, self-conscious woman will not tolerate an unawakened man. What does Eve do? She shares the fruit with Adam who becomes self-conscious. Notice what happened: the woman made the man self-conscious. For long women have been making men self-conscious. They do this primarily by rejecting men. Women bear the primary burden of reproduction and they definitely do not want to take full care of a grown irresponsible man while taking care of an almost completely dependent infant. The man can wake up if the woman rejects him. If the man is irresponsible, the woman is more likely to shame him. Eve woke Adam up. Women are still waking men up. So, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and they awoke. To fall for the trick, Eve would have thought this was a good thing. They were awaken enough to discover some terrible things. We consider what they discovered shortly but for now let us come back to the snake. What does the snake mean in the story of Adam and Eve? What does it represent? You live on a tree infested with snakes. You kill all the snakes on the tree. You observe that the snakes on the tree were formerly on the ground so you get down to get rid of all the snakes. No more snakes. Everything is paradise. No. Now you have human snakes. You are a tribe and you have tribal enemies. They are the snakes you have to defend yourself against - human snakes. Maybe you become an emperor and are able to get rid of all the human snakes as your empire expands. What happens? Snakes begin to grow and develop inside your empire. The snake is not just the snake in the garden; it is not just the snake on the tree or the possible snake on the ground; the snake is not just the human snake. The snake is your enemy. The snake can be in the form of your friend because your friend can betray you. Worse than that, you can betray yourself. In that case the snake is you. So, get rid of all the external snakes and you find that there is a snake inside you and only God knows what it is up to. What is the enemy? It is the snake if you are a tree-dwelling primate. But if you are a sophisticated human being trying to solve the problem of what it is that is the great enemy of mankind, you would realize that it is the human propensity for evil and that is displayed in the next story in the bible - the story of Cain and Abel. Support BTC: 1FcxY1mGXj8UVFFaDuCVrHrmVvq3b4wD1u ETH: 0x52c6ed3031a9fadcac416ca4bdc1a4ae4249dbe2 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 9:58am On May 15, 2020 |
The Price of Waking Up Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and the first thing they realized was that they were naked. What does it mean to know yourself naked? To be naked means to be vulnerable and easily damaged. Naked means unprotected and subject to judgment. Thus Adam and Eve became ashamed. Their vulnerability was on display. They could be hurt. They then sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. That means that they protected themselves from something from the world as well as from the world. When they heard the sound of God moving about in the garden later, the man and the woman hid themselves. We can identify with that sentiment. The weak is shamed by strength. The ugly is shamed by beauty. The living is shamed by death. The ideal shames the imperfect and that means all of us. Thus we fear the ideal, resent it, and even hate it. Hatred of the ideal pushed Cain to murder. But for the majority of us, what we do is to hide ourselves in shame from the ideal. Recognizing their vulnerability, Adam and Eve felt unworthy to stand before God. So they hid themselves. "Adam, where are you?" God asks, and Adam replies, "I heard you God but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself." God asks, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit I forbade you to eat?" Adam replies, "The woman you put here with me, gave me the fruit, and I ate it." In his wretchedness, he points at his love and soul-mate, Eve, and snitches on her. He did not stop there. He went on to blame God. Adam is accurate. And he is pathetic. The consequence of the fall from grace is not over yet. First, God curses the serpent, telling him he shall crawl on his belly and eat dirt all the days of his life. Second, he tells the woman that the pangs of her childbearing will be intensified and she shall bring forth children in pain, yet she shall desire her husband who shall be her master. What might this mean? Well, women experience pain in childbirth. That is to say nothing of the risk of death for mother and infant. And that is not all. The fetal baby is almost completely dependent on his mother for everything during his first year. This child must be trained until he is eighteen (or thirty) before being pushed out of the nest. This all means that women pay a high price for pregnancy and childbearing, especially in the early stages. This has an inevitable consequence: the increased dependence of the woman upon the sometimes unreliable man. That is for Eve. God turns to Adam, "In toil shall you eat the yield of the ground all the days of your life. As you eat of the plants of the field, the ground shall bring forth thorns and thistles. You shall get bread to eat by the sweat of your face all the days of your life." What does this mean? It means that because the man's eyes have been opened, he now has a godlike vision. He can now see far into the future. As good as that may seem, it comes with its problems. Because the man can see into the future, he can see trouble coming. Because he can see trouble coming, he has to prepare for all possibilities and contingencies. For the man to do that he will have to sacrifice the present for the future all the days of his life. He will have to put aside pleasure for security. Simply put, he will have to work. Man, being awake and knowing he is vulnerable has to do that which animals do not - work. Work is invented. It is the end to unconsciousness and paradise. In the name of work, man will keep trying to solve problems. No matter how many problems you solve so as to make today free from problems, you have a lot of problems coming up. And no matter how much you work, you are never going to work enough to solve all the problems coming up. Hence you are terrified of the future. And that is the price of waking up. Support BTC: 1FcxY1mGXj8UVFFaDuCVrHrmVvq3b4wD1u ETH: 0x52c6ed3031a9fadcac416ca4bdc1a4ae4249dbe2 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 8:40pm On Jul 01, 2020 |
The person who said you are good for nothing is dead wrong: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/your-existence-is-not-trivial/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 9:15am On Jul 04, 2020 |
It is high time you stopped sleeping over solutions, proffered by your intuition as regards to solving human basic needs: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/your-awakening-is-necessary/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 9:39am On Jul 07, 2020 |
By compounding lies you create your own hell. Read about it: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/the-truth-is-therapeutic/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 1:35pm On Jul 14, 2020 |
You want to be happy, right? Have you considered how it can happen? Read: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/how-happiness-happens/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 7:57pm On Jul 15, 2020 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 10:28pm On Jul 23, 2020 |
For withdrawal to be successful, the alcoholic has to run towards something while running away from.the substance. Read: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/what-the-alcoholic-should-know/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 4:29pm On Jul 24, 2020 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 11:09pm On Jul 25, 2020 |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 1:32pm On Jul 29, 2020 |
Take away morality and make everything relative, a vacuum is automatically created. This vacuum is chaotic and people have shown they cannot tolerate it. People cannot live without an ideal at which to aim their lives. People cannot live without a moral compass. Read: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/the-problem-with-relativism/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by ymstar(m): 4:06pm On Jul 29, 2020 |
Ok |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 6:57pm On Aug 04, 2020 |
If you ask the proper questions, you will get the proper answers. Read: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/two-simple-but-powerful-questions-that-can-change-your-life/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 12:38pm On Aug 11, 2020 |
No matter how bad things are, it can be worse. Pay attention: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/stand-up-straight/ |
| Re: You Want A Life Of Meaning by Growing(m): 12:24pm On Aug 18, 2020 |
In this post, I discuss what can help someone who is continually experiencing pain and anxiety and feeling life is meaningless: https://consciousevolutionpath.com/responsibility-the-antidote-to-meaninglessness/ |
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