This article really spoke to me. This reading and other Voice Dialogue resources can be found on J'aime's website.
Paradoxical Meanings of Life
© J’aime ona Pangaia
However it is that we’ve come to perceive the answer to that
age old query, “What is the meaning of life?” we arrive at it in
good part through the veil of our culture and specifically, our
subjective experience of culture.
To one person, the answer may be that the meaning of life is
defined through his or her religion. To fulfill one’s purpose is
to live in such a way that you go to heaven, or become
enlightened, or love or serve the most number of people
right here on earth. It could be that life feels most successful
and accomplished when one is on track towards financial
success, having a nice home, a suitable wardrobe and car
that reflects your status and enough things to play with. For
some people, no matter what else you accomplish, the
ultimate purpose of life includes a biological imperative:
we’re here to create another, build and enjoy a family, to
propel the humankind successfully forward through our
family lineage.
For others, the meaning is defined by how close to
immortality you come, perhaps by virtue of your social
contributions. These would be the contributions that enable
you and your values to live on in the hearts and minds of the
most people over the greatest amount of time -- Leonardo
da Vinci, Beethoven, Ghandi, Albert Einstein.
When one has an assumption that life is made worthwhile by
virtue of accomplishing some culturally defined task, then
whatever experience doesn’t fulfill that task can come to be
seen as a waste of life. How many times have you heard
your inner critic telling you that you were wasting your life?
And there's that old adage: “Time is money.” Here's the
notion that life can be misspent when one doesn’t purchase
the best possible outcomes with life’s limited resource: time.
This is a fear that runs deep down in many people’s hearts.
Just as our physical bodies are composed of many different
kinds of organs and parts that fulfill the various needs that
our bodies have as a whole, so too is our psyche composed
of many parts that exist to express or fulfill our different
psychological needs. Many of these needs exist in
opposition to each other, like our simultaneous needs for
connection and for boundaries. In the development of our
ego (or, the “I am” level where will and choice are exercised
from) we grew up identifying with some of these inner parts,
and dis-identifying ourselves from others. This identifying
and alienating works in many ways but, sooner or later, we
will experience how it doesn’t work.
A while back, I heard my own inner critic telling me that I
hadn’t been spending my life correctly. Like it or not, the
inner critic is always a courier bearing the message that
we’ve become too identified with one aspect of our psyche to
the exclusion of it’s opposite. My inner critic had been
worried because it was positive that my life wasn't adding up
to enlightenment, sufficient material wealth and social
currency - and I've had no children. It was concerned that I
wasn’t doing enough.
On the one hand I recognized an internal set of values
around making my contributions to society, and on the other
hand, I held a value in just being ordinary -- a regular person
-- and in allowing myself to just “be”. Because my inner critic
got fearful that I was wasting my life by not guaranteeing my
place in old age, history, or a perfect afterlife, my inner critic
was speaking on behalf of a part of me I had been disowning
a bit: that ‘special-doer’ self. I decided to reflect on the
concerns of this critical inner voice, to hear and examine
what those values were that I wasn’t accomplishing.
I recognized that ‘special/doer’ self system in a statement
I’ve often made. “How extraordinary it is, in all the span of
known human history, to be a woman, educated (literate
especially) and intelligent, who owns her own property,
without needing to be married or beholden to her father,
without the responsibilities of children (and even to have the
real choice not to have children), to be healthy and
physically able -- how rare in all of history this is.
And even though this is true in my own time and place,
many, many women are not so free. THEREFORE, this part
of me sonorously intoned, I have a duty to all those other
women, to all those other female lives, to use these special
potentials and conditions I’ve been blessed with, to
maximize the benefits of these conditions, not only for my
own well being, but for all women! For the race!!! The
species!!! For all life!!!
Of course, I snickered as I thought this, because right on
cue, the other parts of me swung into position with this wry,
critical observation: “How inflated. How utterly grandiose.”
Unlike my life of a number of years ago when I had been a
complete workaholic, my ‘ordinary/being’ self now had a
place in my life. I’d been content to engage myself in the
smaller things -- keep my home comfortable, enjoy my
garden, go to the market, read, watch movies, have friends
over for a dinner. When I lived from this part of me, I would
be happy to just go for walks, stretch, and get plenty of rest.
This has been what drove my ‘special/doer self’ crazy. “It’s
all meaningless activity,” it harped. “It’s a total waste. I’m not
getting anywhere. There’s no drive. No significant,
memorable contributions. No nothing! What a bore! Life is
almost over and you want to play and relax?!”
From a neutral place of awareness, I could feel how the
‘special/ doer self’ in particular suffers from mortality. This is
also a side that perceives time as a flow, a uni-directional
and constant movement from beginning to end, from birth to
death. To the 'special/doer' side, living from that "ordinary /
being' perspective feels like a big waste of time; it's
stagnation. Life is seen as a growth process; from inspiration
to creation, from little to big, from seed to plant to flower.
One needs to grow to a purpose: to flower, to attain.
This part of me didn’t want the end to come before the
flowering. In fact, from there, I felt that life would be ending
all too soon. This is the side of me that has the generative
drive, a productive urge: a child, a book, a painting, a
contribution, a product, a by-product of my existence that
lives on beyond me, that proves I was here and that I did
something with my life. This part wants to carve my initials
into the rock of ages. All of this is how this one part of me
defined the “meaning of life,” and by openly and neutrally
listening to it, I found that I could honor its perspective
without judging it.
The ‘ordinary/being self’, on the other hand, lives in the
moments. It is like meditation, whether in motion or stillness.
Meaning is an experience one has by being present in the
moment. Reading and learning is not a method to get
somewhere else, it is an opportunity to be present with
another ones’ views or experiences. When I live ‘in the
moment', my experience deepens and expands, becomes
richer, more complex and full. From here, I didn’t see my
attributes or conditions as being unusual or more historically
pertinent than other periods. Every life has always had its
own unique set of conditions to experience. What is most
important is how fully alive in the moment I could be,
whatever my circumstances.
From this place in myself, fulfillment comes from enjoying
“what is.” Every moment is the destination, the
accomplishment. Whether one “flowers” or not, one exists.
Existence itself is meaningful and worthy. The flower can
never exist without the seeds, the roots, stem, leaves, bud
and ~ every such moment ~ has merit and must be
experienced as it occurs.
When I'm operating from this ‘being-part’, I, as this "flowering
plant", happen all at once. Time does not begin, move or
end. It’s all a present moment. Time is not a singular
direction; it’s an immortal event. The ‘ordinary/being self’
suffers when I operate from a strictly linear movement of
time because it’s then that the multi-dimensional, all
pervasive moment disappears. In linear time, the ordinary,
present, being-self just evaporates from consciousness.
By I honoring equally the validity of these inner opposing
selves, my inner critic quieted down. In that moment, the
inner critic didn’t have to deliver the message any more that
there is a stifled self in me. I could non-judgmentally notice
both sides and be capable of acting on either or some
version of both.
This kind of awareness process establishes a precarious and
paradoxical sense of calm and dynamism in me, a kind of
inner weightlessness. It’s not unlike the physical sensation I
had as a child on a swing. Back and forth, I’d wholeheartedly
lean into the air, higher and higher, enjoying in particular
those moments when I’d reach the height of one direction
and I had not yet been pulled back down by gravity. I’d have
that moment where I was perfectly balanced between going
up and going down.
I have to be able to recognize the validity of both my
‘ordinary/being’ and my ‘special/doer’ to even have the
opportunity to experience those in-between moments of
clarity. Clarity comes from fully appreciating the contrast and
the mutually exclusive needs these opposites represent.
Then begins the struggle to stay awake to these yin yang
realities, the struggle to exercise free will. Free will arrives
when we have real choice, knowing and honoring paradox,
feeling and choosing our way of being in this particular
situation, and staying connected with the inner
consequences.
J’aime ona Pangaia is the director of Voice Dialogue Center NW in Portland
Oregon. She is also the author of the book, The Benefit of People Who Bug You.
She can be reached at 503-788-8060 and vdcnw@comcast.net
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