The Hidden Meaning
Life has no meaning, so the nihilists say. Such people either aren’t looking hard enough, or are looking in the wrong places for the Obvious purpose and meaning to Life. The best kept secret is the secret that is out in the open. I have an aunt who hides her gold jewelry in a clean diaper she wraps up like a dirty one and she just tosses it to the side of her bedroom. The meaning of Life is both obviously simple and complex, as it should be for a Living Cosmos with very few rules. Like the whole Star Game of the ONA. Can you see the meaning and purpose of it? It is the same meaning and purpose of Life and of all things that exist.
The meaning of Life is: To Live.
An obviously simple answer. But meaningful and not meaningless when you contemplate on the matter a little deeper. For, now we can ask ourselves: “If the meaning of Life is to Live; then what is the Nature of Living?”
The Nature of Living is: Change.
All things that Exist [Live] Change. Change is inescapable as a Thing That Exists. Your entire Life as a Human is a 100 year Process of Change. You start off as a zygote and from there you successively Change like a shapeshifter into childhood, adulthood, elderhood, and causal death. Even things that is not alive that Exist must Change as well. Land in time will change it shape and condition. Mountains in time will Change in shape and appearance. Everything in heaven, from suns to planets will in time Change. Nothing does not Change. Thus the Buddha said once: “All things are impermanent.” Sunyata is the Nature of all things. Just as we can say that the Nature of the Star Game is Sunyata. Every piece existing inside the Game is a Flowing Change. But then we can now ask ourselves: “If all things Change, and if I am Living with Volition, then WHERE am I changing to?” In other words, if we are alive and have Will to choose, then what are we becoming or changing into?
And thus, the terrifying answer is: Causality.
Causality meaning there is no set direction or course. As it should be for a Cosmos with very few rules. Just as the Star Game. We can ask that if the Nature of the pieces is to change, then where are the pieces going in the Star Game? The answer is that there is no set direction or course, there is only Cause and Effect; or as Buddha called it: Kamma, meaning to Build, Work, Act. Which action bares Fruit, Wyrd, Fate, Destiny. And there lays the complexity of things.
The meaning of life isn’t just a boring and simple obvious answer. To Live comes with a raveled potential, which you and I must each Unravel. We in a sense Unfold our Wyrd with causality. In the very same way that the end Wyrd of the Star Game has a folded potential nestled or embedded acausally “in” it, which must be causally unfolded with each move. And there is the Meaning and Purpose of the Game. The entire Game itself is an aspect of the Unfoldment of Wyrd. And you and I are the Unfolders. The nexions of the acausal unfolding into the causal. Acausal meaning in one sense “without cause.” What in existence is without cause? Pi. What caused the infinite potential sequence of Pi? Where is Pi’s infinite sequence of numbers when such numbers are not unraveled? This is just one example to help us better understand a meaning of “acausal.”
But the Game of Life is far more complicated then a Star Game. The Earth is our Board. One single Board, but with Infinite Potential folded up acausally “in” you and I, for us to Unfold causally. Looking at Life in a zen way is like looking at a Circle. A circle is plain and boring. It’s just a meaningless circle with no point. There is nothing special about a circle. It’s not until a Greek mathematician with a clever eye comes along and discovers Pi in the circle, and the Infinite Potential of that Pi, that the circle’s mystery begins to Unfold. What was once seen as meaningless now houses a number sequence that is as potentially infinite as the cosmos itself.
It’s because of causality that thus gives our Life the feel of its ups and downs. In the same exact way as causal mechanics of a Board Game gives the players the feel of the ups and downs. You lose pieces, you take out pieces. In Life the causal actions we commit manifests our ups and downs, our joy and suffering, our pain and pleasure, our ignorance and intelligence, our having and our wanting. All of these things are not the purpose of Life. They are only symptomatic causal fruits of the Essential Meaning. In the same way that we can say taking out a Knight piece in a game of Chess is not the Meaning of the Game. Or not having any room left to move in a game of Go is not the meaning or purpose of the game. These are only results or fruits of the game as it is being played.
Therefore, it is incorrect to say that the meaning and purpose of Life is to have pleasure or love and not pain or suffering. Because the causal results of how we act today may produce pain later, and without such pleasure, we say to ourselves that life is meaningless. Or if you indulge in too much pleasure, it will lose its meaning, and thus you fall into the thinking that life has lost its meaning. No it didn’t. You were looking for meaning in the wrong place. You only assumed that a symptomatic fruit of Life is the meaning. The Meaning is beneath or beyond the Causal: the Folded Potential embedded in the Acausal. Which our own Life and its Flow of Change is in itself a part of that Unfoldment of potential.
I’ve personally met many people who point to the causal fruits of Life and mistake them for the meaning of Life. They will say things like: the meaning of life is to love and be loved in return; to self actualize; to own a house; to pass our DNA down; to dominate; to economize; to be saintly; to know god; or to be gods. These are all byproducts of Life, not the foundation and Meaning of Life. If we attach ourselves to such resultant fruits of our Flow of Change, then such meaning we hold onto; as the meaning of Life; quickly fades, and when this happens we lose such meaning.
Losing such temporal meaning in Life causes problems to arise in our Human condition. For example I know a family friend – we all know one like this – who was happily married. This family friend truly believed that the meaning in his life had been found in his wife, or the love his wife offered. Everything was fine. But then she cheated on him, and his heart was terribly broken. He eventually left her. In his state of misery and heartache – and having lost his superficial meaning to Life – he was lost, in a state of psychological vertigo. Didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself any more. Then along came a friend of his who invited him to church. The preacher gave him solace in his preaching about Jesus. And so he is now a devout Christian when before his religion was his wife. The problem here with my friend is that now he is under the control – a prey – to religion and preachers. He is not free.
But this same situation of having our hearts broken and thus our meaning in Life lost, causes others to React in many different Destructive ways: drugs, alcoholism, other forms of addiction, depression, and even suicide. That’s what I mean by “problems” arising from being attached to fleeting fruits of our Causal Flow. Those things are impermanent and the byproducts of our Lives, not the inherent meaning of Life itself. We can’t see the meaning and purpose of Life because it’s so obvious and simply we force ourselves to over look it and dismiss it, and so we pay no mind to it. The inherent meaning is to Live/Change/Unfold in the matrix of Causality.
And so because some of us come to realize the Essential Meaning, and we understand the Nature of Cause and Effect, we can thus work on become Game Masters. To work on making the right moves in life to manifest the right fruit according to our Will. What is the most basic definition of magick? The manipulation of things according to our Will. As Game Master of Life we don’t live Life as a passive passenger tosses and thrown about by circumstances and the results of our own ignorant actions/work. We live Life for the win. Whatever “The Win” is we each have designated.
So as Game Masters of Life, we understand that what we manifest by our Will is in itself not the meaning of Life, but only a fruit of our work. Thus if we lose it – and we will – we are not affected by such loss. Not affected, we can continue to input more work to manifest more fruit.
And this whole process of becoming aware of ourselves and the Essential Meaning of Life, and the simple rules of Causality we exist in, the succession of harvesting fruit, working to reach our Wyrd is this process of us Unfolding our Potential. Like a flower opening its petals slowly. Like the unraveling of coiled DNA into strings of mRNA for genetic replication. The Potential for Life does not lay in the raveled up DNA. It lays in the Unraveling and replication of DNA. The raveled up DNA is just a seed of potential information that must be Unfolded and expressed. Which is the Whole Point: Expression. Life is worthless and meaningless if we don’t Express it. If we don’t Unfold it.
But the Unfolding of Life like the unraveling of DNA for replication is not a static thing we can point at. It – like all things – is Sunyata: Change, Impermanent, “Emptiness In Motion.” Therefore, when we have the inability to understand Change, we lack the ability to even recognize the meaning of Life itself, because that meaning is the motion and movement of Change itself.
If you ask random people what they believe the meaning of life is they will most often pick “static” things or conditions they can point out: sex, love, music, shopping, eating, money, wealth, girls, boys, cars, shoes, religion, etc. You can point sex out to other people; there it is: sex, this is it, the meaning of Life. But you can’t point to Emptiness in Motion to tell a friend that such Change is the meaning of Life. It’s like being at a concert and trying to point at a part of melody of a symphony. You can’t do it, because it vanishes the minute you try to point at it. You must experience it and speak of it as a Whole. Life as a Whole – which is the Flow of Change in the matrix of Causality – is the Meaning. What we do in that Flow is entirely up to us. And so we literally miss the point when we try to point to it. You get it?
I thought I would try and explain how I saw Life and Meaning of Life is to me, as I have come to Understand Life. Because nihilists just bug me. I have met tons of them but after the 101st one, I felt like sharing my ideas on Life. The intent is specifically for those of us associated with the ONA and its teachings in some way. So that we Dreccs might not be so blind to the Emptiness in Motion that is the Meaning in Life. So that we Dreccians may in our own ways come to Understand that Life as a holistic Whole, with its Flow of Change, and the Unfoldment within its causal matrix; is the very Meaning. There is meaning inherent in Life, if we truly and genuinely Understand Life as the process it is: Acausal Potential unfolding thru a nexion into Causal Expression. You and I are each a nexion of Acausal Unfoldment.
Like many answers given by the ONA, the meaning of Life is both simple and complex. Yes there is a beautiful meaning of Life as a whole. No there isn’t a meaning to Life, because the moment we point to one, it fades. The Meaning is in the fading, the passing, the unfolding, the symphony in play. The trick is to not hold onto a single note, but to Let-Go – Let-Be – and just let the music pass and fade. Just to experience that passing and fading in that mindful moment of Letting-Be. Thus, having allowed the symphony to pass to its end, we are able to realize that the music as a whole, as one thing, is Meaningful and Beautiful. The trick is to not dwell our eyes and mind on a spot on a painting, but to instead realize the painting as a whole and to let the painting be. And when we have done that we can come to realize the Meaning and Beauty of that painting.
If we could each just Let-Go and let Life Unravel, mindful of every passing moment and every fading detail, Life’s Meaning and Beauty will also touch is in the same intimate way. The Meaning is in the Unfolding and Fading. Life’s Meaning and Beauty cannot be known. There is nothing to know. It is wordless Nothing in Motion. It must be experience and felt. In the end it is the Heart which sees the wordless Meaning. Like Love. The Beauty of Love is not the holding onto the one you love. Not dwelling on any moment of the relationship and time spent together. Not in any touch or caress. Not in any kiss or smiling of eyes. But in the Letting-Be. In the succession of moments that Unfolds and Fades. And from that Flow of Change – sunyata – we are brought to tears and elevated in Heart by Love and its unspeakable Beauty.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
122 yf
