All the things that I was so anxious about that were created what was it that was so unnecessary and pointless, all the things that I've been striving for were ultimately pointless. (bell rings) So suffering in your life, if it still arises, use it so that the ego gets burned up by the suffering, so to speak. The ego gets burned up in this fire of suffering. Now we can call this conscious suffering that's very interesting
concept, conscious suffering. When suffering arises, become aware of it, and accept that it's there in the form of fear, anxiety, regret, you have self-pity, you have unhappy sense of self, complaining about your life, many forms of suffering, you've lost things, you don't know, things that you had identified with taken away from you, who am I now, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. Well that's great be nobody more completely, realize fully your nobody list your nobody-ness (laughs). I don't know who I am anymore I've lost everything, all the things I've worked for have gone, everything is so pointless, but their mind is still talking, it's all been for nothing, it's all meaningless, meaningless, this is your mind talking, don't believe in the things it says but it continues talking. Many humans in this world are suffering from what we could call nihilism. I don't know if you
know that word nihilism. Nihilism means the belief that everything is absolutely
and utterly pointless, that's a deep form of suffering. Nihilism, what's the point of it all just this awful life of mine, the whole world is
pointless it's so awful, and that's a very deep suffering the total lack of meaning. Everything is arbitrary, random and meaninglessness is a mental disease that is afflicting millions of humans. It's because everybody, the mainstream culture still believes, it goes back to the 19th century, it goes back to Darwin Origin of Species he said life evolved, which undoubtedly is true, but he said life evolved, but the evolution of life on this planet is an arbitrary random cause of events, molecules and atoms at random coming together and forming life forms over millions of years. Random, the idea of randomness in the theory of evolution, put forward by Darwin and others, the idea of randomness means there is no purpose or intelligence behind it whatsoever it's a random process, in other words, it's the belief that everything that, all life on this planet has no meaning, it just is a meaningless conglomeration of atoms and molecules, it's ultimately meaningless. That basically is the
underlying assumption behind the theory of evolution that many people still believe and it has seeped into mainstream culture and even people who have
never even heard of Darwin, it has seeped into their belief system that we live in a meaningless universe. Before that happened we had
certain religious beliefs so there was some meaning, and lot of that perhaps was ideological and ego-driven, nevertheless in the
ancient religion there is access to the transcendent is
still there, here and there, so there's still little openings into the transcendent even
though many forms of religion developed into ideological belief systems that strengthened the ego, nevertheless, religions still carried, and still carry, the secret of transcendence
is still there hiding within the religions, and that became
inaccessible to many humans, so now we have the pandemic of nihilism. This is one of the pandemics far worse than any physical pandemic, the belief that everything is meaningless. And you can have a meaning in your life that is very limited, like for many people have the meaning, okay I want to have a career, that gives you limited
meaning in your personal life and working for a career,
nothing wrong with that, I'm working to create a better life for myself and my family, that's also wonderful and great, I'm working to achieve
recognition in this world, etc etc that's fine too, but at some point, a meaning that is purely personal may begin to lose its power so that, let's say, you've
spent two or three decades working for your career, which
is nothing wrong with it, you may arrive at a point where your career doesn't
mean anything anymore, or you lose it. But you lose your career and your status, or it consumes you so completely that you become ill with stress, or in some other way, turned
into something that's not satisfying at all it
actually creates suffering. So something can give you
limited meaning for a while, for years, and then
suddenly turn out to be ultimately meaningless. So and some people suddenly
wake up and say all my life, some people fall ill, seriously ill and then they look back
on their life and see all this was so pointless
accumulating possessions, why did I do that, what
was the point in that. all the things that I was so anxious about when there's, now that let's
say they're seriously ill now, all the things that I was so anxious about that that were great, It was so unnecessary and pointless, all the things that I've been striving for are ultimately pointless, that can be an opening suddenly, wow, the limited personal
meaning, which was fine, it's better than no meaning at all to have a personal meaning in your life, better than no meaning at all, but ultimately that's not satisfying in the long term. You have to go deeper, to a deeper meaning that transcends who you are as a person and that is, am I aligned with
the purpose of the universe, that is the ultimate true meaning, am I aligned with the purpose, and what is the purpose of the universe? The purpose of the
universe is consciousness, bringing more consciousness
into this dimension, that's the purpose of the universe, bringing more consciousness
into this dimension. Am I aligned with that, and then, if that is the case, if you are aligned with that you are a bringer of
consciousness, a bringer of light, that is the ultimate true purpose. And it could be that your personal purpose and the deeper purpose can go together, that's fine, so you can
you can have a career and yet it's not totally ego dominated while you are actively working you bring in the light of consciousness. You do things in your work that bring more consciousness
into this dimension, that's wonderful. So you can have, it is
not necessarily a case of, either having a career,
or being aligned with the universal purpose which is you can bring the two together. That's the balance between being and doing as I sometimes call it, the balance between being and doing, bringing those two together. So the purpose, there's only one true purpose in your life and that you have to discover that and that is, am I aligned with the consciousness and am I a bringer of consciousness? So that the end of nihilism is that and it no longer matters your entire past becomes
relatively unimportant when you realize the meaning of life is to be a bringer of consciousness. Let's say your entire past was one disaster after another, it happened to some people, some people's life
unfortunately was like that. Lets say you ended up in prison because you did one wrong
and bad thing after another and then you look back on
your so-called life and say, my god that was a disaster, my entire life was just a disaster. Okay but at this moment I realize the consciousness that I am, and all the suffering that I have created, for myself and others, all the suffering I've
created for myself and others, was part of the egoic dream, the delusion, the egoic delusion and the conditioning that I came into this world with, and then you awaken at this moment, if a totally disastrous life brings you to a point of awakening now, the whole thing was great, because it suddenly has a purpose retrospectively all the disasters brought you to this moment of awakening. So in retrospect what was totally absurd and meaningless suddenly
it fulfilled a purpose. The past can suddenly be realized as having fulfilled its purpose by creating the suffering that led to your awakening. So there's no regret
anymore about the past, It all made sense. So it's the meaning
arises retrospectively. It only remains absurd and disastrous if the awakening doesn't happen, then you're trapped in the dreadful dream, continue to be trapped in it. Wow. So be aligned with universal purpose, that is the ultimate birth, no matter what you do, no matter how it expresses
itself through you, that doesn't matter, but realize that as, and if you want to look at your life in terms of failure and
success, as many people do, is my life a failure,
is my life a success, what criterion do you
use for failure success? Do you allow this world to tell you whether you're a failure success, to a large extent this world is insane. So are you allowing an insane world to tell you whether your
life is a failure or success. Well, no, if this world cannot tell you, then what what is it. Obviously, the only true criterion is whether you are conscious
or not in this moment. If you're conscious in this moment, instead of being totally immersed in the dream of your
conditioned unawareness, the fictitious person. If you are conscious in this moment, then that is the greatest and only true success there could be in this life. (water splashing)
