This piece of writing is my contribution to the #tribesteemup Bi-weekly Question, put forward by @ELAmental.

The question is "What is the meaning of life?" and "Why are we here?"

A daunting and audacious question, I find this to be an incredibly compelling invitation to express myself with as much heart and soul as I can muster. Thank you for the opportunity! Mad love to @tribesteemup, let's Steem on for the enjoyment - regardless of the numbers and charts ❤

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Basically

This life is an opportunity

It's an opportunity to find some respite from heaviness and darkness and bullshit. It's an opportunity to get away from all the game playing and nay saying, the cynicism, the doubt and the fear. We want to make peace, and to know who we really are. We want to feel emotionally fulfilled, and to feel fully engaged. We want to find completion. We want to find some underlying reason why, or some happiness that will not fade away. We want to be adored, and cuddled, and to get laid. We demand satisfaction. We want love, we want to be loved unconditionally in some manner. We want to feel amazing all of the time, we want that to be our base state of operating.

It seems like a lot to ask of this life, yet we can't deny some urge that propels this whole thing forward. What kind of being will fulfill this love? I suspect it won't be another human image, equipped with it's human judgements and limitations. It has to be something that goes so far beyond the human stuff, it has to be so out there that we never even suspected it existed.

Are these noble goals? I don't know, they seem to be honest goals though. Presumably in seeking what we fundamentally want we might find a joy that transcends getting five thousand Instagram followers or driving a BMW. Some things make us really happy for a little while, and then they start to feel hollow and empty - lacking a certain life giving quality. Why is this? And is there something that doesn't follow this predictable pattern?

From the point in our lives that we understand that this is a world of limitations that ends in physical death, the being starts to experience immense dissatisfaction. I remember clearly the exact moment this happened to me, I realized that one day I was going to die, I was about five or six and I was in a car with my family. I burst into tears and said "the bad men are coming", to me the bad men were shadowy figures that represented the end of this life. That was the moment I realized I was in the physical world with physical limitations, inevitably headed back to the dirt. I was fully identified with my body and my mind, it was felt as an all encompassing grief.

The great dissatisfaction and sadness is based in the pointlessness of a fleeting life with no greater perspective or meaning. The great dissatisfaction is also based in being separated from the larger and more unlimited parts of ourselves. The great dissatisfaction can be subconsciously embedded, or it can be consciously perceived. It's painful to bring it to conscious awareness, but ultimately that allows us to go beyond it.

The basic meaning of life

Is to reconnect again with big, or biggest, or limitless life forces and energies. It's to unify and to connect in big ways. The meaning of life is to become so wide and encompassing that it puts to rest the nagging thought that we are merely this sack of flesh and this selfish personality. There is meaning in knowing and experiencing ourselves in the true context, a context which takes us beyond all limitations.

Metaphysically

We are life and the life urge, we are light made solid through a three dimensional projection of its self. We are an absurd video projector which thinks it's the video that it's playing. We are a video game which is driven to play out more and more extreme experiences until some understanding or growth arises ... or we get bored of it.

We are an evolutionary journey upward through complexity and cohesion. We are the underlying life principle which seeks to continually transcend and ascend into higher stages of awareness. We are the continual refinement of perception, like an eagle rising higher and higher until it sees all of everything. It rises higher even outide of its self, and then it sees it's self as the act of perception. It's not an eagle anymore, it's just a seeing or a being. Soon it has no idea what it is, continuing to recede further and further back into nothingness until it encompasses a very wide space with no clear attributes, it contains pure potential and limitless energy. It just is.

We start out believing we are this one cell or neuron, then as our awareness expands we see ourselves as a network and a community, and then a whole body or a whole planet. Our perception shifts to comprehend the fractal nature of life, with the same patterns recurring on every scale of magnification. The scale ceases to matter, only the life principle at work to diversify and enrich.

We are DNA, we are the elixir of life. We are consciousness seeking ever more encompassing modes of understanding what we are, and how we can manifest in more beautiful and self fulfilling ways.

In physics there is a spectrum of frequency that contains all possible expressions of energy and matter. We are that spectrum, and we have no idea how far we can go. Starting with the animal instincts, we move up the ladder of energy frequencies. Transcending our needs for survival we start to activate higher energies that connect us to more and more subtle realms. This is the essence of the spiritual journey. It's a continual becoming and growing into new potentials and possibilities. It has no end, and it seeks to always improve upon its self.

We are the sun, radiating life effortlessly onto everything that receives our attention and awareness. When we see things more honestly and openly, then we become more effective as suns. We are life and the act of life giving, no wonder we are so obsessed with having sex 😂

Existentially

In an ultimate and far reaching way, there is really no meaning to life. The quest for meaning is a by-product of our analysis and study of life. It's a simple illusion created by the fatty folds in our skulls. Simply put, we cannot actually see life accurately through our logical meaning making faculties. Or through any sensory input mechanism. No meaning or story can really encompass what life is.

Life is ever changing, an unknowable mystery. To know life completely lies outside the realm of language and understanding, it lies more in the mode of experience. In accepting the limitations of our vehicle and our tendency to make meaning, we can make peace with not really having any idea what this whole thing is about. Life could have many meanings, but ultimately we do no know, and any conclusions we come to are purely subjective. Meaning can be perceived in a moment but will soon slip away and lose it's relevance. A lasting truth cannot be reached, yet strangely some lasting truth can be found in ceasing to seek meaning and in dwelling in the place where no definition can touch.

We are the seer, observing this life yet also actively participating. We have come to taste life, and then to once again return to the place we came from - a mysterious source which is untraceable in linear terms. When all tastes lose their attraction, and all worldly things lose their pull - then the awareness we are gifted with is drawn inward once again. In directing ourselves inward we connect to the real meaning and purpose of this life. This is to understand and experience the mysterious source which has spawned this entire experience, and to dwell in the depth of it's majesty and grace.