What Is Meaning? A Look at Meaning, What It Is, and How To Find It For Yourself

Quick Facts

-Meaning can be experienced as a felt, emotional experience, one that many people seek to feel every day.

-You can decide what is meaningful for yourself! On the same token, you can ‘disidentify’ from the belief that anything you consider to be void of meaning is, indeed, void of meaning; this greatly helps our emotional states!

Intro

Some of us are unaware of it; some of us are searching for it; some of us have no idea what we’re doing, and some of us already know what meaning really is.

Today, we'll explain meaning. We'll clear up any confusion that exists in the present, and we’ll definitely clear any potential confusion that may exist in the near future!

What Is Meaning?

We all know (or have seen) certain people who are inexplicably “brilliant” in one form or another. Maybe they have a charismatic personality, maybe they are very interesting to talk to, maybe they seem very emotionally intelligent, etc, etc.

They tend to “light a fire” within us for a brief moment while we’re in their presence, and then we go about our daily lives and the feeling has vanished. What’s happened here is you talked with a person who has discovered their own path to a meaningful life and has followed it to some extent.

Unfortunately, “piggybacking” off of someone’s meaning can only happen while you’re in their presence; if you haven’t found your own path to a meaningful life it will fade into who you’ve been up until that point (hopefully with a slight change towards the positive).

These people aren’t special, they aren’t necessarily gifted, and they certainly aren’t worth bowing down to or making a religion after. Rather, these are people who live in the felt experience of meaning. They have (mostly consciously, sometimes unconsciously) found what means the most to them in life and they simply go for it and see what happens. (This usually works out; there are rare instances where it doesn’t, but for people who don’t find meaning in the things they consciously pursue they find it in another area of life.)

In one of my more recent posts (The Primacy of Spoken Language) I mention how words are keys that unlock certain images and/or feelings for an individual. However, these realities are mostly realized when you decide you want to realize them.

I can say that a meaningful life is a life lived while feeling the felt experience that the word “meaning” points to, which seems to be more or less the same experience for everybody the more and more they chase meaning, but it doesn’t mean anything to you unless you feel it for yourself.

With this realization, you can start to visualize what a meaningful life may look like for you, and this is a good segue into the next paragraph.

Meaning Is Found Within Yourself

Intuition is you telling yourself information that you ought to know. If you find something or someone meaningful then you’re telling yourself that this thing/person is good for you and that you want (or even need) more of it/to spend more time with that person. Since intuition is mostly a subjective phenomenon we can conclude that meaning is to be obtained by looking within.

I put great emphasis on this because some say that looking within does not provide anything helpful for them and that it may indeed make their current situation quite worse. Usually, these kinds of people’s life journeys center around learning about intuition and learning how to listen to it, as their resistance is quite strong. However I must fully disagree with the statement, “Looking into myself will only make things worse,” “Medication is a bunch of bogus,” “I’ve tried that before and nothing happened” or any variant thereof because of the nature of the argument itself.

If someone goes into a meditative state while “doubting that it’ll work” they probably will not grow in this area of life because the doubt is actually an intention. And, of course, if you intend to make something work (or to keep something from working) you will be as diligent as possible to produce your desired outcome, consciously and/or unconsciously. You have more power than you suspect :).

It may seem strange that a doubt is the same as an intention, however, the word “doubt” and the word “intention” have the possibility to point to the same felt experience which can be aptly named “maliciousness.” If “maliciousness” is prominent (either consciously or subconsciously) within an individual their doubts and their intentions must consciously be separated from one another in order for their maliciousness to become realized. Once this is done intuition may flow freely if the individual consciously gives it any level of prominence in their conscious mind.

We’ve probably heard this before, but maybe we haven’t; as soon as you consciously decide to live a meaningful life you have taken the first step towards living a meaningful life. This is done by thinking the words, speaking the words, writing them out… “I choose to live a meaningful life.”

It’s usually a quiet choice with little involvement from other people, and from then on you’re searching (whether consciously or unconsciously) for meaning.

This is when you begin to separate the wheat from the shaft… “I don’t like my job because it’s pointless, but I do enjoy playing the guitar… Maybe I should do that more often.” This may go on for a while until you begin to listen to your intuition and do the things/be around the people that help you feel better about your life.

Once this goes on for a while the very thing that gave you life may now only give you suffering, and then it’s time to ask yourself what the next step is. “I used to like playing the guitar, but now I want to go into public speaking.” This can happen infinitely until a (or multiple) higher realization(s) takes place, one of which may be that meaning is an end result of listening to your intuition.

This is an important realization because at this point you will have felt meaning and gone back to your old ways. If this happens then the realization that intuition can guide the way back to the feeling the answer is relieving since the path is known once again.

There Isn’t Much Else To Say About It

I emphasize this because “meaning” is simply a word that points to a feeling. The feeling itself can change, sometimes rapidly and sometimes over a long period of time, but it is simply an emphasized feeling. Trying to over-complicate it only leads you further away from meaning, and this is very important to know at all points throughout your life.

This (quite short) post is a launching pad to start your own journey towards living inside of meaning. If you’ve already begun then I suspect these words will only be like music instead of an enlightening experience, and if you’re already there then I suspect reading this felt like a timeless void of bliss, just like everything else does. Have a great rest of your day!