I used to struggle to find a deep sense of meaning in life.
Too often, I would get stuck in unhealthy habits that made me feel trapped in life.
I ate too much junk food, gave my attention to too much entertainment, and struggled to find the information I truly needed.
Then one day, my life began to change. I stumbled upon meditation, consciousness, and self-actualization. I began doing a 5-minute practice and failed for the first few sessions.
I couldn’t sit still and remain in self-awareness for more than 30 seconds.
Up until that point, I was a slave. I was controlled by my conditioning, which I didn’t have much conscious control over.
I adopted the beliefs, habits, and patterns that my early childhood environments conditioned me with and remained stuck in many of them for years to come.
Slowly, I began becoming aware of the many deep beliefs I held. Many of which I didn’t even consciously decide to adopt. I soaked up the information like a sponge at a young age.
Shortly after I began meditating, a book came into my life. It is called "The Way of the Superior Man".
This book completely rearranged my life and permanently shifted its trajectory.
It taught me the importance of my focus, awareness, purpose, self-mastery, and how to overcome many struggles related to dating and sexuality.
This book taught me how to develop healthy masculine energy.
Up until that point, I was just an NPC. I was controlled by the systems and environmental factors in which I was raised.
I slowly began to break out of many of these routines and patterns and started moving towards self-actualization, consciousness, love, purpose, and authenticity.
For many months after that, I continued meditating, reading, writing, and gaining clarity into the nature of myself, reality, and other people.
Then, in April a few years ago, I had a moment that shifted me forever.
I was lying down in the grass near a park up the street from my house, and suddenly the world appeared very different to me.
I looked at my environment, and everything felt very fluid. As if everything was constantly vibrating at some level.
It had hit me.
Everything in this existence is inseparable from all other things. Everything is One.
Everything is connected to everything else.
My body was no longer appearing separate from its environment.
There was no longer a sense of subject (me) and object (other).
I realized non-duality. I realized Absolute Unity.
It happened very spontaneously and naturally.
I could not logically plan this. I could not force this. I could not create it at will. It happens entirely on its own and at the "correct" time.
I simply surrendered deeply to the present moment, and some aspects of my perception were cleaned up.
I no longer projected an inner sense of separateness and fragmentation onto the world. Everything was completely unified and connected to each other.
Since then, I have done many more meditation retreats and have directly experienced many deep truths about the nature of self, mind, consciousness, and reality.
All of which are deeply intertwined.
I can’t believe this all started because I wanted to feel better in my life and get better at talking to girls.
Now let’s relate this to creating meaning and purpose.
My deep and intuitive sense of meaning and purpose did not immediately occur.
I started off with shallow pursuits like feeling good and getting better with women.
I started slow. I began with the basics.
One thing led to another, which led to another, which led to another, and so on. It was as if I were unweaving a blanket, and each thread was connected to every other thread.
No longer do I view life from a fragmented and isolated perspective (although I can).
I see the various interconnections and seek to create harmony among seemingly separate and distinct parts.
In other words, I connect each part of my life with every other part.
My health, wealth, relationships, consciousness, and self-actualization are intimately connected and affect each other.
When it comes to creating meaning, we need to be thinking along these lines.
We need to connect our sense of purpose to our health, consciousness, relationships, and so on.
Find meaning in solving your problems. Find meaning in getting the ball rolling.
Some practical examples of this include:
Cleaning up your diet
Building relationship skills
Learning about new career paths
Building an exercise routine
Practising meditation
Reading books to help you solve your problems (check out my free booklist)
Writing daily
What all of these have in common is that they are building up your skills in health, wealth, relationships, consciousness, and self-actualization.
How can we have some grand purpose and meaning in life if the very basics of our lives are out of whack?
Our internal problems will affect our external reality and corrupt our ability to impact the world in meaningful ways.
In this fast-paced world, we face many problems. One of the biggest is distraction.
We are pulled to act and give our attention to things that we don’t truly find valuable. Many of these things don’t have any real sense of meaning.
It’s important that we slow down and take time to reflect every single day. We need to be still and let go of the need to constantly act.
Let’s observe our actions, what their goals are, and why we even feel the need to pursue them in the first place.
Man is both the sculptor and the sculpture.
This means that we as humans have a remarkable ability to become deeply self-aware and make profound changes to our mind, body, and consciousness (all are One).
But how many do it?
How many are caught up in distractions?
How many have convinced themselves that all of this is a waste of time?
How many say this is impractical?
How many establish daily systems in order to achieve this?
Very few do.
Only about 10% of the human population is self-actualized, meaning only 10% of people have healthy, mature, and evolved psyches.
Self-actualization is a human need, not a want (check out the previous newsletter for more).
If we do not do this inner work, we actually remain stuck in many toxic habits that were ingrained in us at an early age.
As these habits’ form, they begin to create our individual sense of self. In other words, our identity.
Many of these habits are completely unconscious, and they dictate how we act in major aspects of our lives, such as our health, wealth, and relationships.
My job here is to make you more aware of your conditioning and help you break free of it.
Find meaning in creating the version of yourself that you genuinely love.
Find meaning in cultivating deep connections with people.
Find meaning in learning how to solve the problems in your life. Get so good at solving your problems that they eventually become effortless to solve.
Find purpose through trial and error and experimentation.
Find purpose by facing fear and resistance.
Find purpose by cutting distractions from your life.
Create a vision of who you want to be and slowly align the thoughts, habits, awareness, and emotions that create that version of you.
Simply cut out what doesn’t serve you.
Focus on who you are being. Not simply on what you are doing. Focus on the one who is aware.
Investigate your own psyche. Explore your consciousness. Question your thoughts. Feel your body.
Deep meaning and purpose are created through deep self-awareness. Self-awareness is a skill that requires active and intentional development.
Remove what doesn’t contribute to the raising of your consciousness and the deepening of your awareness.
The depth of your awareness is your greatest asset. You can only consciously change what you are aware of.
It’s simple.
Increasing awareness increases your ability to make meaningful changes to your life, which increases the quality of your life.
Obsess over increasing your awareness, and then thank me later.
- Lucas