In Douglas Adam’s comic novel The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the speaking computer Deep Thought is asked ‘What is the meaning of life?’ After furious and extended calculations, Deep Thought produces the answer to mankind’s perennial question: ‘The meaning of life is… 42!’
Ahem. This is a joke. But it illustrates a central truth. We are all seeking meaning in our lives.
The grandly titled new hypnosis session at Hypnosisdownloads.com The meaning of life (not to be confused with the movie Monty Python’s Meaning of Life!) takes as its central theme the reality that never before have we all been swamped with so much stuff. Yet in spite of having so many material things, so many new ways of diverting ourselves and escaping, so many people still report having a ‘meaning vacuum’ in their lives. Time and time again I hear the refrain: ‘What’s the point of all this?’ or ‘I just feel like I am going through the motions in life.’
The meaning of everyday life
Meaning is the juice of life; the mechanism for motivation and the ultimate human quest. People with a powerful sense of purpose and meaning have an end in mind; they can work hard for a cause and achieve great things because they are so connected to an empowering sense of meaning. In The meaning of life session I use exemplars, people who have discovered great meaning in their lives and succeeded in overcoming incredible odds with the power that meaning gave them. Hypnosis is used to create the mind set to live more meaningfully.
The search for meaning: dissatisfaction and misapplied searching
The meaning of life doesn’t really come from the material benefits you enjoy. If it did, Sting wouldn’t be trying to save the rainforests and Angelina Jolie wouldn’t be adopting half of Africa. We can distract ourselves temporarily through TV, entertainment, or mind-altering substances of one kind or another, but ultimately these distractions – like any indulgence – may have a part in life, but they cannot make a whole life.
Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, famously said: ‘What man actually needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.’
I agree.
Mark
0 Responses to “The meaning of life – 42?”