by ordinarywonderdotnet

Created on: February 21, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2008

Searching for Meaning.

Every day I meditate on the fact that I'm going to die. I try to imagine what the decayed remains of my mortal body will look like when I'm reduced to nothing more than sludge. My physical marker for all of existence will just be a pile of bones. The only destiny my body has is to nourish the bacteria and insects waiting for it in the grave.

I also reflect on the idea that despite my belief that there is more to me than just my body, there is a strong possibility that when my brain expires-after the small grace period of 6-12 minutes-I'll disappear under the casual embrace of nothingness. I will just cease to be. There is a good chance that there is no greater meaning behind existence than what I attach to it and that even my greatest experiences, memories, pains, and joys are small vanities in the face of creation.

This could be interpreted as morbid. Some people might ask, "Well, what's the point then?"

They might say that if nothing has an outside, objective meaning then it dissolves the necessity and development for creation, analysis, logic, ethics and morals. * I'll define "objective meaning" as meaning derived from a literal system-this includes god, which is the word most people use for "spiritual law". I'll use the term spiritual law in relation to "any awareness that is left of us postmortem" to mirror what physical law means for the body.

[* Despite feeling that most people will understand the use of "physical law" as an analogy to "spiritual law" I don't want this term to be confused with religion. Religion is the belief in and worship of a supernatural being or god and/or the institutionalized system invented by man, as defined here by Webster: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/religion. Religion is open for interpretation. When I say "spiritual law" I mean the abstract value that all religions aspire to have rights to. The irrevocable law of what happens to your consciousness after you die. ]

I think this argument is deceiving and requires some definition of terms. When I say "objective meaning" I am talking about irrevocable truth. When I say there is a possibility that "no objective meaning of spiritual law exists", I mean there may not be any literal system that governs "any awareness that is left of us postmortem" and that the fact is that whether or not spiritual law exists, we'll have no idea what it entails until we're governed by it. That is to say, we won't know until we're dead. Thus, I have to draw the conclusion that if

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