Last month I created a thread on an online forum to meet people who are familiar with nonduality in my area. The people I have met so far shared a common struggle: They understood the nondual nature of reality but struggled with the phenomenal world. Here are some of the things they told me (they were in Japanese, so I have translated them into English):

“While I’m outside the matrix, I’m totally happy and peaceful. But as soon as I come back to this [the matrix], I suffer. This difference is too painful to bear.”

“I’ve been wanting to meet people I can talk about nonduality with, but now I am entering a narrative and hate it!”

“I’m aware of the nondual nature of reality, but this awareness paradoxically makes life difficult. I experience intense conflict.”

“Nonduality has saved me, but at the same time it doesn’t save me at all. I struggle with this paradox immensely.”

This kind of experience is common. In fact, it seems to be a phase that everyone on the spiritual path goes through. In this phase, people understand that reality is nondual, but this understanding conflicts with their perception of the world. Since this initial nondual realization is accompanied by a profound sense of peace (i.e., the oneness experience), it often becomes their escape. They often disengage from the phenomenal world—particularly the social world—to maintain the sense of peace (e.g., meditating all day, avoiding people).

Again, this seems to be a necessary phase on the spiritual path. We operate under the illusion of the ego and separation for decades (in a society that shares the illusion); therefore, extended periods of solitude and meditation would be necessary to stabilize a nondual perspective and break that illusion. However, if a person keeps avoiding the phenomenal world, the discrepancy between their nondual worldview and their perception of the world remains, which leads them to reject and despise the world.

Phase 1: Form Is Emptiness (The Many Is the One)

When people first see through the illusion of separation and realize that no phenomenon has inherent existence—no phenomenon exists on its own—they often reject phenomena as illusory. However, since such rejection cannot make the perception of phenomena disappear, which are apparently differentiated, a conflict arises between their nondual worldview and their perception of phenomena. They have not yet understood how Emptiness can be Form or the One can be the Many (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

The Recursive Cycle of Understanding and Perceiving Reality: Two Phases of Nondual Realization

Phase 2: Emptiness Is Form (The One Is the Many)

Phase 1 is what people typically mean by nondual realization. But nonduality also means that duality and nonduality are not two. It is not just that Form is Emptiness or the Many is the One but that Emptiness is Form or the One is the Many. This is considered complete nondual realization (Wilber, 2000). In Phase 1, duality was transcended but not included.

As people meet the phenomenal world with a nondual perspective again and again despite the discomfort, they begin to see that phenomena are not separate from the empty Ground or Source and that the empty Ground or Source manifests as phenomena. When this ultimate nondual realization happens, the perception of phenomena no longer triggers dissonance and conflict. You see differences but also the underlying unity. You stop avoiding phenomena and fully engage as phenomena. You begin to move and live seamlessly as the empty Ground, as Phenomena.

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References

Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, and spirituality: The spirit of evolution (2nd ed.). Shambhala.

Over the past year I have listened to many spiritual teachers describe what awakening is. While their general descriptions have often resonated with me, there are some elements that have not sat right with me. One of them is their dismissal of concepts (or more broadly, representations).

Awakening is beyond concepts in the sense that it is not just a conceptual understanding. However, it would be a mistake to say that it has nothing to do with concepts. “Transcend” or “beyond” does not necessarily mean “discard.” It seems a common error in spirituality to throw the baby (concepts) out with the bathwater (mistaken concepts).

Spiritual teachers often talk about “direct (awakened) perception” to mean perception free of concepts. However, is awakened perception really free of concepts? The recursive process of direct perception and conceptual understanding (Mounoud, 1995) has been happening before awakening, and it is implausible that awakening magically transcends this process. Instead, it would be a new recursive cycle: a new way of seeing the world, or more broadly, a new way of being.

Conceptual understanding penetrates direct perception whether or not you are aware of it. For instance, when you learn music theory and apply it to playing an instrument, you stop thinking about the theory while playing after some time. The theory has not disappeared, though it has disappeared from your consciousness. It has been integrated into your motivational-motor-sensory act of playing.

The dismissal of concepts often manifests itself as what Wilber (1982) calls the pre/trans fallacy. (I will talk about this fallacy in more detail in another post.) Many spiritual teachers speak of awakening as if it were a return to a preconceptual mode of being. Infants and awakened people are similar in that neither of them is under the illusion of the ego. However, they are free of the ego illusion for very different reasons. Infants, lacking conceptual ability, have not formed the ego. Awakened people, on the other hand, have formed the ego but seen through it, which requires (advanced) conceptual ability. Thus, it is a mischaracterization to suggest that awakening is a return to a preconceptual mode of being.

The Expansion of Self-Concept and the End of Egoic Overthinking

The core of awakening is the expansion of identity, which happens not through the abandonment of self-concept but through the refinement and expansion of it. There is a commonly held notion in spirituality that identification (i.e., self-representation) is a problem. However, the problem is not identification but exclusive identification (i.e., the finite self). It is through the identification of the infinite Self that your identity expands to embrace all as your Self and your motivation becomes harmonious (see Bergman, 2002, for a related discussion on the relations between understanding, identity, and motivation). Just as when you identify yourself as the ego, you feel and act as the ego, when you identify yourself as the Self, you feel and act as the Self.

The expansion of identity does not end thinking but ends egoic overthinking. When you believe you are the finite self (which includes the ego), you engage in constant scheming to protect and aggrandize it. But when you realize you are the infinite Self, the need for constant scheming evaporates. Thoughts still happen, but without compulsion and urgency. Above all, the content of your thoughts becomes gentle and peaceful.

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References

Bergman, R. (2002). Why be moral? A conceptual model from developmental psychology. Human Development, 45(2), 104–124. https://doi.org/10.1159/000048157

Mounoud, P. (1995). From direct to reflexive (self-) knowledge: A recursive model. In P. Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp. 141–160). Elsevier Science.

Wilber, K. (1982). The pre/trans fallacy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22(2), 5–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167882222002

Four years ago I abruptly left an academic career I had started just a few years earlier. I enjoyed doing research and developing theories but could not study exactly what I wanted. I did not want to study something I was only partially interested in for years or even decades so that I could earn status and finally study what I really wanted. (I saw many academics have their true passions buried and forgotten in this process.) I got to know of independent scholars who were freely following their curiosity, so I thought I could be like them.

Although this decision has brought many challenges, it has also brought many unexpected and invaluable experiences. In fact, these experiences have brought me deeper insights into reality than any of the studies I did in academia (however, see Footnote 1 for an important qualification).1 One such experience is “loser jobs” I have done.

The Interdependence of All Helpful Jobs

After leaving academia, I decided to do flexible jobs so I could pursue my curiosity in my spare time. I found an app where companies with labor shortage offered work. Most of the jobs listed did not require any special skills: delivery, stacking and sorting in a warehouse, planting and harvesting on a farm, and so on.2

Before I did these jobs, I had almost never thought about their roles in society. Worse, I had thought of them as jobs for “losers.” But I realized how essential they were to our lives. We can eat three meals a day, find things we need in shops, and do our daily routines without interruption, thanks to these jobs.

When I was a kid, I loved pizza delivery workers. I thought they were doing such a cool job delivering happiness to people’s homes. But as I grew up and learned which jobs were for “winners” and for “losers,” I stopped seeing work as helping people and making them happy and started to see it as competition for status and money.

One of the most absurd things in our society is that while many essential workers are considered losers and often paid poorly, there are many jobs that do not offer any benefit to society (i.e., bullshit jobs) and yet tend to pay much better. This absurd situation has placed a great burden on essential workers. Since people avoid “loser jobs,” there is a shortage of essential workers. In my country, people go to big cities for work—many of which are bullshit jobs—which, ironically, is regarded as a winner’s move. So there is a severe shortage of workers in the countryside (especially farmers). They work very hard to meet heavy demand. (These workplaces are often filled with immigrant workers.3 In my experience, many of them are very pleasant to work with despite the often intense working conditions.)

Meanwhile, people with bullshit jobs tend to buy a lot of things they don’t need with their excess money. So essential workers are doubly under pressure: They are understaffed but need to meet tremendous demand. If bullshit jobs disappeared and more people started to do essential jobs, the burden on essential workers—in terms of both time and intensity—would be significantly reduced. Since bullshit jobs do not provide any benefit to society, such a shift would not be disruptive. It does not seem to be a coincidence that AI has been eliminating these jobs. Accordingly, more and more people are starting to appreciate jobs that truly matter.

We have been dealing with problems like social discrimination, extreme income inequality, poverty, and so on, and politicians are busy developing policies that could solve these problems. But unless we change our views of one another and realize our interdependence, no policies will truly solve them.4 It is more important to cultivate a culture of gratitude, not the superficial and transactional kind but that which comes from the realization that our lives are literally impossible without each other.

True Freedom at Work

“Work for money and status.” Most people do not find this idea absurd. As we grow up, we learn to see work as competition for money and status. Consequently, most people work for the wrong reason, with the wrong intention.

Many people are striving at work to avoid becoming losers. (The fear of becoming a loser exists inseparably with the desire to become a winner.) I often meet people who stick to careers they hate simply because they are afraid that if they walk away from their careers, they end up becoming losers. If you have a “winner job,” having to do a “loser job” would feel like receiving a death sentence. This reveals how powerful concepts are. More than jobs themselves, concepts and attitudes attached to them determine how fulfilling or unfulfilling they are. If you view work not as competition (making yourself happy and others unhappy) but as cooperation (making everyone happy), the concept of winners and losers evaporates, and whether you do a “winner” or “loser” job ceases to matter. Above all, if your intention at work is solely to make a happy society, you will be untouched by arbitrary social concepts. Last year I saw a great movie with this theme:

Freedom at work is not doing “winner jobs.” As soon as you believe freedom exists in doing certain kinds of jobs, you have created a prison for yourself. Many people with “winner jobs” are as much or more imprisoned by their jobs than those with “loser jobs.” They are constantly stressed out about losing their positions and becoming losers.

I am not advocating for “loser jobs.” My point is that if you have the right view of work and work with the right intention, you can do any helpful job without feeling like doing a chore. This is true freedom at work.

Still, you might wonder how we can do mundane tasks like washing dishes, putting boxes on a conveyor belt, and planting seedlings for hours without getting bored. But are these activities really mundane? Isn’t anything happening at all wonderful? Do you really see what is unfolding moment by moment, or are you looking for something else? If you are fully present, it is impossible not to feel wonder and awe for whatever is happening. This is probably the most conscious form of motivation. This is also what real meditation is: full engagement as reality.5

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When I was a teenager, I suffered from body dysmorphic disorder. I spent hours in front of a mirror daily, analyzing and hating my appearance. Almost all my facial features looked ugly, and I thought about having cosmetic surgery to change them. I actually had one: double eyelid surgery.

After the surgery, I was doubly ashamed. The surgery did not change my sense of ugliness, and now I also felt fake. I became even more anxious around people, worrying that they might find out about my surgery. It was a taboo to have cosmetic surgery in my country (not so much a taboo anymore, which does not address the root problem). The culture shames people for being born with certain appearances but also shames them for altering them to match its beauty standards.

My country (Japan) and East Asia in general are obsessed with double eyelids. This is because the looks of Western people have been considered beauty ideals in these countries, and what distinguishes East Asians from Western people the most is the size and shape of their eyes (see Kowner, 2004, for a related discussion).1 Most celebrities in Japan have double eyelids (many of whom are Asian/White),2 and teenagers typically learn what is beautiful and ugly by looking at the appearances of celebrities. So I was sometimes rejected by girls I liked in high school because I did not have double eyelids. After high school I moved to the West and felt somewhat relieved because people there seemed to care less about eye shapes. (They seemed to care more about body shapes than about facial features.)

At age 20 I shifted my focus to becoming intelligent and started to care less about my physical appearance. But my sense of ugliness did not disappear completely until awakening. There was, however, an event prior to awakening that significantly eased my sense of ugliness. It was when I revealed my surgery to my ex-girlfriend. She responded, “It is nothing. Why are you ashamed of such a thing? You are beautiful whether you had the operation or not,” and kissed my eyelids. After she left the room, I cried. It was the first time in my life I accepted my appearance.

When I watched the movie American Beauty for the first time, it touched me deeply. But I did not know why. Now I do. It was pointing to Beauty beyond the duality of beauty and ugliness: immanent beauty that is revealed when the veils of social conventions and existential biases are lifted.3

There is no one who really benefits from beauty standards. If you think people who match beauty standards are lucky, think again. We often hear conventionally attractive people complain that people care about nothing but their appearance. Indeed, these people, especially if they are women, are often viewed and treated as sexual objects.

So, what is true beauty? It is the inner luminosity that is present in and shared by everyone. It does not belong to particular individuals. But for most people, this luminosity is buried deep due to social and existential fears. It is revealed on rare occasions when unconditional love is felt. When you were a kid, you loved your mother and father not because they were good-looking but because you saw their radiant love. And this radiant love and beauty is what we are all seeking, not superficial beauty.4

Beauty standards will keep changing.5 They are arbitrary. So you are wasting your time if you think you can secure permanent beauty by chasing them. True, essential beauty is timeless. It never changes and is ever-present. It only needs to be uncovered. To see it requires not better eyesight but a deeper state of consciousness.

May we see the inherent beauty that has never been lost and that is in each of us. May the world be a place where there is no beauty standard and no cosmetic surgery. May the world feel unconditional love and be free of shame. May all shine with radiant love and beauty.

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References

Kowner, R. (2004). When ideals are too "far off": Physical self-ideal discrepancy and body dissatisfaction in Japan. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 130(4), 333–361. https://doi.org/10.3200/MONO.130.4.333-364

In my previous post I talked about the awakening insight that led to a fundamental transformation in how I live. But I did not include an important detail: It took a year for the insight to fully penetrate and transform my way of being. I lived with the new insight while holding onto my attachments. Consequently, I oscillated between egoic and trans-egoic modes of being.

Oscillation is natural for a psychological developmental transition. When a new perspective emerges, an old perspective and its associated lifestyle can persist for some time before they fall away and a new way of life settles in. For those who are interested in theoretical stuff, I’ll explain how cognition, perspective, identity, and motivation develop together in future posts. In this post I’ll recount my recent experience.

After the awakening insight, my attachments did not fall away immediately. Even though I knew they were not aligned with my new perspective and kept me from leaping into a new way of life, I held onto them.

I kept the hope that awakening would revive the career I had abandoned. I left an academic career to pursue enlightenment. I thought that if I achieved enlightenment and shared my insights with the world, the sacrifice I made would be repaid, and a new career could take off. But it didn’t. I shared my insights, but they got few views. At the same time I saw online spaces flooded with spiritual insights written with AI. Some of them were really well-written, weaving valuable insights together with perfect coherence. Why would anyone read my insights when AI could write similar things? My insights would be used for AI training and become part of it, so I would soon be irrelevant, I thought. My hope for a new career was crushed. I am grateful it did. If my insights had met with public recognition, it would have perpetuated my attachment and hence my ego.

Around a month ago, my relationship also ended. My ex-girlfriend and I had different worldviews and were going towards different directions, but we tried to find a compromise instead of letting each other go. I held the selfish hope that if I kept sharing spiritual knowledge with her, she would join me on the awakening journey. At the same time, I tried to suspend my awakening journey to make room for the kind of lifestyle she desired. It goes without saying that such attempts only made both of us constrained and frustrated.

So my biggest attachments collapsed within the same month. I fell into the void where there was nothing to hold onto. But I did not try to escape from the void by searching for new attachments. I stayed. I meditated. It became clear that this was the same place I had been going in and out of since I had the awakening insight. This is my true home, my true nature. Now that my attachments were gone, I could be nowhere else but here and see it clearly, beyond a shadow of a doubt. There emerged a tremendous sense of freedom and power I had never experienced. I understood, not just conceptually but viscerally, that I had never owned nor lost anything and that I would never own nor lose anything. All phenomena are always already liberated. I have always been the infinite Force. All I needed to do was realize it and rest as it.

Now I have no plan for the future. I don’t have the plan to turn my insights into a specific form, into a specific career. I don’t plan to have a writing career. I write now simply because I feel like it and enjoy it. I currently work in a warehouse, but I don’t stop sharing my insights while working there. I transmit them not through words but through intentions. Insights can be shared in infinite forms. They come fully alive when they are free to take any form and not forced into a particular box.

The moral of the story is this: The awakening insight can fully penetrate only when it meets the right condition: the collapse of all remaining hopes and attachments. Until then, it remains fleeting glimpses and peak experiences. Understanding this fact may help but will not grant a smooth and peaceful transition. In fact, you will most likely resist the collapse of your remaining hopes until the last moment. It is impossible to bypass the process with an intellectual understanding. The only way is through.

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We usually start a spiritual journey following a major life failure or crisis: failing to achieve a life purpose or being exhausted from the striving. Spiritual teachers tell us to surrender and let go, but we struggle to do so. We want to be liberated from the suffering of striving, but imagined rewards at the end of striving are too tempting to give up. We now suffer from inner conflict, oscillating between striving and striving not to strive. Why does our striving persist?

The Insight That Stopped My Striving

For several years I was caught in the frustration of not being able to stop striving. I understood from books and recorded talks on spirituality that the key to true peace and happiness is non-striving and the acceptance of what is.1 But I could not stop resisting life and striving for a life purpose. I had a goal to be enlightened and share insights with the world.

During those years I told my friends and family that I would be starting a blog to share my insights, but almost two years passed without writing a single post. They asked me what happened to my plan. I was still striving and resisting what was happening, so I knew I was not enlightened. I thought that if I was not enlightened, whatever I would say would be false and not worth sharing. I did not want to write about something I had never experienced and therefore did not truly understand.

I was frustrated with the slowness of my development almost daily. One day I went to a harbor to clear my frustration. Looking at the sea calmed me. Unlike me, it did not seem to hurry and be frustrated with its own movement. I tried to console myself by thinking, Insights are happening in the course of the universe. And I have no control over how fast they come. Although it made me feel somewhat better, I knew deep down that I would soon be drowning in frustration and self-criticism again: I had said the same thing to myself many times before.

Then, moments later, another thought came: My desire to be enlightened and share insights with the world is also happening in the course of the universe. I (my body) did not create this desire. So I (my body) am not responsible for fulfilling it.

I had had many insights before, but this one was entirely different. It did not merely lead to a modification of my worldview; it led to a fundamental transformation by removing its core. I started to feel less and less like the center of life and stopped seeing everything in relation to my goals and desires. My preoccupation with life purpose and meaning went away, and my striving subsided. A profound sense of peace emerged along with joy and wonder at whatever was happening. I stopped trying to force life and started to flow as life.

The Core of the Ego Is the Bodily Desirer

Before awakening, we are preoccupied with fulfilling our desires. We spend most of our waking hours devising strategies for self-fulfillment and implementing them (Figure 1). As we devise more effective strategies and gain more control over external forces, a sense of self-efficacy grows.2

However, our pursuit is accompanied by constant strain on our body and self-criticism. We strain our head to think hard, but it does not constantly come up with better strategies. We force our body to keep working, but it does not always move. So we criticize our body for failing to be an effective source of thoughts and actions. The constant and perpetual frustration can lead to the realization that our thoughts and actions do not originate from our body but are happening in the course of the universe.

However, dissolving the idea of the body as the thinker and doer will not stop our striving.3 As I explained in the Origin of Meaning Part 2, the ego is the concept of the body as the source of perceived internal forces, including but not limited to thoughts and actions. In fact, the thinker and doer are outer layers of the ego. The core of the ego is the desirer because thoughts and actions serve desires (i.e., desires are always behind thoughts and actions; see Figure 1). Thus, as long as we believe that our desires originate from our body, the core of the ego remains, and we continue to feel cut off from the rest of the world. Accordingly, we remain exclusively identified with our desires and keep striving for self-fulfillment.

Figure 1

Striving for Self-Fulfillment

From Personal Desire to Universal Desire

The impression that the desires and forces of the world originate from different sources (bodies) is compelling. When your desires clash with other forces, it would probably not occur to you that those forces originate from the same source as yours. Indeed, it is one of the most baffling facts of reality that all apparently conflicting desires and forces come from the same source.

Awakening is the realization of one source or ground of all the desires and forces of the world, the underlying unity beneath the appearance of conflict and division (see Figure 3 in the Origin of Meaning Part 2). When this happens, conflicting forces cease to be enemies. You stop trying to defeat or eradicate them. You embrace them as your own, and thus you and they begin to move more harmoniously. The world stops being a zero-sum game.

When you embrace all the desires of the world and act as universal desire or will, you can embrace any outcomes. You fully express desires you experience but are not imprisoned by their outcomes: You do not cling to or resist them. This is full engagement without attachment to outcomes. If anything, desires you experience would be more likely to be satisfied because you are living as the world, and not as someone who is in fight with it.

You no longer carry a sense of lack and strive for self-fulfillment. Your action emanates from a sense of fullness and thus brings forth a fulfilling world.

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In this brief post, I will address perhaps the biggest confusion in spirituality: confusion between the Self and identity.

The Self exists with or without identity. The Self, when being unaware of itself, does not have identity. In other words, identity is self-awareness.

The Self can misidentify itself as the ego, and awakening is the Self becoming aware of its true identity.

So when someone says the Self realizes itself as the Self, notice that the first Self (existence) and the second Self (identity) are different.

But here you need to be careful not to separate identity from the Self because identity is also the Self. The Self transcends but includes identity.

The Self is ever-present. You have always been the Self. When you did not have identity, you were the Self. When you thought of yourself as the ego, you were the Self. After awakening, you are the Self.

But before awakening, you did not know that.

Everyone is the Self, but not everyone is aware of it. When people confuse the two, they say confusing things like “Everyone is enlightened.”

So when we talk about awakening, we mean a change in self-awareness or identity. The Self, on the other hand, does not change. It transcends changes. But because the Self is ever-present, it is never apart from changes.

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When mental representations of forces (i.e., psyches) and corresponding bodies are formed, self-other differentiation becomes explicit and clear-cut: We consciously identify ourselves as psychologically and physically separate entities in the world. The concept of the finite core self (i.e., the ego; with the corresponding symbol “I”) emerges, that is, the source of perceived internal forces in the body (Piaget, 1930/1972, Chapter V, Section 3; Watts, 1957; see Figure 1).2 As we view the needs and desires we experience as originating in our bodies and perceive forces that differ from those needs and desires as originating in other bodies, we develop a conception of reality as a collection of separate and independent desires or wills.3

Figure 1

Images, Symbols, and Concepts of the Finite Self

Note. Self-concept consists of the core self (the source of self-characteristics) and self-characteristics. Self-concept develops as different characteristics are attributed to the core self (e.g., my actions, my desires, my thoughts) and the core self becomes correspondingly more complex (e.g., the doer of my actions, the desirer of my desires, the thinker of my thoughts). Throughout much of psychological development, attention is on developing self-characteristics, and therefore the core self is unexamined. The core self is placed in the head and chest because people commonly locate it in these regions of the body.

It is extremely lonely, scary, and confusing to think of ourselves as separate and independent bodies of needs and desires. It implies that the “outside” world has nothing to do with our needs and desires, and vice versa. Our needs and desires exist by and for themselves, and therefore the purpose of our existence is nothing but to fill the mysterious and absurd lack or void within. And other bodies exist for the same reason as we do. Each body is minding its own business to fill a lack and has no concern for others unless they are useful for filling the lack (not to mention the complete insensitivity and indifference of “inanimate bodies”).4

So we feel we have been thrown into an uncaring and alien world, which we somehow need to rely on to fill a lack. To make matters worse, as our knowledge of the world expands, we feel more and more alienated and vulnerable. With the view of a finite and isolated existence, becoming more intelligent and knowledgeable feels like a curse rather than a blessing.

The Restless and Endless Pursuit of Absolute Security and Lasting Fulfillment

We can suppress the terrifying worldview—the view that we live in an uncaring and alien world—as long as we keep our needs and desires satisfied. This is why we are constantly trying to control and make the world care about us and ensure satisfaction.

Although we make our meaning more and more reasonable to achieve more secure and lasting fulfillment (Loevinger, 1976), and even though we do make progress, our meaning-pursuit remains relentless due to the unchanged view of an alienated existence and identity. We tend to be ruthless and destructive in our endeavors because we see obstacles to our fulfillment as being posed by alien enemies or forces (Watts, 1973). Utopian visions are often followed by atrocities and devastation for this reason. Broader perspectives can come up with more holistic goals and plans, but if such goals and plans are implemented without awareness of our common source and identity, they will bring bigger disaster.

As long as we view ourselves as separate and independent bodies of needs and desires, it is impossible to genuinely do good for the world, no matter how fair and reasonable our ideals may be.5 Beneath our laudable ideals lies a huge void, and we are “helping” the world to fill it (so we care more about being seen as a peace-maker than about making the world peaceful, for example). This is why hypocrisy is commonplace. Recently, we have seen many people come to solve cultural divides, only to exacerbate them. Our extremely lopsided progress over the past decades is also a clear reflection of our alienated identity: We have made substantial progress in connecting us technologically, but hardly in our sense of unity and love.

The conception of an alienated existence not only shapes our perception of the world but actively creates an uncaring and alienating world. The egoic pursuit of absolute security and lasting fulfillment, by its very nature, disconnects us from the world and brings conflict, insecurity, and unhappiness. In other words, the pursuit of meaning is self-defeating and self-perpetuating. Its progress merely suppresses the fear of living in an uncaring and alien world, partially and temporarily. To dissolve the fear, we need to get to the root of the conception of an alienated existence and correct the misattribution of desires (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Egoic Meaning, the Fear of Living in an Uncaring and Alien World, and the Misattribution of Desires

Note. Egoic meaning is a person’s ideal worldview: life in a caring and congenial world, in which their most important needs and desires are securely and lastingly fulfilled (i.e., the opposite of their actual worldview: life in an uncaring and alien world).

The Identification of the True Self and Life as the Meaning of Life

After going through cycles of perpetual frustration, you begin to inquire into the driving force behind your pursuit of meaning: the origin and nature of your desires. You discover that the desires you experience do not originate in your body but arise because of all the desires and forces you see as belonging to other bodies, and vice versa (i.e., dependent origination). You then further realize that since the desires of the self always arise inseparably from those of others, there is one desire ever arising: All the desires of the world are one desire of the Self.6

You mistakenly thought that the desires of the world came from different sources because your attention was drawn to desires in action and their outcomes, which can conflict with each other and thus give the appearance of division and separation. Meanwhile, you were blind to the background and origin of your desires, which reveal one source or ground of all the desires and forces of the world (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The Fundamental Human Blind Spot: One Source or Ground of All the Desires of the World

Note. Since attention is usually directed toward the outcomes of desires, the background and origin of desires is rarely examined.

Once you realize that you are not the self but the Self, which includes but transcends the former, preoccupation with the needs and desires you experience starts to diminish, and the striving for self-fulfillment to subside (Wilber, 2000a).7 Although the expansion of your identity does not make you indifferent to fulfillment or happiness, you cease to seek it in desperation and with grim determination. The expansion has dissolved fearful and restless energy and brought peace and equanimity, which leads to harmonious action naturally and spontaneously. You no longer fight for unity, peace, and harmony. You have become unity, peace, and harmony. Your peaceful presence transforms the world and brings happiness and fulfillment as much as your harmonious action (Hanh, 2017).

You now understand that the world currently does not manifest enough love and care not because it is inherently unloving and uncaring but because it is largely asleep and unaware of its true nature and identity. So although you still see differences in the world, you see them purely in terms of self-awareness, without implying differences in identity or essence. Accordingly, you no longer try to defeat or eradicate the unawakened aspects of the world but invite them to wake up.

You no longer strive for an ideal future in which absolute security and lasting fulfillment are attained and life can finally become meaningful.8 You have stopped trying to escape from life and live fully as life. Life has become the meaning of life.

The pursuit of meaning originates from dissatisfaction with and alienation from life. Although the pursuit itself does not solve the dissatisfaction and alienation, its experience is what allows us to find better ways to relate to life and eventually go beyond it to fully embrace life. The frustration has been guiding us all along to awaken to our true Self and live in true happiness.

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References

Bertenthal, B. I., & Rose, J. L. (1995). Two modes of perceiving the self. In P. Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp. 303–324). Elsevier Science

Cook-Greuter, S. R. (1999). Postautonomous ego development: A study of its nature and measurement. Integral Publishers.

Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2013). Nine levels of increasing embrace in ego development: A full-spectrum theory of vertical growth and meaning making. https://www.cook-greuter.com

Gibson, E. J. (1995). Are we automata? In P. Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp. 3–15). Elsevier Science.

Hanh, T. N. (2017). The art of living: Peace and freedom in the here and now. HarperCollins.

Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development: Conceptions and theories. Jossey-Bass.

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.

Piaget, J. (1971). The child’s conception of the world (J. Tomlinson & A. Tomlinson, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1929)

Piaget, J. (1972). The child’s conception of physical causality (M. Gabain, Trans.). Littlefield, Adams & Co. (Original work published 1930)

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Rochat, P. (1995). Early objectification of the self. In P. Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp. 53–71). Elsevier Science.

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Wilber, K. (2000a). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2000b). Sex, ecology, and spirituality: The spirit of evolution (2nd ed.). Shambhala.

This meta-question about the question of the meaning of life is crucial because virtually all our major problems and conflicts are caused by our restless pursuit of meaning. As we will see, our meaning-pursuit is the very thing that keeps us from what we seek. This does not mean the pursuit is pointless—far from it. However, it will eventually move us beyond it to find what we have been seeking all along.

Our Biggest Fear

Imagine that you lose your meaning of life. What thoughts and feelings arise in you? These thoughts and feelings are your biggest fear, and you create meaning to protect yourself from it.

There is a well-known theory in psychology that deals with the origin of meaning: terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986). According to this theory, death—more precisely, mortality—is our biggest fear, and we create meaning to defend ourselves against the fear.2 However, the theory has been called into question (e.g., Hart, 2019; Treger et al., 2023).3 So let us begin by examining why the fear of mortality is unlikely to be our biggest fear and the origin of our meaning.

Survival is our most basic concern. Since meaning is what we believe to be the most important thing in life, it may seem that concern for survival underlies our pursuit of meaning. However, our most basic concern rarely translates into our most important concern. This kind of reductionistic confusion has been common (see Wilber, 2000).

Our needs initially evolved for survival and reproduction. However, we attach importance to the satisfaction of needs, so that it becomes valuable for its own sake, independently of its survival and reproductive benefits. In fact, our concern for satisfaction (especially the satisfaction of the need to which we attach special importance; i.e., our meaning) often conflicts with and overrides our concern for survival and reproduction. For example, the need for social approval serves survival and reproduction, but those who make social approval their meaning often risk and sometimes even sacrifice their lives to get it.4 For such people, nothing is more important and compelling than the feeling of receiving social approval.

Still, some might argue that some people risk or sacrifice their lives for their meaning because they believe meaning-achievement will grant them an afterlife. However, even here it is questionable whether immortality is what they are really after. It is unlikely that what they have in mind when they risk or sacrifice their lives is an image of themselves merely existing forever in the afterlife. Instead, they are likely imagining themselves enjoying some happy and fulfilling afterlife.

No one desires immortality or permanence per se. If those who believe in an afterlife were purely concerned with living forever, they would not care whether their afterlife would be eternally pleasant (heaven) or eternally unpleasant (hell). But they all wish for heaven. In fact, they would rather not have an afterlife than go to hell and suffer for eternity. The quality of life is our primary concern, and the quantity or duration of life secondary. Only when we consider life, real or imagined, to be enjoyable and desirable, do we wish to have more of it. So the reality of mortality—life having an inevitable end—is not our worst fear. Dissatisfaction and unhappiness in life is.5

We greatly fear dissatisfaction and unhappiness because of our evolved cognition. Cognitive evolution has deepened sensations and enhanced survival and reproduction. However, when cognition is fairly evolved, it makes sensations so intense (i.e., feelings and emotions, as distinguished from sensations) as to begin overriding survival and reproduction. If you examine the pattern of human development (e.g., Loevinger, 1976), you will notice that it is characterized by a better way to live a happy and fulfilling life rather than to survive and reproduce (i.e., we are driven primarily by the desire for happiness and fulfillment).6

Our deep sensitivity causes us to avoid unpleasant feelings and seek pleasant ones. We do all sorts of things that can shorten our lives (e.g., excessive drinking) to escape unpleasant feelings. Some people even commit suicide to escape once and for all.7 When we get stuck in dissatisfaction and unhappiness, we find life meaningless and start questioning whether it is worth continuing. Unless we find a way out of unhappiness (e.g., meaning), our motivation for life will die out.8

Human Unhappiness: What Dissatisfaction Means to Us

So we seek meaning because of our intense fear of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, which results from the deepening of sensations by our evolved cognition. Now, how does our cognition deepen and amplify sensations?

Human cognition is remarkable for its ability to associate and structure memories, symbols, and concepts in hierarchical and meaningful organization (Bickerton, 1995; Bor, 2012).9 This ability enables us to build a vast and complex yet coherent conception of reality, which acts as an interpretive context or frame that enriches and deepens sensations. So we do not experience satisfaction and dissatisfaction as simple sensations of pleasure and pain in the immediate context. We experience them imbued with broad and intricate meanings or implications.10 Thus, we can even experience them imbued with implications for the nature of reality or existence, the implication that we exist in a caring and congenial world or an uncaring and alien world.

Since dissatisfaction is a common experience and phenomenon—even if you are relatively free of it, you see it around you and in the world—it is an ever-looming threat. So we are constantly threatened by the realization that we live in an uncaring and alien world. However, this terrifying realization is not the discovery of the nature of reality but the product of our fundamental misconception of reality.

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References

Bickerton, D. (1995). Language and human behavior. University of Washington Press.

Bor, D. (2012). The ravenous brain: How the new science of consciousness explains our insatiable search for meaning. Basic Books.

Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D. M. G., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist, 65(2), 110–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018413

Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp. 189–212). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9564-5_10

Hart, J. (2019). What’s death got to do with it? Controversies and alternative theories. In C. Routledge & M. Vess (Eds.), Handbook of terror management theory (pp. 65–83). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811844-3.00003-2

Loevinger, J. (1976). Ego development: Conceptions and theories. Jossey-Bass.

Treger, S., Benau, E. M., & Timko, C. A. (2023). Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of terror management theory. PLoS ONE, 18(5), Article e0285267. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285267

Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, and spirituality: The spirit of evolution (2nd ed.). Shambhala.