Adam Blatner

In a severely multi-dimensional universe, possibilities multiply logarithmically, and that’s nice. But there is a lack of specificity, it’s all swirly and dream-like. So (in this myth) God created a three-dimensional realm with matter and gravity and other features more familiar to us, all of which conspire to generate specificity. Our brains and lives are thus devoted to living a specific, manifested life, not a multi-leveled cloud of potentialities. Or, saying it differently, we must select out of that aforesaid cloud which elements we want to and can bring forth. Aye, there’s the  rub! For among us are those who sense dimly the beyond-realm that is so much greater than our  own. Or perhaps they just “get” this mythic interpretation from contemplating the dream-realm.

That’s the point, though! We are destined to be on one hand a puny shadow of the all-ness that could be, but on the other hand, somebody  needs to make it specific! Specificity is an aesthetic value, leading to tangibility, sustainability, duration, and the ability to remember, to contemplate, to fix one’s attention on some “thing.” (That’s the trouble with the dream-land, no thing-i-ness that holds still!)

The challenge is to express what we can in this reality-plane of specificity, of three-dimensional space-one-dimension-time, mass, energy realm. (But don’t sweat it—it’s not as if that’s the only challenge. There are scores—hundreds—of things we can also take on as challenges: improve my golf game (well, I personally don’t play golf, but it’s a for-example); do the laundry; relax; philosophize; snuggle… etc.

That includes reaching beyond and bringing back whatever we can of the ineffable beyond-dimensional realms. That’s one way to think about art.

So another myth is that our job is to help God be born more, to integrate what we differentiate, and to differentiate further what we have integrated. These myths are a little different but not incompatible. In ordinary language, make it a better world—all the above is just a contemplation  of what “better” involves.

Allee says the meaning of life is to find how you can connect with your own vitality and keep doing it. Even if you keep living on this planet through 97 years of thick and thin.

What do you think is the meaning of life? (You can change your mind minutes or days later, too.)

Addendum: There is no meaning, in the sense of it being “out there.” But we make meaning. We are meaning-making beings, myth-makers, story-tellers.  It’s part of the narrative structure of our minds, it’s archetypal. We think most naturally in terms of stories, not abstractions. So all I’m doing is encouraging you to make more conscious some of the meaning-making activities you do unconsciously.