I have recently started to think about life for the first time. The meaning of life, what I want to get out of it. How I feel. I have been trying to put aside everything I have been taught and believe and try to reanalyze everything. My head is a little messed up at the moment; with new ideas and changing views often. I must say I am not religious or spiritual. I like the scientific method and rational thinking. I use the word "soul" to mean that little something that humans have that machines do not have. Maybe it is just the ability to feel.


"Work hard, play hard" - that was the extent of my guidance with regards to understanding what life is about and how to live it. Everything else I have been taught has been purely academic. Work hard, play hard... what that means to me is getting a career working 9 till 5, then at the weekend get off your head on drugs (such as alcohol). In fact that is what many people do here, and I am made to feel like I am "pissing my life away" by not living like this. I am the strange one.

Western culture teaches inattention. We must always be busy doing something with something to show for it. If you don't you are just lazy. We need our HDTV and our music. Constant input and distraction to stop us being bored.

We are judged to be successful in life if we have achieved things such as good grades at school and a well paying job. Expensive car and lots of material possessions means we are doing well. We think that buying possessions will make us happy. They may do for a short time, but deep down and long term they do not.


So.. what is life for? I want to be happy and my life is for living. I want to experience the richness and the experiences that life has to offer. I want to be content with myself and with life. I do not want to be distracted from life and feeling. The way to help achieve this may be with mindfulness meditation. I am only just starting to explore this. Mindfulness meditation is not about doing anything, it is about simply being. It is about staying present and aware with calm and focused attention. Not just having thoughts and feelings, but being aware of them.



Tell me what you think of this. Agree or disagree?

One could argue that while meditating you are missing our on the living of your life by reflecting on it. To really feel all the emotions life has to throw at you, you would get out there and win and lose and jump and fall and laugh and cry and so on...
If you meditate you will be sitting and thinking about the emotions you feel right now, or have felt before, not living through new ones

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DMA

western culture is bad for your soul

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Hello DMA:

Any culture is bad for your soul if you're at the effect of it. You say Western culture teaches certain things. I'd put it another way. Western culture offers us choices. To me, choices are good for the soul.

In my view, if you live your own life regardless of the culture, you have a shot at finding what you're looking for.

excon

When you are young, you must go out in the world and have many different experiences and many different relationships... live, make mistakes or have successes, learn all you can about people and living life.

The time for reflection is when you are old, and hopefully, wise, from making sense out of all your life experience. :)

Don't try to figure out "the meaning of life" when you are young... go out and experience life. There is nothing to figure out if you don't have all that experience. You can't save yourself from some suffering by being cerebral. :)

It's a question of how conscious you are. To what extent do you let the ebb and flow of popular trend move you? How much faith do you have? Throughout history man has been experiencing life on many different levels-a wise man is someone who knows from experience and isn't afraid to see or sense because it's not motivated from without. To discover yourself and love yourself is, I believe, a main goal of life. The life force is and endless sea of pure love and trust. Life is not about being a social muppet, one who sacrifices all that is most important for an empty and corrosive facsimile. Be careful what you take for "rationality". Life isn't one dimensional and culture doesn't determine reality, but too often it determines what an individual might allow themselves to experience. If you life around a bunch of self-loathing burger joint maniacs, just do yourself a favor and get the courage to trust in a source of absolute love, far above capricious exploitation and nefarious irresponsibilities. You can experience joy, ecstacy, love and trust-real qualities that leave no question about the value of life. The truth is in consciousness. Don't work hard; live smart(with awareness).

I go along with excon on this one.

Experience anything and everything you can in your life.

Use your own judgement, as you grow and mature everything will fall into place, you will know what is right for you and what isn't,choose your path accordingly.

Offer help where you can,also remember to accept help.

Material possesions have no value if you are hollow inside... love and be loved.

Appreciate the world around you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DMA

I have recently started to think about life for the first time. The meaning of life, what I want to get out of it. How I feel. I have been trying to put aside everything I have been taught and believe and try to reanalyze everything. My head is a little messed up at the moment; with new ideas and changing views often. I must say I am not religious or spiritual. I like the scientific method and rational thinking. I use the word "soul" to mean that little something that humans have that machines do not have. Maybe it is just the ability to feel.


"Work hard, play hard" - that was the extent of my guidance with regards to understanding what life is about and how to live it. Everything else I have been taught has been purely academic. Work hard, play hard... what that means to me is getting a career working 9 till 5, then at the weekend get off your head on drugs (such as alcohol). In fact that is what many people do here, and I am made to feel like I am "pissing my life away" by not living like this. I am the strange one.

Western culture teaches inattention. We must always be busy doing something with something to show for it. If you don't you are just lazy. We need our HDTV and our music. Constant input and distraction to stop us being bored.

We are judged to be successful in life if we have achieved things such as good grades at school and a well paying job. Expensive car and lots of material possessions means we are doing well. We think that buying possessions will make us happy. They may do for a short time, but deep down and long term they do not.


So.. what is life for? I want to be happy and my life is for living. I want to experience the richness and the experiences that life has to offer. I want to be content with myself and with life. I do not want to be distracted from life and feeling. The way to help achieve this may be with mindfulness meditation. I am only just starting to explore this. Mindfulness meditation is not about doing anything, it is about simply being. It is about staying present and aware with calm and focused attention. Not just having thoughts and feelings, but being aware of them.



Tell me what you think of this. Agree or disagree?

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Well said I totally agree

Hello People

For me life is about being happy, with yourself, environment and people around you

How to achieve this requires you to live your life.

Meditation is just a part of it, one thing cannot be the sole purpose to your life but many aspects contribute towards the goal

It is only through experiences do we know what we like and don't like, which then forms the wisdom of knowing who we are

Knowing who we are then makes us choose something else, which then interacts with our previous experiences to form a new set of ideas

Thus the cycle continues until the end

As excon says Western world allows you the most freedom of choice.

If you don't like materialistic objects, don't have them

The basics of buddhism is that everything is good in moderation, obsession of one or the other is not good

Meditation or certainly parts of it allow you to recognise what you are feeling without the influence of an outside source, and can be interesting to do, but not only

Once you have tried it and learnt from it you will then make decisions with an extra experience to help form the judgment

I wish you well on your journey, may the path be smooth

No Culture is bad or Gud,

Its only behaviour and trends that are followed can prove to be perilious or good one.

Meditation is great, especially when done correctly. Life is about pace. Fast, slow, doing, thinking. Reflecting will help you enjoy the doing. In some ways, it is the "opposite" of doing, but a better word would be "complement". Oddly enough the first Google definition of complement "A thing that completes or brings to perfection." And so it is with meditation.

Culture certainly "gets in the way", and meditation would certainly help bridge cultures. It transcends language, habits, and all abstraction. It can help teach the essentials of life, so you can understand what this "messed up" feeling is in your head.

Correct meditation is good for some people.

Incorrect meditation probably does as much good for those who do that.

For some, no meditation works well.

Do whatever you feel enriches your life. What feels good for you.

Experience everything you can, learn all you can, fill your head with memories of the diverseness that you experience.

My outlook was always to try anything, unless I was almost sure it would kill me. I've had a full and exciting life.

Western culture made it possible. Thank God you have this culture that allows you the most freedom in the world.

Use it wisely.

Do what you have to to survive, do what you have the freedom to do to live.

No one way is right for everybody. Everybody needs to find their own way to contentment.

Wow... I love what you wrote... that is very insightful! I feel the same way, I am thrilled with business and all the highs and lows it brings. I love that aspect of living life to the fullest. However, to have just that and material success is pathetic. There is a lot more to life, but in trying out a lot of that 'more' there are a lot of limits. Understand your needs, fulfill them and be content is my way of life. It's really simple actually, not being affected by the crowd takes a lot of balls and it is appreciated by the crowd! Spirituality, love of a few dear people and contentment is what keeps me super duper happy. Career is my way of putting my mind to rest, it just gives me something to play around with and not get bored. That's all... but I am good at it. I was sooo confused just some time ago, but every time I pray silently things seem to become more and more clear. That's just something that works for me, meditation is stupid in my opinion if it is not linked to spirituality in some way. Not to confuse spirituality with religion at all. I am going to blog about this, thanks for putting your thoughts beautifully. Fight the tide and dare to be different, be happy and you will live life to the fullest!

I have read all the comments. I am quite surprised how much time has gone by since I made the original post.

I do not feel free at all. Everything is highly restricted. I make a point of walking on the wrong side of the barrier into the road or traffic to cross the road. Just because I will not be told how and when to cross the road. It's too much.

The situation has not really changed in all this time since the original post. What I come back to is... OK, so I can do anything I like. I leave my house. I can turn left or right. I can keep walking. I can walk all the way around the town where I live. I will see houses and trees and maybe a couple of shops. Now what? What is there to do? The answer is along the lines of 'going out'. The culture is to go out, get wasted while listening to dreadful music played at painfully loud volumes, which is also so distorted and poor quality but I seem to be the only one that doesn't like it.

I'm terrible now because I NEED distraction like TV, music, games. Without my computer and internet connection I might as well be in prison. I have done nothing that I alluded to in my original post. I have failed at life. Just now find things to kill time. The months just drift by quickly now. All I have to look forward to is death.

The new ask me help desk doesn't seem to be possible to bump a thread when you respond. So I will make a new thread.

Part 1 is here... https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/philos...ul-182105.html


I have read all the comments. I am quite surprised how much time has gone by since I made the original post.

I do not feel free at all. Everything is highly restricted. I make a point of walking on the wrong side of the barrier into the road or traffic to cross the road. Just because I will not be told how and when to cross the road. It's too much.

The situation has not really changed in all this time since the original post. What I come back to is... OK, so I can do anything I like. I leave my house. I can turn left or right. I can keep walking. I can walk all the way around the town where I live. I will see houses and trees and maybe a couple of shops. Now what? What is there to do? The answer is along the lines of 'going out'. The culture is to go out, get wasted while listening to dreadful music played at painfully loud volumes, which is also so distorted and poor quality but I seem to be the only one that doesn't like it.

I'm terrible now because I NEED distraction like TV, music, games. Without my computer and internet connection I might as well be in prison. I have done nothing that I alluded to in my original post. I have failed at life. Just now find things to kill time. The months just drift by quickly now. All I have to look forward to is death.

Part 2... https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/philos...-a-520828.html

Wow dude it's expected that the situation is not going to change in the west! It's amazing what we define as freedom. I would suggest that you travel to some eastern countries... it helps a lot of people when they do this. :)