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When we are young, most of us tend to accept what our culture has taught us with regard to meaning. We tend to accept the meanings and values of the group with which we identify, to accept their definitions for what is truly important, how we should live, what the important goals of life might be. And we set out to achieve these goals for ourselves.

Or alternately, upon reaching the “age of rebellion,” we rebel against our birth culture’s goals and values, and adopt those of an alternate group with which we choose to identify. But in either case, we accept ideas about how to live, what is important, and what constitutes meaning from some group with which we identify.

For many of us, however, as we get older, simply fitting in to someone else’s definitions about the meaning and purpose of our lives starts to feel hollow. We have a growing urge for a direct experience, for a more personal experience of the energy, the clarity, the vitality, and the power in our lives that a more direct understanding of the mystery in which we are embedded might bring. We begin to discover a need to understand more clearly for ourselves what the meaning and purpose of our lives might be.

Yet sometimes when this happens, if we begin to share our concerns with those in our identity group, we find many of them unconcerned with such questions, or even hostile to our questioning. Thus to undertake such a quest can sometimes feel a bit lonely at first.

But if we begin to look more closely, we will begin to notice that much of story, much of poetry, much of the world’s literature, much of philosophy, much of psychology, and much of religion has to do with this search for meaning, has to do with the question of what we human beings should do with our lives after our basic necessities have been met.

So if you should start to consider this question of meaning in your own life more carefully, you should know that you are engaged in an enterprise that is at the very heart of the human experience. From the earliest times right down to today, many of the best and brightest among us have been trying to understand what it means that we find ourselves here, alive, on this planet.

Many of the greatest minds and hearts that humankind has produced have been questioning, seeking, trying to understand what life is about, what the meaning and purpose of life might be.

So if we do begin to look closely at human history, we quickly discover that we are in very good company. Going back even before the time of recorded history, we discover stories and signs that suggest our earliest ancestors were trying to understand for themselves what life was about, and how they could live it meaningfully. Every culture we know about in prehistory had a creation myth that was an attempt to answer such questions, and to pass along those answers to the tribe.

Or visiting the Neolithic caves of Europe, or the rock outcroppings of Africa, one discovers paintings and drawings from as much as 50,000 years ago that arose from a concern with something beyond the basic necessities of life. In order to create these beautiful and haunting drawings in the caves of Europe, the creators had to go to a great deal of trouble. They had to find a dependable source of light to take back into the caves in order to do this work. They had to create paints and instruments with which to work. Sometimes they even had to create scaffolding in order to access spots beyond their natural reach. And they clearly devoted a great of the time of their lives to this process.

Why did they do this? We will probably never know for sure, but my guess would be that it had to do with their attempts to make sense of their lives, why they were here, what life was about. Why else would they have gone to so much trouble? The best argument for this connection is simply that human beings have been doing such things through all of the history we do know about for these reasons, so similar efforts by our earliest kin create a natural continuity with what we do know. Other arguments can and have been created for their origin, but all such arguments require us to “presume” to know what was in the minds of these peoples, rather than assuming that we can know about them precisely because they were our ancestors, and were therefore somewhat like us.

And make no mistake, much of the human history we do know is clearly about a search meaning, an attempt to find what is truly important in life, to understand how we should live and what we should value. All of the world’s religions certainly are about this. What was Jesus teaching if not how to live and what was important? Why did the Buddha leave his wife and young son, if not to search for answers to these questions for himself? Why did the early Christians go to the desert or the mountain, if not to contemplate these questions for themselves? Why else did Moses go to the mountain, or the wandering sadhus in India leave their homes, or Mohammed meditate in his cave, or tribal peoples tell their creation myths, or Confucius provide his teachings, or Hebrew scholars study the Torah, or native people’s everywhere perpetuate their ceremonies and rituals?

Such examples could go on endlessly, of course. But this list is long enough to convey the centrality of this quest in the world’s spiritual traditions. The argument is not that this is the only thing that religions have been about, or that such a quest is religion’s only function in our lives, or that the only reason someone participates in a religious or spiritual tradition is to undertake such a search for themselves. Far from it. But it is to argue that many of the founders of the world’s religions, and their most prominent leaders and exemplars, did undertake just such a quest, and that their experiences became the heart of the religious tradition. And further, that many of the best and brightest in each religion of the world did undertake just such a quest for themselves.

Moving to the world of philosophy, again we find an overwhelming list of the giants of human thought who directly and specifically addressed these questions about life and its meaning. This search was at the heart of the work of Socrates, and Plato, and Plotinus, and Augustine, and Lao Tzu, and Hildegard, and Kant, and Kierkegaard, and Emerson, and Spinoza, and Avicenna, and Nietzche, and, well, most of the great philosophers of all time.

In the article on The Role of Art, the relationship to these questions and this search in the world of art is discussed at length, so suffice it to quote here Huston Smith’s pithy phrase, “art is spiritual technology.” 

Then there is science. For much of human history, science was motivated by just these questions. Scientists were often philosophers as well as scientists, and their search for knowledge was motivated by their own urge to understand the mysteries of life—why we are here, what life is about, how we came to be, how we should live. As Albert Einstein captured it, “I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.” To make his point even more emphatically, and to point to the absolute necessity of a healthy relationship between our thinking minds—our objective reality—and our subjective lives and truths—our meanings, values, and life purposes—Einstein went so far as to declare, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

In modern times, one group of scientists has taken a very materialistic point of view, and from that stance has tried to dismiss or diminish the importance of our subjective questions and issues. They have argued that the subjective dimension is somehow created by, and therefore can be understood through, a materialistic explanation of the world. But this was certainly not the belief held by most scientists throughout human history, and it is probably not the point of view of most scientists working today.

Again, Einstein is probably much more representative of the point of view of most scientists—through the ages as well as today—when he says, “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.” No wonder he went on to declare that, "Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.  What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus stands for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring and constructive mind."

Turning to the world of psychology, we quickly discover that the attempt to understand what a meaningful life might be, and how one might best live into that, is at the heart of much of the field. Psychology also deals with managing serious mental illness, with trying to alter dysfunctional behavioral patterns, and with short-term fixes for specific problems—all worthwhile endeavors. But a very high percentage of the people who consult psychologists, and therapists of all kinds, are trying to discover more clearly for themselves what is really important to them, how to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life, to what and to whom they should devote the time and attention of their lives—all questions in the subjective domain of meanings, life purposes, and values.

For this reason, many of the most famous and important psychologists devoted their work primarily to this end. As Ken Wilber says, “In psychology, where the objective approach produces varieties of behaviorism, the subjective approach shows up in the various schools of depth psychology, such as psychoanalysis, Jungian, Gestalt, phenomenological, existential, and humanistic—not to mention the vast number of contemplative and meditative psychologies, East and West alike.” In other words, much of what we think of as psychology is concerned with an attempt to answer the subjective questions of our lives, the very questions that have always been and still are at the heart of what I would call the “Quest for Meaning.”

After many years of work with thousands of clients, and carrying this theme to its logical conclusion, Carl Jung observed, “A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul that has not discovered its meaning.” What if this were true? What if our neuroses are a call to find greater meaning in our lives? Then, psychology would more and more take on the work of helping us see that much of our suffering is caused by our inability to discover, to this point in our lives, what is really important to us, what we are called to do with the time and energy we have been given. And our neurotic suffering would not be something to be avoided or feared, but would become the guidance and motivation we need to help us find where we are stuck, where we are misguided, what we need to let go of, and to what important task we should give the time and attention of our lives.

This is not to say that we can avoid all suffering in our lives, but to say that—as we discover what is truly important to us, and begin to live more fully from that—we will gradually let go of our “neurotic” sufferings, the suffering that comes from our misperceptions about ourselves and about life. As we gradually do this, we will find ourselves opening more and more into the full potential of this life that we have been given.

Many other examples could be given of those throughout human history who have undertaken their own quest for meaning in many different forms. We read in the great Russian novels about the Salons of the 19th century that sprang up in the cities of Russia, places where men and women gathered to discus the great issues of their time, and to try to understand the crucial life questions for themselves. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in Europe, groups of people gathered at cafes and drawing rooms, debating and discussing art, literature, and the meaning of life. In New England in 18th and 19th century America, Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau carried on their discussions of these questions in public forums and private parlors. Out of such currents arose the Chautauqua movement, meetings in town squares and public meeting halls where people gathered to hear speakers and to discus questions of life and living.

Examples could of course be given from many other cultures besides that of the west. Jewish scholars have for millennium used discussion, and often written commentary, to explore the questions of what we are doing here on this earth, and how we should live. In medieval Japan, and continuing to this day, the practice grew up among Buddhist monks to make journeys to other monasteries, there to discus and debate their understandings of life—in order to sharpen their own understanding, and to see what they might learn from others. Wandering Sufis would do the same across the Middle East. Rather than continue to enumerate examples, suffice it to say that this impulse is constantly arising in people of all cultures, all walks of life, all religious backgrounds.

All this being true, why is it necessary to point out the importance and persistence of this urge to seek, to question, to grapple with life’s central questions? The reason is simple: there is a counter force that must be overcome if one is to attempt an answer to these questions for oneself. In every culture, there is a strong force which asks, often demands, that we go along with what we have been told, that we simply accept the rules, values and meanings that we were given when we were growing up—by family, community, tribe, or church—and to fit in, conform to those around us, not make waves of any kind.  The message in modern western culture is often to focus your time and attention on getting ahead, getting a raise and a promotion at your job, or to get a better job. Or the message is to rise through the rungs of the latter of your social group, whatever that might be, and to avoid all questions that might disrupt that upwardly mobile climb.

The pressure, the force of this demand on us varies from group to group, but most everyone finds themselves carried along by this pressure for at least portion of their lives. And this is not all bad. As was said earlier, we need to learn to live within a culture, to develop and test our skills and our abilities within some social group. And most of the people around us will likely be engaged in this endeavor at any given time. Thus if we start to grapple with other questions, they might not understand what we are up to, and might even well us to stop such questioning and get back on the bandwagon, the treadmill that “everyone” is on.

When and if this happens, if you decide to begin your own Quest, that is the moment to remember that that you are in very good company. It is for this reason that all the examples of people who have undertaken this journey were sited above. So if you feel the urge to ask, to seek answers for yourself, to grapple with these fundamental life questions, then always remember, YOU ARE IN VERY GOOD COMPANY!