I was asked by Excellence Reporter to answer the question: “what is the meaning of life?” I tormented myself all evening and night, remembering how I have lived and what I had in my life, and what I saw as meaningful in this life. With great surprise I […]
*** ~AUGUST TURAK is a highly successful entrepreneur, award-winning author, speaker, and contributor for Forbes and the BBC. He is the founder of the educational nonprofit the Self Knowledge Symposium Foundation (SKSF). As a frequent guest, Turak has been living and working alongside the monks of Mepkin Abbey […]
Excellence Reporter: Ping, what is the meaning of life? Ping Fang: This has been the question pondering in my heart since childhood. What is the purpose of being human? Is there any meaning to it? I was born in the time of the Cultural Revolution in China – […]
Excellence Reporter: Zeenat, what is the meaning of life? Zeenat Potia: I see open, receptive palms. Both receiving and offering the gifts of our collective human existence. For me, this may look like hearing my daughter’s laughter, feeling the warm monsoon rains on my face, allowing myself to […]
The paradox is — we want happiness but we get suffering, and that’s the curse of our desire for (instant) happiness. Modern times are the epoch of the search for happiness and that’s perfectly fine, but when it is not based on meaning, our search very soon becomes […]
On Feb. 13, 1987, I was shown, in a vision, what the purpose of life is and the lesson has never left me. It happened while I was driving my car on my way to work in the city of Vancouver, Canada. I was at the time registered […]
Excellence Reporter: Narayan, what is the meaning of life? Narayan Helen Liebenson: A friend once had an awakening experience and went to a master to ask whether this experience meant he was now enlightened. The master asked my friend: “do you have complete confidence in the indestructible nature […]
Excellence Reporter: Igor, what is the meaning of life? Igor Kufayev: Speaking ultimately, Life, as an expression of Being, is beyond any meaning we can ascribe to it. That does not mean that Life is meaningless, but rather that it has as many meanings as there are levels of […]
Excellence Reporter: Barbara, what is the meaning of life? Barbara Harris Whitfield: I had a near-death experience many years ago in 1975. The highlight was what is called “The Life Review.” There I saw a cloud with thousands of bubbles and in each bubble was an event from […]
Excellence Reporter: T Proctor, what is the meaning of life? T Proctor: The meaning of life is nothing. And from that nothing comes everything. There are still songs to sing, dances to dance and hearts to be touched. There are stars to be born and constellations to be […]
Excellence Reporter: Shaila, what is the meaning of life? Shaila Catherine: Many years ago a friend said to me, ‘It matters what I do today because I am trading a day of my life for it.’ This became a daily inquiry that helped me overcome a lifelong tendency: […]
Excellence Reporter: Sarah, what is the meaning of life? Sarah Taylor: What is the meaning of life? We could go at this from all sorts of angles, most of which won’t really matter unless they resonate and help you move through the world with presence, heart, and the […]
“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense […]
Excellence Reporter: Dirk, what is the meaning of life? Dirk Oellibrandt: We humans often first look for the meaning of life in order to become aware of what life really is. This will lead us first to self-consciousness. We need meaning if we miss direct experience. As soon […]
Before we can ponder the meaning of life, we must first recognize that life is not outside of us, or something happening to us. We are life. The life we live and the life we are, are not two separate existences. When we obstruct this union, we look […]
Excellence Reporter: Bhante G, what is the meaning of life? Bhante Gunaratana: In my view the meaning of life is understanding life as it actually is and liberate oneself from repetition of birth and death. One must understand that between birth and death there are moments of pleasure. […]
Excellence Reporter: Mark, what is the meaning of life? Mark Van Buren: This question has produced billions of answers over the many years of human existence, which makes one think, could there be an inherent ONE meaning everyone can align with? I’ll be honest, I’m not going to […]
Excellence Reporter: Annette, what is the meaning of life? Annette Kaiser: The meaning of life is to become a conscious human being, that loves, what is. At the core this is a way of living, understanding the essence of human existence: “Love says, I am all, Wisdom says, […]
Excellence Reporter: Leonard, what is the meaning of life? Leonard Jacobson: There are many levels to my answering this question. At the most superficial level, I would say there is no meaning to life. We are born. We live our life and remain unconscious for most of it. […]
Excellence Reporter: Mary, what is the meaning of life? Mary Reed: It would be easy to answer this question by saying that the only meaning of life is that which we give it. But as a mystic, the question feels a little like asking, “Does your mother know […]
There is a story of a student who was with his teacher. And his teacher was teaching him all these truth principles, and how to awaken and become free, but the student kept asking: “Master how long will it take me to get there? How long will it […]
Excellence Reporter: Karsten, what is the meaning of life? Karsten Ramser: The meaning of life is connected to our state of consciousness, therefore it is an individual expression. There does not exist an objective meaning of life. It is senseless, useless and a waste of time to discuss […]
Excellence Reporter: Andreas, what is the meaning of life? Andreas Müller: There is no answer to that question, because there is no one who could answer it. And there is no answer to that question, because there is no such thing as “life” in the first place. All […]
Excellence Reporter: Fred, what is the meaning of life? Fred Davis: The meaning of life is whatever you assign to it. Your life purpose at this moment is to read this sentence. Meaning and purpose both beg the question, “To who?” Life has no inherent meaning or purpose. […]
Excellence Reporter: Rebekah, what is the meaning of life? Rebekah Maroon: My first thought is, what does that question even mean? We automatically think that this question is valid, that there is actually some kind of conceptual meaning that we can find, and then kind of stamp it […]
The meaning and essence of life is to live with Truth, Freedom, Creativity and Happiness! Is to unfold our potential in all aspects of our existence, to create inner harmony and reach a higher state of consciousness; to explore life, learn from experiences, develop our capacities (physical, emotional, […]
Knowing oneself fills our lives with meaning, so when we ask ourselves, “where do we come from?” we respond — to ourselves; and when we ask, “where are we going?” we respond — to ourselves. When answering the “meaning of life” question we can answer in a thousand […]
“Just one more moment, a single moment of rest in the wind… and another woman will conceive me” >> Khalil Gibran, “The Prophet” << What is life? Every human being, at one time or another in his or her existence, raises this question. But do you have an […]
Excellence Reporter: Gilbert, what is the meaning of life? Gilbert Schultz: What is the meaning of life, other than this immediate self aware presence, this unmitigated livingness? Life is spontaneous. The word spontaneous means uncaused. The question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is based upon an assumption […]
Excellence Reporter: Paul, what is the meaning of life? Paul Hague: The meaning of Life, in my experience, is to realize the exquisite sense of mystical Wholeness, which is the True Nature of all of us. I have come to this realization through the creative power of Life, […]
All events in life are shaped according to the divine plan. What is bound to happen will happen. What is not to happen cannot be brought about by any human effort. On this point Ramana was quite categoric. When Deva Raja Mudaliar questioned him as to whether only important […]
Excellence Reporter: Swaha, what is the meaning of life? Vasant Swaha: The ultimate meaning of life is to realize that you are an expression of God’s love, peace, light. Therefore, be a light in the world. To live as consciously as you can in every moment, and that will […]
Excellence Reporter: Prajnaparamita, what is the meaning of life? Prajnaparamita: This question contains an assumption: life has meaning, we just need to figure out what that is. But does life even have a meaning? Life just lives. It is neutral in itself, expressing itself as it does, in […]
Transforming Difficulties Into Triumphs and How I Came to Create a Self-Help Workbook to Help Others Discover Their Unique Life Meaning and Purpose In 2012 I attended an introductory course in Logotherapy at the University of South Africa. There I met the course leader Teria Shantall and I […]
Excellence Reporter: Dr. Whitney, what is the meaning of life? Leanne Whitney: When the living is in the moment to moment of the body, the fullness of the body and its presence is known. Here. Now. In a world where our musculature and nervous system interacts invisibly with […]
“You’ve got to turn around, Bodhi,” the woman said with a chuckle to her dog. Bodhi was stuck in place, his leash wrapped around a pole. Yet he continued to pull forward anyway. In this situation, even the smartest dogs can’t seem to grasp that continuing in the […]
Excellence Reporter: Regina, what is the meaning of life? Regina Dawn Akers: The meaning of life seems to vary by individual, since each person gives her own meaning to the events and circumstances in her life. Yet, if we look deeper, I think each person ultimately wants the […]
*** ~Allan Morelock My birth took place January 7, 1949 on a small rural farm in East Tennessee, and somehow the pure memory of my spiritual nature was retained as the process of incarnating into human form unfolded. As a child, I remembered myself being free from the […]
This is a question that has come to me many times in different ways. What is the meaning of this life? Or rather, what gives this life meaning? In my early twenties, I met my first spiritual teacher Eunice. She spoke of “being a soul in continuous life […]
Excellence Reporter: Zahir, what is the meaning of life? Zahir Khan: To know thyself is the meaning of life I would say. We can get caught up in so many of the dramas and stories of life that we don’t stop, even for an instant to contemplate or […]
Prior to inquiring into this question, let us first acknowledge that it is impossible to discern or describe the totality of the meaning of life in conceptual terms, from the standpoint of Mind, regardless of the length, depth or breadth of our expose. The best one might do, […]
Excellence Reporter: Andrew, what is the meaning of life? Andrew Cohen: The meaning we give to life is entirely dependent upon the self we understand ourselves to be. All the thoughts that I share here about the meaning of life are given in the context of the different […]
Except in the narrowest sense, the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is ludicrous. That is unless you can clearly define “life.” Is life biological? Social, spiritual, political? Is it all of these? None of these? You see? When we finally define life for ourselves, does our […]
We are born. We eat sweet potatoes. Then we die. ~Easter Island proverb What if we fully faced the fact we are going to die. That there is a physical end to this life we are living. And what if we embraced the profound uncertainty of not knowing […]
“And she lifted her head, looking out the window. The Sun shone directly into her eye with just a slight angle and she chose not to waver in the face of the strong light, but to let the suns rays penetrate her vision and give her Eyes for […]
Excellence Reporter: J.Jaye, what is the meaning of life? J. Jaye Gold: Questions of this nature can really only be explored, not answered. For this inquiry, let’s explore the purpose of an individual human life. It is fruitful to examine human life as a “process,” rather than a “product,” […]
Excellence Reporter: Dorothy, what is the meaning of life? Dorothy Rowe: Life is the spark of Divine essence within all things, the Source of creation, simultaneously manifest and unmanifest. This spark of life is self illuminating. As such it appears as the phenomenal forms of the world. We […]
What is the meaning of life? I silently laughed as I read the question. Where was Socrates when I needed him? But I don’t need Socrates to have an opinion, and, of course, Socrates, true to form, would expect me to answer the question myself. That’s the problem […]
Excellence Reporter: Pernilla, what is the meaning of life? Pernilla Lillarose: I would like to answer this question from 2 angles: What is the meaning of life to me? What is the meaning of life itself? The answer will depend on who this ‘me’ is and what life […]
This question was Present as far back as I remember… possibly lifetimes. After much searching and eliminating, not this, not that… The meaning revealed itself to be at the deepest core of all Being. The True meaning and whole point of life is not to be found on the […]
Excellence Reporter: Daniel, what is the meaning of life? Daniel Schmidt: Only the limited mind wants the meaning life. The ego structure wants to know, but what we really want at a deeper level is the full experience of being alive. The flowering of human consciousness is realized […]
Excellence Reporter: Gail, what is the meaning of life? Gail Brenner: This is a beautiful, fierce, and illuminating question, and here’s my story about it. For over 20 years, I lived in the painful process of struggling to discover the purpose of my life. The days seemed to […]
Excellence Reporter: Reb Brian, what is the meaning of life? Reb Brian Yosef Schachter-Brooks: Let’s look at Deuteronomy, 11:26-28 רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה “See, I set before you today blessing and curse” This is the message to us in every moment: life is both blessing and […]
Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? Meaning and purpose are among life’s biggest questions. The answers are not simple and require self-exploration. Meaning is what we give to our experiences. How we interpret and relate to life leads to the […]
Excellence Reporter: Mani, what is the meaning of life? Mani: When I hear this question, I feel a warmth in my heart, not my physical heart but the heart of my being, which I call my Soul. Each Soul is the repository of the essence of many lives and […]
Right at your heart! That’s where we start! Somebody recently sent me an early birthday present. It must have been very urgent for me to receive because it was four months early. It was the story of a man who raised goslings from the egg to flight. So, […]
Excellence Reporter: Rev. Peter, what is the meaning of life? Rev. Peter Panagore: Love is key. Love is the meaning of life. We keep the love we give away, and we keep the love given to us. Love is the treasure of Heaven. Give love freely. The flow […]
Excellence Reporter: Mukti Apollo, what is the meaning of life? Moksha Mukti Apollo: This question has become a cliche, and have been answered many times by many so called authorities and experts. So, I propose metaphysical yet scientific approach to answer this question, and I’ll answer in two […]
The evolution of our souls follows these steps upwards towards enlightenment (not necessarily in this exact order and some happen simultaneously). To be read from the bottom of the page upwards… The Absolute / the Nature of Reality is Good / Pure Being /Enlightenment ↑ Discovery of Nature […]
Excellence Reporter: Gloriji, what is the meaning of life? Gloriji: I don’t know, but I can share from my experiences. In our relative experience of being in the world, our search for the meaning of life begins as we mature. We’re acutely aware of the pain and suffering in […]
Excellence Reporter: James, what is the meaning of life? James Waite: We often go looking for meaning in all the wrong places. Indeed, there are no right places, outside of our self, to find real meaning. Meantime, it seems most of us are launched by our cultures and […]
A 21st century scientific revolution is underway that will transform our understanding of our Universe at every level and crucially at the scale of our everyday lives. Even more important, by reconciling scientifically-based evidence with universal spiritual experience, it will revolutionize our understanding of the nature of reality itself. It’s revealing that […]
In answering a question like this I think that instead of answering with an opinion, it’s best to look together and try to come to know something that is undeniably true, for all of us. Otherwise, one person’s opinion is no more or less valid than another’s, and […]
Excellence Reporter: Tree, what is the meaning of life? Tree: The ultimate meaning of life is to discover who we are. To have an embodied experience of, “I Am That.” We are all searching for this either consciously or unconsciously or is it searching for us. To experience […]
Notice that the word “love” has no intrinsic meaning. Instead, someone chose to correlate the word “love” with kindness and compassion, two concepts that already existed. From that point forward, the word “love” could be used in a practical way as long as everyone agreed with this definition. […]
Excellence Reporter: Alice, what is the meaning of life? Alice Grist: I write a lot about the dirty and the divine, about how one is lost without the other. That holds true to this question, that question about the meaning of life that we find ourselves contemplating, usually […]
Excellence Reporter: Swami Khecarantha, what is the meaning, or the purpose of life? Swami Khecarantha: The purpose of life is to discover the ultimate truth, that God dwells within you as your Self. It is the direct experience that all of life is simply One Thing, beyond all […]
Excellence Reporter: Dr. Gustin, what is the meaning of life? Kate Gustin: To ask any question about meaning is to venture into narrative, language, story, mental constructs. The mind is absolutely fabulous at generating answers to such inquiries; it will pull from individual history, from culture, from personal […]
Excellence Reporter: Jan, what is the meaning of life? Jan Esmann: Asked that question I at once thought you could write a dissertation about it or nothing at all. Both replies would be equally meaningless, but allow me to summarize my experience contemplating that very question for 59 […]
Excellence Reporter: Amoda, what is the meaning of life? Amoda Maa: There’s a precious pearl inside each of us. It’s so easy to ignore in the pursuit of more profitable acquisitions in life, such as finding the perfect partner or rising to the top of our profession or […]
Excellence Reporter: Vera, what is the meaning of life? Vera Helleman: This is a question that people ponder about when the primary necessities of life are fulfilled and an itching feeling says: ‘what now?’… ‘how do I make my life meaningful?’. There is an inner longing in each […]
Excellence Reporter: Michael, what is the meaning of life? Michael Speight: Of course if one is a fan of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” the answer is “42” and we could just leave it there and just enjoy the fun of that. Life is an opportunity. According […]
Excellence Reporter: Hans, what is the meaning of life? Hans Wilhelm: I once found this poem on a Starbuck coffee cup that explains the meaning of our life perfectly: Life is a school for angels. Love is the teacher, so you do your homework without fear. Death is […]
Excellence Reporter: Michael, what is the meaning of life? Michael Roads: In the most simple terms possible, the meaning of life for humanity is the meaning of you. Truly, that’s it . . . in a nutshell. Of course, being a complicated species this statement is far too […]
Excellence Reporter: Rev. Bill, what is the meaning of life? Rev. Bill McDonald: I have given much thought and time to contemplate that very question ever since I was a child facing death in the hospital at eight years of age. I had “died” in my hospital bed all […]
Excellence Reporter: Mr. Harsanyi, what is the meaning of life? Gabor Harsanyi: To answer this question in the most loving way… without making anything right or wrong, I refer to a quote from my book “Functional Silence: De-mystifying Awakening for the Spiritually Exhausted”: “Bees love to fly from […]
Excellence Reporter: Daniel, what is the meaning of life? Daniel Moler: Growing soul. But, what is soul and how do we grow it? We often think of the soul as an individual thing, a part of our personal identity. However, in the shamanic arts there is another interpretation. Soul is […]
Excellence Reporter: Hans, what is the meaning of life? Hans Laurentius: In my view life has no meaning in an absolute sense. This however does not mean that your life cannot be more or less meaningful. To be is a challenge, and to be in a fully grown […]
Since I was a young child I asked myself this question ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ Why am I here?’ What the hell is going on here? I was surrounded by facades and people pretending to know a lot of apparently very important stuff. There were […]
“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater […]
Excellence Reporter: Jacqueline, what is the meaning of life? Jacqueline Straub: I’m a fighter. I fight for reforms within the catholic church and for years I have been committed to structural change. Since my youth I have wanted to become a priest in the catholic church. That is […]
Excellence Reporter: Randy, what is the meaning of life? Randy Taran: We are perched on a planet, spinning in the galaxy amidst unimaginable vastness, and at the same time we are also the center of our very own universe. When we are in our head, we feel the […]
In the course of several decades giving public lectures on language, mind, and human nature, I have been asked some mighty strange questions. Which is the best language? Are clams and oysters conscious? When will I be able to upload my mind to the Internet? Is obesity a […]
When it comes to spiritualism and mediums, the art of fortune telling and so on, there is often a lot of preconceptions people have. Take scrying, for example. The art of scrying – the act of gaining insight or revelation by becoming in touch with your unconscious mind […]
Excellence Reporter: Aberjhani, what is the meaning of life? Aberjhani: Years of meditating on that huge question have led me to believe we ourselves are the meaning of life in the sense that we are born with an innate ability to endow it, Life, with meaning. This […]
Excellence Reporter: Acharya, what is the meaning of life? Acharya Shunya: The meaning of life for me is the search for life. To not merely lead the life mechanically — we are born, we grow up, we are given goals by society to meet, be it earning wealth, […]
Excellence Reporter: Cara, what is the meaning of life? Cara Lopez Lee: Describing the meaning of life feels like trying to describe an orgasm. It can’t mean much to someone else until they’ve experienced it themselves, at which point they’ll likely lose interest in reading someone else’s account […]
Excellence Reporter: Mira, what is the meaning of life? MiraMichelle: Life has a particular resonance that is universal for us all. We meet this resonance daily and experience what is there to be experienced. Sometimes we rejoice in that what is and sometimes we despair. Whichever way the pendulum […]
Excellence Reporter: Sonia, what is the meaning of life? Sonia Roberts: Legacy is fundamental to what it is to be human. Legacy, not meaning money and property, but rather something you can leave behind to the people who come after to enrich their lives, the community and society […]
Excellence Reporter: Betsy, what is the meaning of life? Betsy Damon: If life is a miracle, then the meaning of life is to be in the miracle: Alive, awake and aware. If you see someone who needs a helping hand, help them. If you have an extra piece […]
Excellence Reporter: Marybeth, what is the meaning of life? Marybeth Holleman: I am five years old, and I am sitting in the solid branches of my dogwood tree, the one that blooms pink flowers every spring. Up here, the breeze tickling my bare arms, the sunlight warming the […]
Respect the woman, for she is the mother of the universe, and all the truth of divine creation lies in her. She is the basis of all that is good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. On her depends the whole existence […]
Excellence Reporter: Shifu Jerry, what is the meaning of life? Shifu Jerry Erickson: This is a question I believe we have all contemplated on many, many times throughout our lives. As for myself, I have studied and traveled extensively to find answers about life, spirituality, comparative religion, healing […]
We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved. Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world. I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look […]
How often in tired, depressed moments we ask, what is the meaning of life? We only ask this question when we don’t feel there is any. When we are at peace, happy, connected, we forget to ask this question because we are busy doing what we were born […]
Excellence Reporter: Father Charles, what is the meaning of life? Fr. Charles Ogada: The tree lives by the unconditional giving of its very ESSENCE – which is its fruits. The life of the Sun has meaning only by the unconditional giving of its very essence. The River flows […]
Excellence Reporter: Jeff, what is the meaning of life? Jeffery Olsen: I died in 1997. That’s right, I died. I left my body as a result of a horrible automobile accident which crushed both my legs, causing the amputation of my left leg above the knee, along with […]
Excellence Reporter: Dr. O’Driscoll, what is the meaning of life? Jeff O’Driscoll: In life, and particularly as an emergency physician, I’ve learned that every scrap of human experience has value. Every shred of every encounter with every soul teaches me something. Each interaction yields an opportunity to connect […]
One day, guests came to the Master. They were not his disciples, but had heard a lot about his wisdom. The Master’s disciples also gathered to listen to the conversation. When everyone was conveniently located in the garden after a delicious lunch, the guests began to ask the […]
Excellence Reporter: Dr. Antonov, what is the meaning of life? Vladimir Antonov: For me, this question is not one which is “idle” or has “no answer”, as is sometimes said. I’m 72 now. But I had already started thinking deeply on this subject when I was just in my […]
