Like a large part of humanity, do you need to believe in a God or in a transcendent Universe with multiple faces (deceased, heroes, angels, energies, light rays, etc.)?
Do you think more like a scientist and your representation of the universe reflects the immensity of a cosmos always in transformation?
The researches in depth psychology try to prove that the need to make a representation of the universe corresponds to the necessity to give a sense to its existence. This human life, indeed, compared to the billions of years which preceded it and to the billions of years which will succeed it, is very short. Our consciousness knows deep down its timelessness. To find the meaning of our life registers it as necessary and useful. This stardust thus justifies its quest for meaning and its own questioning spirit.
In my experience, Louis-Jacques Dorais, professor emeritus of religious anthropology at Laval University, noted that for some people, transcendence (defined as a power intervening in human life and giving it meaning) could be conceived first and foremost as a matter of immanence (i.e., linked to the very nature of the universe in which it manifests itself), without any absolute distinction between the material and the spiritual, between experience and faith. (Revue Relations, Autumn 2021, No. 814)
When you ask yourself about the MEANING of your life, your answers will be concretely related to your daily life. Transcendence finds its final meaning in your life choices. Conversely, your choices are intimately linked to the meaning you give to your life. This meaning, you draw it with regard to your faith, your belief whatever it is. This is why it is so important to question yourself, to try to articulate and understand as often as possible why you choose this behavior or the other.
Only 30 years ago, North America still offered a path of faith that connected people to each other. Then the cultural revolution burned down, debased, destroyed, moved or renamed this symbolic building of the Church.
Today, what answers could be proposed to your search for transcendence?
Do you consider yourself free of belief in a world emptied of these religious symbols?
Around which transcendent concepts could your quest for meaning be organized?
A: Many answers as many steps on the Compostela path of inner search.
Our North American world has thrown away false Catholic beliefs. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the search for meaning. Everyone, one day or another, usually on a day of great suffering, looks for the beliefs that will bring meaning to their lives.
But what does our broken world offer us?
Very often, unfortunately, counter ways of the old catholic sectarian regime like: the Bible of the angels, the revelation of such and such, the voice of this medium or this clairvoyant and his connection to some saint, this visionary, this guru with strange words, this pendant, this stone, this shaman, this beneficent witch, this tipi, this way of thinking, etc. Far be it from me to criticize these esoteric movements which more often than not do good and bring a certain consolation to our mourning, tears and dualities. However, let's go further by questioning certain words, certain sources of knowledge, certain egotistical and mercantile acts and behavior.
Let us know that the true answer to our approach will require a really authentic work on ourselves. These realizations will be painful and will require a long-term effort and personal investment.
B: Freedom has a price.
In this meaningless world, most of us enjoy a certain freedom. This freedom of conscience allows us to go from one school to another, to start as many times as we like on our path of conscience, to believe in this one day and that the next. It likes us to tell stories that make us feel noble and great. In this way our self-esteem and self-confidence seem to be protected. We then think that we are always right. This feeling forces us not to question ourselves. And as the Zen sages say, it is when the real tiger is there that we recognize the truth of the danger we should have prepared for!
Unfortunately, these personal stories are too often the veneer to hide our real fears, our lack of courage and self-denial. We remain so hypnotized by them that our will, like that of an alcoholic, is totally attached to them and unable to free itself.
If Freedom has a price to pay, it will be a real and often updated will to continue the path of consciousness not for ourselves but especially for others. For there can be no real spirituality just for ourselves. The meaning of our life cannot be a story of continuous personal gratification. The representation of such a path is that of
of a process of authentic consciousness freeing the vision from the uncomfortable glasses of ready-made beliefs and from judgments that valorize a certain violence towards oneself and towards others.
C: The concepts of transcendence.
All religious systems advocate the order of things in balance and the just and equitable measure for all in goodness, altruism and service.
None of them work on the separation of beings as between good and bad for example.
However, most religions, sects and people with egotistical influences create fortresses around them based on judgments. Most of these judgments come from unverified beliefs.
While religious systems admit an agreement between the inner and the outer world and value it, make room for the stranger and the difference, religions, sects and ego-influenced people make the two sides of the being contribute to the separating and often murderous ego, the physical and metaphysical world. For them, if you do not believe as they do, you remain outside their fortress and discussion is no longer possible.
When the Lord Jesus, the carpenter's son, was asked about taxes, he answered:
- Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.
Transcendence can only become immanence, that is to say, the sacred meaning found in your life can only be revealed in your daily life if and only if it does not serve the separating ego but rather connects beings around social concepts in the colors of goodness and altruism.
The authentic spiritual approach requires a training of the thought. This training leads to intelligence and good human reasoning.
Cécile Hontoy, author, speaker.
Anthropologist and Bachelor of Education
Internationally recognized Yogui
40 years of career in human services.