What Is Meaning? Dharma vs Meaning and Ego Illusion

By Rev. Michael Gadway

The question is not to know what is the meaning of life, but what meaning I can give to my life. – Dalai Lama

Dharma vs Meaning: Why they are not the same

Many people confuse dharma and meaning; they are not the same. Dharma is spiritually alive and it flows through our existence. It is an extension of the spirit of God that lives and breathes within us. In essence, we realize our dharma in the intimacy and urgency of our relationship with God, and the unfolding of our destiny as a result of that spiritual communion. Though there is a divine intelligence guiding both the individual’s and the universe’s spiritual evolution, it does not arbitrarily assign meaning to its Lila (Divine play). The expression of God, as life, unfolds because that it what it does, not because that is what it intends to do. 

Unity of Consciousness and the Illusion of Separation

There is one unified consciousness, One Presence, One Power, One Being. A singularity of Spirit presenting as a plurality. The belief in a separate existence that requires definition and meaning is a construct of the conditioned mind. It is a delusion born of a mistaken mental constraint. The need for meaning arises within the mind as a result of its Illusory perception of dualism; this impulse to seek meaning is born of the mind’s awareness of the polarity of opposites. If we are not special, if our lives are not endowed with meaning by God, then the opposite must be true: we are without value. We are nothing. In the pursuit of uniqueness and the need to be special and singularly individual, the ego searches for meaning in order to define its importance. Therefore, the need for meaning can only be a result of believing we are other than the Source and the subjective idea of the reality of this material world.  

Self-Derived Meaning and Spiritual Responsibility

By saying this, I am not implying that we should not assign meaning to our lives. I am saying that meaning must be self-derived and it must give us spiritual satisfaction. We decide what our lives mean. No one else can do this for us: not our family, not our friends, not our work or our spouse, and certainly not God.  We determine the essential quality of the life we are living and choose the significance of it. We turn inward and identify what is of value to us and how we want to interpret and apply that value to our lives. 

A Teaching Moment on Meaning, Death, and Emotional Resistance

I was teaching a class at a retreat center in Georgia when I made the statement, “Life means whatever we want it to mean.” A woman, obviously angered by the statement, said loudly to me and the group gathered, “Do you mean my friend who just died of cancer, her life means whatever I want it to mean?” I said “To you, yes that is exactly what I am saying.” In an exaggerated huff, she walked out of the room and didn’t come back. She was still looking for an external locus of authority, God, to assign value to her friend’s life. But there is no personification of Spirit that arbitrarily applies meaning to an individual existence. 

Inner Authority: Choosing the Meaning of Our Lives

We are immortal units of Spirit. The truth of us exists eternally and is beyond this mundane realm. Often, we find ourselves bound by a cultural or social need to label and identify. But it is we who choose what is important to us and what is not. I often hear people say, “Oh, that must mean God wants me to…” But there is no personified God enthroned in heaven assigning meaning to our lives. We are not looking for our dharma; we are already living it and if we are looking for meaning, that is ours to identify, assign, and apply to the cadence of our lives.  

Divine Order and the Impersonal Evolution of Consciousness

There is a mathematical precision to life and a divine intelligence orchestrating the universe. The universe operates under an impersonal divine principle and that principle is relentlessly moving us towards awakening and liberation. Divine order operates independently of our relationship with a personified God. Our common destiny is to awaken to the allness of life and it is preordained.

Devotion, Form, and Personal Relationship with the Divine

There is a story about a great saint who had experienced, and was established in the consciousness of the absolute unmodified field of Spirit. Yet, he continued to worship God in form with prayers and chanting. A disciple asked, “Sir, why do you continue to worship God in form when you have awakened beyond form?” The great saint answered, “It pleases me.” Our personal relationship with God is just that, personal, and we can choose to derive unique meaning from it. When we create and develop personal spiritual meaning to and in our lives, we become more reliant on our sacred relationship with the Divine and less reliant on society. We stop looking for external guidance and instead begin to rely on the God within and the dharma that proceeds from it. When we are anchored in a spiritual union with the Spirit indwelling, we are living our dharma. What we do in the world and the meaning we give that interaction is ours to decide. We must always remember our consciousness is God’s consciousness. Our lives are God expressing in oneness as beautiful diversity.

Turning Inward to Discover True Meaning

Meaning isn’t found using the world’s mores and standards as our guideposts. It isn’t hidden in the lines drawn by society. We won’t uncover meaning by walking the roads others paved. The light we are seeking is within us and when we turn towards the inner light, we come to realize that we have always been and we will always be. When our immortality is realized, we can decide for ourselves what it all means. 

Dharma, Truth, and the Emergence of Meaning from the Soul

Our dharma arises from the core of who we are and meaning is the self-derived mental byproduct of that realization. Truth begets dharma, and dharma begets meaning. They are stitched into the clothe of our Soul and the only way to unveil them is to turn towards the truth found in the depth of our being.