Seeking as a Mode of Being

Seekers seek truth and meaning in life. We seek the meaning of our individual lives and we seek the meaning of life itself. Seekers seek to understand the connections between all forms of life — between our own small community and the wider human family. We seek the connection between the human community and the natural world. We seek to understand the relationship between ourselves and the Transcendent. We want to understand the belonging of humanity, nature, and all of Life in one coherent, collaborative, co-creative whole.

Seeking meaning is what gives meaning to life, and to seek the meaning of life is to be already engaged with the meaning of life. It’s a paradox that, by seeking meaning, we gain meaning. The search provides its own fulfilment. By searching for meaning we are participating in the meaning of life. Aristotle said, ‘All people by nature desire to know.’ He was pointing to the defining characteristic of the human which is to seek meaning. We are meaning-making beings. We need meaning to thrive, and we are most fulfilled when we seek meaning. Aristotle also said that the purpose of life is not to seek happiness, but to seek eudaimonia which is fulfilment.  James Hollis, Jungian analyst, also says that the purpose of life is not happiness but meaning, and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, also identified that the primary drive in the human is the will to meaning.  

However, we live in a culture where authentic meaning has been lost, and the search for meaning generally abandoned. Real meaning, which used to be recognised as the whole point of life, has been discarded as irrelevant or too much trouble. In its place, we have constructed a world where people let themselves feel satisfied with only a façade of meaning achieved through superficial signifiers of belonging to the right tribe, or by the emptiest of markers such as what we wear, our material possessions, and the amount of money we have. Our sense of meaning and belonging is no longer derived from grappling with the big questions of life rather, it comes from superficial things that give a superficial sense of belonging and meaning.

The search for meaning brings us in many different directions – scientific, artistic, working with the land, amongst many, all of which can afford deep meaning. But the home of the search for meaning itself is philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with the foundational search for meaning and the meaning of life itself. Philo-Sophia literally means the love of Sophia, and Sophia is the ancient name for wisdom found in many traditions in Greece and the Middle East. The essence of philosophy is the search for wisdom and meaning but we don’t need to be a ‘philosopher’ to be engaged philosophically with the search for meaning in life. Instead, when what we do in life, how we are in ourselves, and what we work at, truly expresses who we are in our truth then we are living our wisdom.  Philosophy is also the search for what makes life meaningful. And paradoxically – the search for meaning is what makes life meaningful.

Like the feminine Sophia of the ancient world, wisdom in the Irish tradition was also historically recognised as feminine and as belonging to the women’s domain. In our tradition the wisdom keeper is the bean feasa, the wise woman, who was both a real woman in the community and an archetypal energy. The bean feasa personified wisdom in the community. The preeminent Irish goddess Danú, has always been associated with the land because it was recognised that wisdom is held in the land. The wise woman was in deep communion and communication with the land — she received her wisdom from the land and shared it with the community.

Therefore, if we want to be wise we must be in right relationship with the land. If we want to have wisdom we must know how to speak with the land, to listen to her, and learn from her. Women were the holders of wisdom in the Irish tradition and the men performed different roles and functions in the community such as kingship and ruling. They served the community in different ways but wisdom was the domain of the feminine and women were the holders of wisdom.

Until the Age of Reason, it was also known that at times of social crisis or breakdown, the bean feasa or Sophia was the person to seek out. In seeking her out and invoking her wisdom, people were quite plainly seeking wisdom, seeking the meaning of things, seeking wisdom to deal with the crisis they were living through. In our time of profound social crisis and breakdown we need wisdom and meaning more than ever but we have lost both the will for meaning and the understanding of how to seek it out. The bean feasa and Sophia have long been relegated to the side lines, at best, in western culture, and we no longer know how to find the meaning of things or the wisdom to deal with crises. That means that our work is now doubled. We must recover both the pathways for seeking meaning, as well as finding the wisdom we need. We must restore Sophia to her essential role of providing the wisdom we need for life.

We must become seekers once more, and seek the meaning of life. Unless our individual meaning is aligned with the meaning of life itself we are fundamentally off track. Seeking, as I said, is its own fulfillment, so if we begin again to seek, meaning will soon reveal herself. Our world may become wise again, but only if enough of us are prepared to do the hard work of seeking,

- Photo taken half way up my last climb up Croagh Patrick.