27-02-2023
Question: Last year I turned 60. I have all that a successful man is supposed to have — degrees from prestigious universities, successful career, respect of peers in my industry, good family with wonderful wife and children, and affluence and comfort for the rest of my life.
Yet, I feel a void inside. And dread and desperation. I have succeeded in impressing everyone but myself. I should be fulfilled, considering all that I have, but I am not. I feel I have wasted my life trying and succeeding to impress others, starting from my parents all the way to even my children. I sense that I have never pursued what I am really here for—what I was born to do. Also I feel it is too late now, at age 60, even if I realize what I was born to do. No time left for me to do anything worthwhile. Any comments?
Response: First, I want to acknowledge and express my appreciation for your honesty. Most people in your position or situation continue to deceive themselves and others and live as if everything is fine when it is not.
Your ego expired a long time ago but since you did not know any other self than your ego, you have lived as your ego long after its expiration date. Your ego, as which you identify your “self”, has no interest in you, because your ego is the society within you whose interest is that of the society, not of you.
You are a successful man, much better than the average, and that is how the society has internalized itself in you as your ego and how you the ego externally served the society.
The “you” that is feeling the void, the dread, the desperation inside is your awakening yet still latent soul which you, the ego, have been unaware of or neglected for all your life. The “you” that is now bemoaning and saying it is now too late, is the ego reacting to your soul’s recognition. At 60, when you sense the nearing of your ending, you, the soul, are realizing that you, the soul, have not really lived and that you have not realized your true self.
Thus far you are a winner in the finite societal game of life but a failure in the infinite spiritual game of life. What is the spiritual game of life? It is the infinite game of self-realization in the sense of God-realization within. We were all born out of our mothers’ wombs. That physical birth is only an opportunity for self-begetting and self-realizing the real self of our soul.
The mother’s womb is the human creative matrix for our physical birth into the world that is the cosmic creative matrix for our spiritual birth.
We have two kinds of autobiography. One is the autobiography of our ego and its life in the text of the temporal corporeal world. One is the autobiography of our soul and its development in the context of the eternal spiritual world. Everyone has something to write about in the former. Most people have nothing to write about in the latter; their soul’s autobiography remains blank.
The blankness of your soul’s autobiography, you sense as the void. To confront the void is dreadful and to recognize the likelihood of it remaining blank for the rest of your life makes you feel desperate.
The good news is that the soul begins to wake up from its psychcoma (soul-sleep) in the dark night of the soul. The good news is that once you become awakened, you come to know eternity and taste immortality, and thus how long you can live in this temporal corporeal world becomes essentially irrelevant.
The contribution you make through your committed engagement in the work of your soul’s spiritual awakening is cosmic. Though it may visibly contribute to other people and society, these contributions are only secondary. You fulfill the cosmic purpose of your existence.
Spiritual awakening is the individual’s self-responsibility the fulfillment of which is his or her cosmic responsibility. Where other people enter in your work of soul-awakening and self-transformation is this: Unless your work includes your genuine compassion and external considerations for others, it is not authentic nor authentically cosmic.
Where to begin? First, listen to the longing of your soul wanting to awaken and to your intuition, and then intuitively follow wherever the longing leads you to. Include in your quest for self-awakening all your loved ones (and eventually all of humanity)—that is, your purpose is the awakening of all who are included in your quest.
No one needs to know. Having spent your life (successfully) impressing other people, this may not be easy for you, but know that your soul awakens only in solitude and in silence. It is only between you and God, literally, which means entirely within.
That you wrote to me indicates that there is something I had written that had resonated with you. From time to time I will be happy to offer you suggestions if your quest leads you to me. The most important thing is to be and to remain a student, and then it is you who make me and other people your teachers. Your quest will remain authentic so long as you follow your inner authority, not outer authority.
When you feel lost, you may knowingly and willingly submit yourself to the teaching of a particular teacher but retain your own self-responsibility. It is on account of your self-responsibility that you have chosen a particular path for the time being.
Nothing is more important, nothing matters more, than your own soul awakening and self-transformation in life. That is the purpose of human life that gives meaning to your life.