A crisis of meaning in life is the moment when you have fulfilled everything that was expected of you — and suddenly it turns out that the compass no longer works. Previous goals no longer inspire, roles no longer hold, and the question arises: where am I even going?
This article is the third in a series on self-discovery: after “Who am I?” and “What drives me?” we move on to the main thing — how to find your direction when external landmarks have collapsed. We will talk about how to hear your inner impulse and find a path that is truly yours.
What does it mean to “follow your heart”
Where you go depends a lot on your inner motive.
Motives do not always exclude each other. Something is done out of fear, something out of gain, something simply out of a lack of understanding of your own motives for why you did it at all.
Few people do anything following their heart.
- What does this mean in practice?
- How to feel what my heart wants?
- How to distinguish this from the desire of the ego?
- How is “following your heart” different from destiny?
These are common questions that are sent to us. All such questions come from the head.
When you feel, you feel in the heart, and then there are no questions. You just feel — I need to, I want to. Moreover, “need to” and “want to” are crooked words, because it is a fusion.
It is such a powerful urge that bursts from within, you cannot sleep. I think it is a familiar state often.
As soon as the mind interferes, the sensation of this inner impulse disappears. Or you start to talk yourself out of it, criticize, doubt. Immediately relatives and friends chime in: “No-no-no, you don’t need to go there, what are you doing?!” And it all fades away.
See also Synchronizing your desires with service, or Why it is important to follow a heartfelt impulse
I don’t know where I’m going. Crisis
Comment: “I don’t know where I’m going. I’m tired of everything, I want to die both body and soul.”
This state indicates that your motives were external. Those hooks have fallen off. And what’s inside?
I think there will be more and more such people. Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions when you’re told: “do one, two, three, and it will work for you.”
Only you know at what stage you lost yourself, at what stage you lost the meaning of life. Did you ever have one at all?
They say you need to finish school, pass exams, enter university, find a job, then find a husband or get married, have a child. And so you’ve completed the minimum socially significant program.
There are parental expectations and societal expectations. You’ve fulfilled them. And then what?
It’s no coincidence that the crisis used to begin at the age of Jesus and the age of Buddha, 33-36 years. That was under the old model of the 20th century, when growing up began much earlier.
Psychologists call such periods identity crises — moments when the old system of meanings stops working, and a new one hasn’t yet formed.
More precisely, there was less infantilization, and the childhood period was shorter. People at 18-19 were already quite mature, serious, or at least by the time they finished college.
Now many people — 40, 50, 60 years old — don’t smell of adulthood. This has changed in recent years.
But in that system, by the period of 33-36 years, a person had already gotten a profession, learned to earn money, gotten married, already had children. A person had fulfilled their social function by this age. And then the crisis of “who am I, why am I, where am I going” began.
This was a chance to change your life entirely. Because what needed to be given back for being born here had been realized by that point.
And now a huge number of people are lost. If we recall the classics, in the 17th century, and in the 19th, and in the 20th century, they wrote about the lost generation, about people who lost their meaning.
But this means that either you were led by something that lost its value, and along with it you got lost, or your focus was tied to results: by a certain age to have an apartment, a car, houses, steamships.
You admit your complete worthlessness, inadequacy, because you are 40 years old, and there is no marriage, no children, and most likely there never will be, and nothing else either.
See also Returning to yourself through life crises and reassessing your place in life
Searching for direction, not reasons
Such a period is a moment of death of the ego, which moved through significance, importance, results. This can be the result of all your transformations, when all external hooks fall away.
And you need to lean on something, look inside yourself, but you are exhausted there, without resources, you have spent everything trying to conform, participate in this race, trying to pretend to be something you are not, and this is very hard.
There can be many reasons, but the reason is not important to us.
Unfortunately, what worked before, when they told you, showed you, explained, and said: “go here,” will no longer be.
You need to find it inside yourself. And not an answer, but a direction in which you want to go. Without fear and without gain.
See also New life. What it means to create like a free artist
Three points without which it is impossible to create
We have examined three questions: who am I? where am I going? why?
These are fundamental things. When there is no clear understanding inside, no precise answer to each of these points, how will you create anything and move anywhere?
Hence the feeling of confusion and helplessness when the identification of oneself, based on these matrix or external hooks that are firmly inscribed inside, falls away.
There is nothing inside yourself to lean on. And words about Light and Love, if they are just words, unfortunately do not create a feeling of inner support.
The matrix foundation is pulled out from under your feet, whether with your conscious participation or without it.
No one will have it. And here the question is — what will you be left with? Will there be something inside you that you can lean on when this part is pulled out?
If these were beautiful slogans, it will all be lost.
Therefore, look at these three key questions through the prism of what will remain if everything external, matrix-based is removed: fear, benefit, personal interest.
Few people do something just for the sake of doing it.
In motivation, if the matrix is removed, the question arises: what can drive me? The answer may be an inner impulse. But where does this inner impulse come from? How not to confuse it with the ego?
Many things rise up inside when you have relied for too long on something that is outside of you.
See also: Turning inward as a process of reclaiming one’s power at the collective level
Where are you now on this new path? Were you able to answer for yourself the three questions: who am I?, where am I going? and why? Which one caused the greatest difficulty?