This book is a sequel to Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor E. Frankl. I have talked over and over about logotherapy. Victor discover and/or created it while in concentration camps during WWII. It is a therapy based on finding meaning in life, aka purpose. This book talks about more specifics of the therapy and how over time he realized more.
“Thus, human existence–at least as long as it has not been neurotically distorted–is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly. I have termed this constitutive characteristic of human existence “self-transcendence”.”
“Therefore man is orginally characterized by his “search for meaning” rather than his “search for himself”. The more he forgets himself–giving himself to a cause or another person–the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself.”
Do you see the connection between this and Buddhism? A loss of self is the answer. And the more you loose yourself, the more you gain of yourself.
So you know that Eminem song, Loose Yourself?
“You better – lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go (go)”
This is the key to happiness. Learning how to loose yourself, in order to gain who you really are. Finding purpose is about loosing yourself. Being a Buddhist is about loosing yourself. However, it is not about not knowing who you are. It is about knowing who you are and intentionally loosing yourself in order to get more.
Then Frankl goes onto explain the existential vacuum of not knowing yourself or your purpose.
Google:
“Viktor Frankl described the existential vacuum as a widespread phenomenon of meaninglessness and emptiness in the 20th century, resulting from the loss of traditional, instinctual guides for behavior. This leads to symptoms like boredom, apathy, and depression, a phenomenon he called mass neurosis, where individuals lack direction and don’t know what they want to do.”
“I once took a taxi to a university whose student body had invited me to give a lecture on the question of whether “the new generation is mad.” I asked the cab driver to answer that question. He came up with the following succinct statement: “Of course they are mad; they kill themselves, they kill each other, and they take dope.” -Man’s Search For Ultimate Meaning
The world is the way it is because people do not know their purpose. When you find your purpose, you find yourself. You know how they have those pictures where you have to unfocus your eyes to really see the picture? You know that saying when you can’t figure something out, you should do something else and the answer will come to you?
Who you are is apart of your subconscious mind. You cannot figure out who you are completely using your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is really not that smart. Your subconscious is the genius. It is the part of your brain in charge 95% or more of your life. It is the biggest part of your brain. If you want to figure something out, especially something as important as who you are, you should use your subconscious.
And you do that by figuring out what your purpose is and working on that. The world is so messed up and dysfunctional, because no one knows who they are. And they especially do not know their purpose.
“Depression, addiction, and aggression,” form the neurotic triad as Frankl puts it. I am not sure when this book was published originally, but the copy I read was printed in 2000. Do you think these things have gotten better since the year 2000 or worse? I am going to venture and say worse.
The outline for happiness seems to be:
- Find yourself enough to find your purpose.
- Work on your purpose.
- You will find more of yourself.
- And you will probably find more of your purpose.
- You will arrive at Zen, peace, contentment, and/or happiness.
Life is not that complicated. Yet everyone makes such a fuss and complicates everything. We should stop doing that immediately. Because it is just causing a ruckus and making us all miserable.
Let’s be happy and do what we were sent here to do, yah?
Those are the books I finished over the weekend. Hope you enjoyed my book reviews. I highly recommend all the books I review. I do not write up the books I do not like.