Meaning of Life

  The search for the meaning of life is important. Admittedly, organized

 religion is not meeting the needs of many people, resulting in their

 departure from their prior commitments to a specific religion. The

 traditional avenue used is joining and aligning oneself to Christianity,

 Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto, or some

 indigenous religion. There seemed no other way even though it resulted

 often with understanding that the “other” may not achieve “eternal life”.

 People often considered “their way” as “the way”. Surely, I recall in my

 younger years feeling glad that I was a Catholic and, at times, sorry for

 others.

 Starting with Pierre Theilhard deChardin, I became energized reading

 about the Divine in the context of evolution. As I written before, for me,

 the Divine or the Spirit is present in the Universe from the beginning and

 will remain forever.

 The recent column by Richard Rohr epitomizes this understanding.

  “Understanding the Divine was The good news of an incarnational

 religion, a Spirit-based morality, is that you are not motivated by

 any outside reward or punishment but by participating in the

 Mystery itself. Carrots are neither needed nor helpful. “It is God,

 who for God’s own loving purpose, puts both the will and the

 action into you” (Philippians 2:13). It is not mere rule-following

 behavior; rather, it is our actual identity in God that is radically

 changing us. Henceforth, we do things because they are true and

 loving, not because we have to do them or because we are afraid

 of punishment. Now we are not so much driven from without (the

 false self method) but we are drawn from within (the True Self

 method). The generating motor is inside us now instead of either

 a lure or a threat from outside us. This alone is a converted

 Christian, or converted anything.”