Meaning in a rational world

On Shavuot eve there will be a secular Shavuot repair at the Nanochka restaurant in Tel Aviv. The producer of the evening, Nir Lahav, explains what a secular Romilas is and why it is necessary

In the 400s, Ben-Gurion met with the Chazon Ish, one of the architects of the ultra-orthodox community in Israel. In this famous meeting, the Chazon Ish used the parable of the full wagon to represent the religious with the yoke of mitzvot and faith compared to the empty wagon that represents the secular. The Chazon Ish was wrong, of course, secularism has its own full cart that is different from the religious cart. The western culture that we are a part of is wandering on the secular values ​​that have developed since the scientific revolution during the last XNUMX years. Values ​​such as individual freedom and equal opportunities became political struggles that gave rise to many important revolutions such as the liberation of slavery, the separation of religion from the state, equal rights for women, homosexuals and other minorities as well as the establishment of many countries including Israel. But the construction of the alternative to the traditional religions is not yet complete. I have a feeling that even nowadays many would argue that secularism has no meaning or values. There is only hedonism and definition what they are not, they are not religious. When you look around the situation really looks bad. Instead of a meaningful society, the Western world seems obsessed with chasing after superficial and momentary pleasures and after its own tail. From worshiping celebrities, money and consumption to cynicism and workaholism (as my interpretation of the word workaholism). Certain historical processes have led to the erosion of the ideas and values ​​on which Western secularism is based (for details, see my articles Is there meaning in a world without God?)

But the situation does not have to be this way, secularism needs to continue to build itself so that it can offer society as a whole a way of life full of meaning and values ​​without the need for stories of illusions. The time has come to offer a secular spirituality that is not related to religion or mysticism, but is based on science and philosophy. A true secularism that will continue the revolution that the human race started. Because for values, morality and meaning in life you don't need God or New Age. At the beginning of the secular revolution, most of the involvement was at the political level. How to make a secular state that will reflect the values ​​of individual freedom and equal opportunities. It seems that we have made significant progress towards this goal and now we need to add to the political level the personal level of the individual himself. This is the goal of secular spirituality. This is a concept that connects the great importance of logic, facts, casting doubt and truth with the human need for meaning and guidance on how to live. She does not ignore the emotional side of a person and recognizes the importance of community. Such a secular spirituality will also offer new rituals for the important transitions in life and new holidays that will connect us to ideas and remind us of the values ​​that are relevant today such as the values ​​of freedom, casting doubt and equality.

Is it possible to connect "cold" rationality with emotion and the need for meaning?

In our opinion this is possible. We call our attempt to connect them with the name of secular spirituality. Secular spirituality considers it important to have a story as a framework for our lives, a story that will help a person develop himself, realize his abilities and feel whole throughout his life's journey. Only with the help of such a general framework story can man transcend his survival needs and develop himself so that he is freer, more whole and meaningful. It is important that such a story is not dogmatic and rigid but rather dynamic and changing which is based as much as possible on the scientific knowledge we discover and the philosophical insights that humanity has reached throughout history. This is a philosophical interpretation that gives each person only a general framework and within it allows them to choose the way of life that suits them. This proposal for secular spirituality consists of three stages:
First step, the doubting step. Casting doubt is an important tool that can be used to reveal what is not real, when we are being lied to and when we are lying to ourselves and thus get closer to the truth. This is a long and important investigation that takes time. If you do all this skeptical way you reach a crisis. This is the starting point of secular spirituality. The starting point is the conclusion that with a very high probability there is no God and no supernatural phenomena. Not only is there no God, but there is also no first intention or purpose for the nature around us. Nature is indifferent, accidental and casual. In the long evolutionary process we developed the ability to know that we live and die and the desire to find meaning in our short lives. Like little children who don't yet know facts about the world, we got scared and started making up stories for ourselves about why there is lightning and why people die. This is how we slowly invented and developed the different religions. We were comforted by an imaginary parent we invented. Now it's time to grow up. We already know many facts about nature, we have developed our thinking and logic and now we can abandon our imaginary friends and find meaning in our lives even though nature is indifferent, even though there is no creator of the world, no destiny, no predetermined purpose for our lives and no absolute meaning. Now the question is how to do it?

The next step is the step of taking responsibility. The continuation of growing up, the understanding that we need to take complete responsibility for our lives. If we feel insignificant, we are the ones who need to find meaning for ourselves and not wait for another savior. There is no messiah, we have to be the directors of our lives, the creators of ourselves. If we don't face it, our disposable life will pass in front of us and end without having navigated our life and without having lived it to the end. without us making a life. We need to embark on a fascinating journey, an active search for depth and meaning in our lives. But in order to find meaning in our lives, we first need to know ourselves, be aware of what activates us, understand who we are, what we love and hate, what our passions are and thus create, in a long process that never ends, every time renewing ourselves and our meaning.

A more advanced part of taking full responsibility for our lives is the understanding that we live within a society, we are part of the culture and we are the ones who shape it. There is no absolute morality that emerged from heaven. We are the ones who give meaning to the events around us and we are the ones who are able to define good and bad and choose according to which way it is appropriate to behave. We have the sole responsibility to choose for ourselves values ​​and a way of life that suits us, both as individuals and as a society. If we don't, someone else will and we will live by their story instead of ours. Part of the role of secular spirituality is to give a person tools on how to do this, how to develop morality for ourselves.

It is not easy to realize that all the responsibility is on us, to trust ourselves, to examine our surroundings and to choose what suits me and what I throw away, even if I am the only one who thinks so. To accept myself and continue to develop, to continue to create my life as I would like it to be. But this is a necessary step if you want to develop an authentic me that is unique to you and different from all other people and if you want to reach my special meaning in my life.

But there is a problem. If life has no absolute meaning, if there is no great cosmic drama of which human life is a part and it does not matter if we live one way or another. So why bother? Life is the product of a blind evolutionary process. Nature is indifferent, if all humanity becomes extinct, it will not matter to anyone. So what's the point of our little lives? It seems that any meaning people find is just a pleasant illusion. One might think that this is all science and Western culture offer us, but this is not true.

In order to reach meaning and happiness, you don't need any self-delusion, but as we've seen so far, you do need an investment. Like anything, when you invest you can achieve significant results. Whoever claims that there is no point in living if there is no absolute meaning, it seems that he has not yet felt a sense of great meaning in his life, therefore the consolation that remains is that there is some hidden meaning. The feeling of meaning can be felt the moment we take full responsibility for our lives and slowly build our self and our meaning in our lives. The feeling of meaning is ultimately an emotional experience and there is no difference in the experience even if it was created from something absolute and great and also if it was created from a meaning we created for ourselves. As soon as we feel the experience of meaning, it fills us and it doesn't matter what its source is. In principle, it is possible to feel meaning both through the stories of religions and through the construction of personal meaning, but we choose not to follow illusions but to build for ourselves a real meaning that has a grip on reality. A meaning that was not imposed on us by the environment but our meaning, which we built alone - our creation.

Besides comfort there is another reason why we are in search of something that will be bigger than us, after some great cosmic drama. I think there is something we have not yet internalized about what the sense of meaning is.
Why is it so strange for us to think that one day we won't be? Probably because we have a basic feeling that we are unique. A feeling that we are supposed to be eternal and powerful. The fact that we die clashes with this basic feeling and unsettles us. A sense of meaning is only achieved when we manage to bridge the gap between this basic sense of power and the ultimate reality around us. When we build for ourselves a personal meaning in our lives we need to resonate between our sense of inner power and something external, otherwise the gap will not close. We are looking for something bigger than ourselves so that we can identify with it and feel powerful too. In the religious story, for example, there is an eternal soul and we are all sparks of God, so that our sense of inner strength receives external confirmation and as a result we have the strength to overcome the finitude that surrounds us. Now that the religious idea has been dismissed, the question arises whether this feeling of our basic power is just an illusion and whether there are such great real phenomena in nature that can resonate with our inner feeling?
Now we are ready to move to the last stage of secular spirituality -

The third stage: the "experience of touching infinity" stage The fact that nature is indifferent and has no absolute meaning does not mean that there is no great cosmic drama and that our existence is unimportant. The attempt of secular spirituality is to show that there is a great drama in our existence and that this basic feeling of power is not an illusion. Although we are neither eternal nor infinite, we are certainly powerful and unique. Thanks to a long evolutionary process, our brain capacity has reached a significant leap forward. Unlike most of the matter that surrounds us, our brain has the ability to experience conscious experiences (unlike a stone, our brain experiences pain or joy. Unlike a camera, our brain interprets the image that appears to its eyes and experiences it) and it has the ability to experience self-awareness (not only experience Joy but also to know that I am currently experiencing joy and in general to know that I exist). These abilities give us tremendous power, much greater than what we understand and perceive. Think of it this way, compared to being small and fragile physically and temporarily, we are huge in terms of our potential and in terms of our thinking. The sun may be huge in physical and temporal dimensions. It is four and a half billion years old and the Earth has entered it a million times, but there is one thing we have and she does not have. She has no idea that she exists, or how she came to be and how she will end. She also has no choice. We, on the other hand, can encompass the entire universe in our thoughts, understand insights about infinity, understand how the universe was created, what we are made of and how the sun works. With the help of our thought we encompass and contain the sun and the entire universe! In addition, we can create whole worlds inside our minds (a dream is an excellent example of this) and then try and realize them in reality by creating things that did not exist before. This awareness also gives us much more choice (compared to a stone that gets wet from the rain, we can choose to bring an umbrella, or continue to get wet. An interesting question is how free the choice is, but we will not go into that in this article). In conclusion, compared to the sun which is huge in physical and temporal dimensions, we are huge in terms of our ability to think, be creative and choose.

I think there is a huge drama here!
We are huge in terms of our potential and therefore our basic sense of power is real. That is why the existence of each and every one of us is also important. We have the ability to choose and implement the tremendous power in us and influence the whole world. The secret is of course to turn this basic feeling into a developed experience that we are aware of and feel accompanies us throughout our lives. I like to define it as "the experience of touching infinity". This is the experience in which someone feels this tremendous power that they have and the great drama that they have in being able to encompass the entire reality, choose, create and change. In order to reach these kinds of experiences, you need to connect the inner power with something external, for example through the creation of something new in the real world or any other major change that can be accomplished. The important thing here is that it doesn't matter at all that humanity has no objective meaning. What matters is that each and every one can feel the true tremendous power that is within us. Compared to this power, the rest of the day-to-day experiences/troubles are dwarfed and take their rightful place. This is how we will resonate this basic inner feeling with something real. We will be aware of the power we have built, we will polish it and put it into practice again and again throughout our lives. This is of course a great sense of meaning.

Do you want to try and feel the experience of touching infinity? Let's try. We are only at the beginning of the way to understand how the brain works and creates consciousness. Our creativity, our imagination and our understanding only seem to increase with time. It's amazing to realize that we really have no idea who we are and what we are capable of. Take for example a question that sounds very simple and clear, do you have one personality? How many "I" do you have in your mind? According to our feeling, it is clear that each of us has only one self or one personality, but it is not at all clear that this is really the case and from many studies that have been done, it seems that several "personalities" may be formed in each brain at every moment. GodNext video that I prepared a book about these studies:

It could be that everyone has at least two "marriages", one for the whole hemisphere and we didn't know this about ourselves at all. What other abilities are hiding in our developed mind? Our potential is so great that everyday life is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of our mental abilities and if we want to feel these strengths we need to delve deeper and learn how to activate our brains and ourselves.

It seems that from our mental capacity for awareness and self-awareness we reach a basic sense of power quite quickly throughout our lives, but then the gap and the problem also arise. Now we need to invest effort to transform the potential and the basic experience that resides in us into a developed and lasting experience of power. From this power that resides in us we can be filled with a deep meaning, a meaning that begins with the experience of touching infinity and continues with a lasting feeling of inner power that is realized in everyday life. Now it is also possible to understand that the second stage detailed earlier, the stage of searching for our active meaning is just another means of recognizing the great powers within us. Every passion we realize we have is an excellent tool to feel the power in us and start realizing it. Of course, in order to accomplish this, you need to learn how to feel the power in you and how to realize it. One of the goals of secular spirituality is to give these tools to man and instill them in the education system.

We saw that our basic sense of power is not just an illusion and it can be developed into a sense of meaning. But if we are looking for real phenomena so great that they can resonate with our inner feeling, we should notice that there is another answer right under our noses.

Nature and the reality in which we live are the real big thing that is around us and we are even a part of it. The mind on that the enormous potential inherent in it was created and developed as part of nature. An attempt to understand the reality around us is also an attempt to understand ourselves and our place in the fabric of reality. Reality is so immense that everyday life is only the tip of its iceberg, a drop of water from a vast ocean. Who knows the nature of reality as it is? We delve into it and explore it with the help of science and philosophy and as we progress in this journey we discover more and more surprises and how different it is from what we know in our "common sense". The fact that nature is indifferent does not mean that there is no great cosmic drama. Although there is no supernatural (see for example the blog sharp thinking), it's all part of nature and the physics we discover, but that doesn't mean there's no more wonder in the world. Science and our exploration of the world do not destroy the wonder, on the contrary they only strengthen it. The more we investigate, the more we experience wonder and awe in front of the reality revealed to us. The simple truth is that we are only at the beginning of the long road to understanding where we live (yet there are already many things we know do not exist like fairies or unicorns. How do you know? Again go tosharp thinking).

Thanks to the great power in us we are able to explore and understand nature. We interpret and give meaning to our discoveries and thus become part of that great cosmic drama. If we are looking for something bigger than ourselves that will give us a perspective, so big that it will appear to us as a miracle, then this thing is placed in front of us - the investigation of the reality around us. The amazing progress we have made in the field of physics since the theory of relativity shows again and again how much reality surpasses any imagination and how much our everyday life does not represent reality as it is. You can think of it as if we live inside a cave, seeing only shadows that penetrate into the cave and thinking that is all there is, not realizing that it is an illusion and that it is possible to expand reality and see what exists outside. to see what is the more basic thing that produces the shadows we see. Likewise in the study of nature, reality is different from what we think and the more we delve into scientific research and understand it more and discover the laws of nature, we take another step out of the cave towards the basic laws of nature that created reality and us. Want to try and experience the experience of touching infinity with the help of investigating reality as it is? Let's try!
Pay attention toNext video. This is a video that consists of real depth images of our neighboring galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy which is about 10,000,000,000,000,000 km away from our galaxy. In the video you see zoom in, entering inside Andromeda, every white dot you see is a sun similar to our sun:

There are about a hundred billion suns in an average galaxy and there are about a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. I wonder what is hidden there inside the Andromeda galaxy. Is there intelligent life out there moving on a planet around one of these billions of suns? How many life forms are hiding there?
This example is just the beginning of course. The insights and discoveries we have made so far are amazing, starting for example from the understanding that time is another dimension in which the past and the future exist at the same time, to the understanding that matter is not the most basic thing. Today our most advanced theory claims that the most basic thing that we and all other matter is made of is something called a "field". (For details see my blog free and happy).

The fact that nature is indifferent and mechanical does not make the world heavenly and unimportant. We are the ones who give things importance and meaning. We are the ones who find out how strange and different reality is from what we thought and what a long way we probably have to go to get to the bottom of it. Who knows, maybe the way "out of the cave" is endless? The important thing is that every time we experience this and reveal another touch of reality, we are filled with deep meaning and feel again as if we have touched the infinite for a moment, in a reality that seems eternal and infinite. Such a tremendous reality can of course also scare us or make us feel small, but once we have developed ourselves and we are aware of the enormous mental potential in us, the power of nature will only help us echo the feeling of inner power in us and will not cause any fear. Every step we took outside the cave is another experience of touching infinity, another opportunity to match our inner strength with something external and greater than us - the strength of the nature around us. This is the best match that can be made between the inner strength and the outer strength, the fulfillment of the potential that we have by understanding an all-embracing and eternal law of nature. How small problems and everyday troubles seem then and how big the meaning is!
This, in my opinion, is the great importance of physics, not to measure the falling speed of the stone and not only to build new technologies, but to reveal the basis of reality and thus reach a deep and lasting meaning in our lives. Obviously, in order to fully realize this possibility, one should choose to explore nature as a way of life. To study nature, by the way, does not mean that you have to be a scientist. Nature can also be explored through philosophy, through art, and it is even possible to live the exploration of nature through scientific education. As we have seen, it is possible to reach a deep meaning also with the help of the understanding that our every creation and realization is part of the tremendous power that we have within us, but even in this case, it is important to remember the power of the reality around us and to experience it from time to time with the help of popular science. This thing will connect us for a moment with the experience of infinity and remind us not to assimilate completely in our local swamp because there is something else big around us and thus we will reach an important perspective in our lives.

But what about morals, values ​​and way of life and what about holidays and community?

As we wrote, each and every one should choose their own way of life. Our experience is to give a broad framework story and tools that will help people build their values ​​and their way of life. So far we have presented a general story based on science and philosophy to reach meaning in our lives. Now each and every one can begin a journey of development towards the feeling of experiencing the power they have and its realization in any way they choose. As soon as there is meaning, there is a kind of anchor. A goal that outlines a path and from which we can choose which ideas we want to live by. We call these ideas values. From these values ​​we will build the way of life that suits us. In order to reach meaning, we saw that it is worthwhile to internalize and live the power that is in our mind. From this meaning it is possible to propose a general set of values ​​so that each and every one can build a way of life from it. From the understanding that a person has enormous strengths and that it is worthwhile for a person to embark on a journey of development to realize this strength without the need for illusions, it is possible to agree on common values ​​and a way of life that will allow each person to realize his strength according to his free choice. These values ​​are supposed to be suitable both for the life of the individual and for the entire society consisting of all those individuals. These core values ​​include:

1. The right to life and human dignity (Not only does every person have the right to live, but he should be respected in the style of "love your neighbor as yourself")
2. The right to a free life and to exercise the choices freely as long as they do not directly harm the other's ability to exercise their rights
3. The right to equal opportunities as well as equality before the law Without differences of class, religion, nationality, race, sex, age, income, etc
4. the value of truth, the attempt to choose and stick to the real thing. If the truth is unknown, the attempt to approach it. A central tool for this is the imposition of doubt.
5. The value of brotherhood, perspective and holisticism. On a personal level, each person should live out of self-importance and strive to connect all sides of their being, the intellectual, emotional, etc. At the same time always strive to remember the overall picture that gives perspective on our lives. On a general level, we all experience the same gap and crisis and therefore we must live out of brotherhood with others, see the similarities between us, help each other and develop the human network. Also remember that we are part of an entire ecological network that depends on its components. We are part of the earth, part of the animal kingdom and other animals and part of the universe.

   6. The value of development and education. We must strive to live knowing that we are not perfect and therefore we will always remain students. We continue to develop throughout the years of our lives and at every stage we help others to rise to our level of development. Without education and learning it is impossible to develop beyond the needs of survival and therefore one of the most important issues for a person is to give tools at every stage on how to continue and develop. Hence the issue of education is among the most important issues for man and society. Neither the method itself is perfect nor these laws and values ​​can be changed and should be tested and developed over the years.

These are the main ideas of secular spirituality. She calls us to continue growing up, to take full responsibility for our lives and to understand the amazing potential that exists in us and that exists around us. According to this proposal for a secular spirituality, in order to reach meaning and to build a value system and a way of life, it is worthwhile to embark on a journey of personal and social development that never ends. A journey to know the inner strength and the outer strength. This way you can also get perspective. In our daily life we ​​are surrounded by many events and experiences. Most of them are marginal compared to the strengths and potential inherent in us and in the nature around us. Now it is our duty to go out and touch them and help others to touch these strengths and embark on a journey of spiritual development. Part of such help is to offer communities that will strengthen us, to offer articles, rituals and new holidays that will remind us of the perspective and values ​​and continue to develop our time and human culture.

For this purpose, we established a group several years ago Secular spirituality. As part of the group, we hold lectures, build a community and celebrate events that will remind us of our strength and the values ​​that are important to us. for example,  Stardust Festival - The festival of science and meteors that we hold every August at the peak of the Perseid meteor shower or Yom Kippur is marked by secular spirituality, and every Shavuot evening we perform Tikkun Shavuot as a sign of secular spirituality. We are constantly working and are always happy for new volunteers and activists who see science, philosophy and art as tools that can develop man and society and want to act to fulfill this goal (please contactNir Lahav).

This coming Tuesday, the eve of Shavuot, 30.5.17 we will hold the Tikun Shavuot as a sign of secular spirituality For the fifth time in a row at the Nanochaka restaurant in Bezal Aviv starting at half past eight in the evening. As every year, we will celebrate the pleasure of learning and knowledge with the help of fascinating lectures into the wee hours of the night. In honor of the Fifth Amendment, we are honored to present a combined event of science lectures and philosophy lectures in collaboration with the Secular spirituality With -Think&Drink Different. In the first half of the evening we will take the red pill and try to understand what is the reality we live in? What distinguishes the great ape from other animals? What is dark matter? And how can we understand infinity?

In the second half we will turn to the big questions of meaning, life and death. Is there secularism with meaning? How do you deal with the death that awaits us all around the corner?
And why throughout history has the human race been looking for powerful kings and rulers?
You are welcome to come and join to our community!

Learn more,

Tikun Shavuot marked by secular spirituality 2017 - science, philosophy, meaning

All the activities, the forming community and the volunteers - in the Facebook group of Secular spirituality
and the Facebook page of Secular Spirituality

channel Secular spirituality YouTube

You are invited to read more articles on secular spirituality In a free and happy blog of Nir Lahav