The Life School

Meaning Of Life
Part 1 - The Miracle of Life

In this first section, I'll endeavour to explain the first sub-category of existence. What is life all about at its most basic level? The answer is: to experience the art of living and to cope as best we can with it's challenges. The following ten concepts apply to every living organism - whatever they may be - so it should come in handy for any plants or animals reading this wishing to develop their general comprehension of this philosophy. (Interpreters not provided).

1. To Live.

There are many differing theories surrounding the idea of birth and rebirth, and what happens to life as it emerges into our world. What makes us 'alive' at all? On one hand you can argue that both the sperm and the egg we were created from are both, in fact, alive, and we simply grow and feed from these living cells. Alternatively you could ask what makes these components alive in the first place. Are they extracted from the very living tissue we are made of?, or is there a life-force which flows into them and provides the vital spark of life? Whatever the answer may be, we have been given life - a quality many rocks and fossils are extremely jealous of (or at least the ones I've spoken to).

And so we get back to the point; we are here. We are alive. Why? Is this our lot. Are were just the product of our parents amorous explorations; just a factor in the growth of the human species; or is there a higher purpose to our existence? Put simply, many spiritually minded people believe we are just visitors to this planet. Our body was cobbled together from various materials for the purpose of walking around, but the 'spark of life' is actually a small chunk of a vast universal flow of concious energy. Some call this factor God, others name it Vital Energy, the Divine, the Source, the Power, the Light, the Force. This energy within us and which gives us all life is generally accepted as a Soul. So if this is the case, then why ARE we here? Well.. to take on the thrill of being alive in our own individual and unique way. In other words, we are here to Live and experience life!

So while we happen to be hanging around on this planet - rejoicing in our aliveness - just what is it that we are supposed to do with it? Opinions differ widely. If we were sent here with a prior purpose in mind, surely we would know about it. One theory is that we are shown everything there is to know about the nature of the life we are about to lead by an angel just before birth. We get to see and choose our parents, our gender and a host of other things which make life interesting. We are also filled-in on a few of the things we need to know about life - such as why we are here. Then, at the moment of birth, the angel will wipe our memory clean and we forget everything about any past experiences (or past lives), and we remain in this state of obliviousness until we can either find a way around this problem, or until we die and return to the universe. We then blunder though life trying to remember what we were supposed to know in the first place - how we should live!? This issue can take the rest of our lives to figure out, and maybe we don't even notice Rule Number One at all - we are alive!!

2. To Complete A Task

While we continue to decide how we should live, we may also become aware of the second, but possibly the number one reason for our existence. Have you ever wondered how we could ever hope to advance ourselves spiritually, (possibly up to arc-angel or saintly status), with just one short life-span? You think you've got it bad with your 75 year average expectancy; think how a dog feels, or a fish, or an insect! So with the obvious time limitations involved for any living entity, it has been cogitated that we have each been given tasks to complete while we are here; to advance the soul and to prove themselves worthy of our own being. You may have been given one task or many. Your tasks may be obvious to you, or you may take considerable time and effort to meek out any possibilities. Maybe you never quite manage to even clarify your tasks before your days in this body are up. The tasks you came to perform may take the whole of your life or be done in an instant. You may work on your task for years before you even notice your vocation is being realized. You may be performing your task every day without noticing anything particularly special about it. Or maybe your unique blend of talents and interests leads you through the door and wipes your feet on the other side. It may even lead to fame and fortune, to noble and wonderful gains of recognition, rewards and honours, or it may be totally unnoticeable to anyone else.

Nobody said these things are easy either, what would be the point of a task to prove yourself if everybody could do it blindfold? The richest rewards are often hardest gained, after unpleasant struggles and fighting every step of the way. At this stage, many of you may be thinking "Oh what's the point of it anyway, I may as well take life easy and not worry too much about noble quests of certification." And to that I may have agreed but for the principle of the early retirement policy believed to be invoked by said gods if they believe you've earned it. And then it's back to paradise for you my friend!, and none of this working and wanting and suffering malarkey we get down 'ere. But then, only the good die young.

3. To Survive

Another curiosity which binds every living life-form is the powerful innate desire to be alive, and to remain alive without interruption. You will do almost anything to continue living, including learning to live with terrible wounds or disabilities, and continuing to fight for survival even pitted against impossible odds. The will to survive will always be strong so long as there is hope of improvement, without hope this force will slowly drain away, even though our very existence depends upon it. Survival, just like every other factor of life it seems, takes constant work and attention.

[Interlude - Knights Bridge]

[King Arthur; along with his trusty coconut bearer Patsy; travel through an ancient forrest on their quest to find the Holy Grail. Arthur arrives at a small stream (with a low wooden bridge) just as the Black Knight defeats another knight in a bloody battle.]
[Sounds of Battle]

ARTHUR:You fight with the strength of many men, Sir Knight. [pause] I am Arthur, King of the Britons. [pause] I seek the finest and the bravest knights in the land to join me in my Court of Camelot. [pause] You have proved yourself worthy; will you join me? [pause] You make me sad. So be it. Come, Patsy.

BLACK KNIGHT: None shall pass.

ARTHUR: What?

BLACK KNIGHT: NONE shall pass.

ARTHUR: I have no quarrel with you, good Sir knight, but I must cross this bridge.

BLACK KNIGHT: Then you shall die.

ARTHUR: I command you as King of the Britons to stand aside!

BLACK KNIGHT: I move for no man.

ARTHUR: So be it!

[Black Knight Attacks]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's left arm off after a short battle]

ARTHUR: Now stand aside, worthy adversary.

BLACK KNIGHT: 'Tis but a scratch.

ARTHUR: A scratch? Your arm's off!

BLACK KNIGHT: No, it isn't.

ARTHUR: Well, what's that then?

BLACK KNIGHT: I've had worse.

ARTHUR: You liar!

BLACK KNIGHT: Come on you pansy!

[Black Knight Attacks]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's right arm off]

ARTHUR: Victory is mine! [kneeling] We thank thee Lord, that in thy merc-
[Black Knight kicks Arthur in the head while he is praying]

BLACK KNIGHT: Come on then.

ARTHUR: What?

BLACK KNIGHT: Have at you!

ARTHUR: You are indeed brave, Sir knight, but the fight is mine.

BLACK KNIGHT: Oh, had enough, eh?

ARTHUR: Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left.

BLACK KNIGHT: Yes I have.

ARTHUR: Look!

BLACK KNIGHT: Just a flesh wound.
[Headbutts Arthur in the chest]

ARTHUR: Look, stop that.

BLACK KNIGHT: Chicken! Chicken!

ARTHUR: Look, I'll have your leg. Right!

[whop]
[Arthur chops his leg off]

BLACK KNIGHT: Right, I'll do you for that!

ARTHUR: You'll what?

BLACK KNIGHT: Come 'ere!

ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?

BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!

ARTHUR: You're a loony.

BLACK KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on then.

[whop]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's other leg off]

BLACK KNIGHT: All right; we'll call it a draw.

ARTHUR: Come, Patsy.

BLACK KNIGHT: Oh, oh, I see, running away, 'eh? ... You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you.... I'll bite your legs off!

4. To Have Experiences

Along with our aim of completing a task, we are also given opportunities to deal with smaller everyday experiences. Some of these will be noticeable, others will be handled without much effort on your part, but each has it's place on your learning path. Every feeling you perceive is an experience. Every thought you have, every action you take, and each use of the senses are experiences. Some experiences will be fun, others will be excruciatingly horrible. Some things may be clearly seen as forming interconnected lines of fate, others may seem completely random in their transpiring. The matter of importance isn't how we see these events, but rather how we deal with each as it arises. Handling a situation well will give rise to many merits, maybe a personal feeling of satisfaction, maybe a sense of goodwill or compassion, or just a feeling of "thank gods that's over with." Some traditional laws of the universe, represented by some as Karma, state that situations handled favourably will cause further favourable situations to arise in the future (or good Karma), whereas poorly guided actions will cause unfavourable events to transpire. This law can also be seem in other religions such as the Christian proverb, "As ye sow, so ye shall reap", which shows we really should be taking more notice of these things.

5. To Have Challenges

One step on from 'experiences', which will generally occur many times a day, is the much less common 'challenge'. Challenges, like experiences, need to be dealt with as best we can so we come out a winner after the smoke clears. They don't happen all that regularly, which is good because the thing about challenges is that they do require degrees of guts and determination for best results. Some of your challenges will be difficult. They can bring pain and suffering, and you may wish with all your heart that some challenges did not come your way. But life is touch and these things need to be tackled in order to progress onto the next lot of opportunities. Each challenge is, after all, an opportunity to prove yourself and to build your character, so rather than fight your bad luck, it is much better to see the battle as one you can take pleasure from winning. Illnesses, bodily damage, loss, worry and grief are all challenges.

6. To Create A Home

While you cope with lifes worries and challenges, you will also need to create a comfortable space for yourself where you can relax and take stock. This is your home, your base, the solid ground you branch from and put down roots. You may spend a great deal of your time here or you may use this place simply for eating and sleeping. It may be in the place of your origin or you may feel compelled to travel elsewhere to create it. It may belong to you, it may be owned by your parents, or it may be on temporary loan to be reclaimed after you move on. Some people like to settle for a long time in the same place, while others prefer to travel and regularly uproot themselves for pastures new. Your home may not even be a purposely designed residence, so long as it meets your need to rest you could use any hole in the ground. Maybe you enjoy the company of others; your family, your friends or your partner, or you may prefer to live alone. From this base you can also make plans for the future; where you could raise a family; accomodate friends; and build it up into your own castle. The home is also where the heart is, so they say....

[Interlude - The 4 Yorkshiremen]

(Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. 'Farewell to Thee' is playing in the background on Hawaiian guitar.)

Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Jones: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TJ: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TJ: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TJ: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TJ: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TJ: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TJ: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope..

7. To Grow

We are also here, alive on this planet, in order to develop our physical bodies and to raise them into maturity. During this advancement, you will notice many changes taking place within yourself - some things will slowly appear, some things will get bigger and some things will drop off. This is the process of growth. The change may come gradually with no clear moment or division, or noticeably and obviously in sudden movements. This action is not limited to the physical side either, growth is also significantly a mental alteration. We grow mentally though our experiences, taking on-board knowledges which help us appreciate our surroundings all the more. One moment we may be in fear of a situation though a lack of growth, the next we are confident and knowledgeable having walked through the fear and sustained our growth. But does growth begin at birth and end at death? Many believe not.

8. To Mature

During your lifetime, you will notice significant stages in your bodyies growing career. These are your phases of maturity. As we all know, each body starts off as a single cell which gestates and grows. This period usually ends in some kind of birth and the beginning of infancy. After this, you continue to grow through the life-cycle for as long as you survive. Here is a typical human life-cycle.

Juncture	Age (about)
Infancy Childhood Adolescence Young adulthood Adulthood Maturity Supermaturity Elderhood Frailty	0 - 3 3 - 11 11 - 16 16 - 20 20 - 25 25 - 50 50 - 65 65 - 80 80+

Obviously, you may not live through all these available stages, depending on several life threatening factors, (including that age when you keep calling your mother an 'old bag' and she knocks you around the house with the frying pan). Each segment also contains physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth experiences, and is one factor what makes each stage unique to itself. As with all growth matters, the stages may end and begin suddenly, or segu� into one another gradually over many years. It is often noticed that those in the lower stages will hanker and yearn to be older, and so enjoy the benefits this superiority brings, yet those in the older brackets often seek to be younger, and hunger after the youth they once squandered trying to be older. This occurrence is known as the 'second human condition' or the 'flaw of age' and is a major cause of distress especially around Birthdays and Christmas.

9. To Expel Waste

You will experience the need to let go of some things you could well do without. These excretions and extrications could be items in your physical surroundings, outdated beliefs and emotional baggage from your mind, or put simply the stuff which builds up inside which you want out. The best thing to do is to discharge your wastes in a manner that is safe for yourself and your environment, or you could gift wrap it and hand it over as a present for someones thirty-second birthday.

10. To Heal

Lastly in this section, another aspect which units all living entities is their ability to be ill, and you will experience disease, pain and sickness in yourself and those around you. When this happens, you will feel the urge to find remedies and treatments (and heaps of sympathy) in order to aid the healing process. Whether you treat yourself though natural means or rely on chemicals designed to take the pain away, you will eventually learn how to look after your ailing self and recover to full vitality. Learning how to heal is an important step in your development and soon you will need to use these skills to make others, possibly your own family, well again.

So.. to sum it all up then in broad terms.. uhh.. Life is a truly amazing phenomenon and you're damn lucky to be here mate, so make the most of it!!

[The Galaxy Song]

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space.
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Meaning Of Life Part 1 - The Miracle of Life