If this 'creator' you talk about has any human characteristics such as purpose, intelligence or consciousness, that I think, is what is blocking you from understanding the meaning of life. When I dumped all superstitions, it suddenly all just snapped clear. Good lick.

Hi trinacria3,

The question of suffering is a really profound one.

For me it is like light & darkness, you can’t know one without the other, and on an even more profound level, one of them has no real existence at all, it is merely the absence of the other. For example; we wouldn’t walk into a room and turn off the darkness.

Suffering is the absence of soothing or comforting, or whichever other antonym you may choose. So without suffering how could we know soothing or comforting?

Our experience of suffering on this plane of existence, in my limited understanding, is temporary and provides an opportunity for us to reflect the divine attributes that are inherent to our being, such as; compassion, empathy, justice et.al.

The reason, again from my very limited understanding, for this temporal physical experience is to enable us, of our own free will, to choose how we will act and react to different situations and circumstances i.e. will we try to overcome our lower nature and allow our higher natures to reflect into the world, or will we allow our egos to dominate.

The purpose in all of this? Well that’s the age-old question, and I really have no idea, but I have seen it explained thus; when a foetus is developing in the matrix of the womb it is developing the limbs and organs that it will require to function in the world it will enter upon birth. The foetus has no comprehension of the world outside of the womb and also has no choice in the acquisition of it’s limbs and organs. In like manner, the acquisition of capacity in reflecting divine attributes is necessary for our functioning on the plane of existence we will enter upon the cessation of our physical life in this world. The only difference being that we have a choice as to how we will develop our capacities in this material world.

help someone better their lives in some way as often as you can

We human beings at the functional level are no different than a single celled creature living in pond scum. That is not a negative comment, it is merely the truth. We are an animated mass of symbiotic elements that have aggregated into a single functioning organism.

The entire purpose of life at any level is to reproduce and survive. The process varies a lot in detail, but that is the scheme of things. We humans and a number of other animals on this planet have developed the capacity to contemplate the abstract. To consider the past, present, and future. We are also aware of our mortality. It is therefor no surprise that during our long evolutionary struggle to the place we now are has brought us to believe in odd things that are inconsistent with our reality.

We are not only able to consider what is, but we can think about what it should or could be. We have achieved a position on the evolutionary chain where we can not just think such things, but we can affect changes to those things.

As a result, we ponder why we are here. What is our purpose beyond the basic reality? In doing so we can also imagine answers to these questions. We can invent purpose beyond reproduction and survival.

So, for what it's worth, we create our own purpose, our own importance, and our own rationale. Everything you see in this world today is the result of countless minds inventing and reinventing themselves over deep time. So, my friend, your purpose in life, your reason for being is for you to decide, then pursue it with all your energy. I wish you good and pleasant imagining. Invent well.