Purposeless

I'm going to take the next step now.  If there is no real pain in the world, it's all just in our minds, why try saving anyone?  Why are we trying to save ourselves?  Is the compassion for the ego?  What exactly are we trying to help?  If we are suffering, and we alleviate that suffering, either through awareness or through intervention, what, exactly, are we helping?  What is our purpose?  It seems to me that if we alleviate the suffering through intervention, we are helping the mind, the brain, the ego: that which believes in the pain.  

If we help through awareness, though, we may be accomplishing two things: killing that which suffers and bringing awareness of the universe to the universe.  But why?  Looking at my path, I definitely have found that I started on the path with reason, which is interesting.  I started on this path with an intellectual purpose to ease my own suffering.  And then the purpose seemed to start to change to just becoming awareness.  But now, it seems, as my awareness arguably grows, it's killing purpose.  That intellectual vehicle that started me on this path is exactly what is being dismantled through awareness, and it leaves me, well, I'm left just existing.  Still moving, still going, still perhaps even searching, but for what?  

On the death of purpose:  It seems to me that the mystics I've read seek to either bring awareness or end suffering, or both, at least at first.  Starting with ending suffering: Killing that which suffers is not necessarily something worthwhile, really, as the ego seems somewhat meaningless in the world.  Whether it exists or not is, well, not important.  It's just an ego.  Is it a being?  Is it something worth preserving?  Is it the Devil?  Is it bad?  Intrinsically bad?  Is killing it a good purpose?  I don't think so.  It just is.  So, perhaps bringing awareness of the universe to the universe is a good purpose.   Why is this a goal?  What does this do?  Is this what the universe seeks?  Tolle thinks that the universe wants awareness of itself, seemingly for fun.  But why?  It comes down to this: if there is no good or bad, why try for anything?  If there is no good or bad, there is no better.  If there is no better, there is no purpose.      

In the movie contact, there was always a line that I loved towards the end of the movie.  Matthew McConaughey, who has become the spiritual leader of the country, is asked whether or not he believes Jodie Foster, a strict scientist, when she describes a mystical journey where she met with technologically advanced aliens in a galaxy far far away.  He responds, "As a person of faith... I am bound by a different covenant than Dr. Aroway - but I believe our goal is one and the same: the pursuit of truth.  I for one believe her."  I've always absolutely loved that quote because it is exactly what I feel is the connection between religion and science.  People are just searching for what is.  But here's the part of it that may be the death of the ego which makes the pursuit of truth so difficult and leads to such different conclusions:  The truth just may be that there is no purpose.  There is no goal, no end point, no purpose.  In this respect, I think the mystics have it right, there is only the present.  There is no future to seek, no reason for doing or even being.  There just is...  As de Mello would say, wake up!  But it seems you'll then discover there's absolutely no reason to.  

I've got to stop listening to Enigma in the mornings.