ARTICLE


Living a Life with Meaning by Persephone Arbour


“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Joseph Campbell


I’m definitely an Agnostic. I’m not happy with being organised – so don’t belong to any form of organised anything - anymore! (Although, in the past, I have ‘belonged’ & ‘believed’ - many times!) However, I have been lucky enough to live a very full and meaningful life. I only know and understand my own views on what that means. So, inevitably, this article will contain pieces of my 79 years of life-story.


Some of these are experienced on the outside - friends, family, nature and travel. Some are felt internally, received through the inside - music, painting, poetry, meditation and good conversation. And, some are completely intangible – wonder, passion, sensitivity, peace, silence, mystery and love. Each and every one is full of meaning.


Born in 1933 to loving parents, my inner life grew through them, then war, boarding school, the Royal Academy of Music, marriages and subsequent four much loved children.


In the late 60’s and early 70’s. I discovered the (then new) humanistic psychology movement, sometimes called the ‘growth movement’.


This


was, for me, a time of profound personal growth, training and subsequent new career as a therapist. This, seemingly inevitably, brought me into contact with a guru – then called Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, now known as Osho. This was when I knew that I had to discover my spiritual life, and wouldn’t have missed those years with him for all the tea in China. Eleven years that literally changed my life – and still has the deepest meaning for me, although an active member of the organization no longer.


Late in 1987, I was invited to Australia by my then lover and lived there for fourteen years.


So, what is this word meaning – and what does it mean anyway? I can’t teach you, or write a ‘how to’ explanation


for finding it in your lives – all I can do is share my own thoughts and experiences and hope that they might trigger something of the sort within you - something meaningful!


In Australia, I was living and working in Perth, and was asked to become a Civil celebrant for funerals, weddings etc. Then, I was invited - out of the blue - to create a regular column in a West Australian holistic publication called Nova Magazine.


There, I discovered that I could write.


I absolutely love it, writing I mean! For instance, writing this article is extremely meaningful to me – the actual act of writing I mean. It’s almost like playing in an orchestra, the most meaningful part of my earlier musician’s life.


I write for myself, and others, just as I played in an orchestra – for myself, and others. Creativity is sourced from internal meaning, and gives out meaning to - any life.


After about fourteen years living in Perth – (even becoming an Australian citizen,) I woke up one day with the words in my head: “I don’t want to die on the other side of the world.”


So, by then nearly 70 years old, I came home, and have been living back here, very happily, for over eleven years.


Now 79, I still travel, more internally than externally at this age – but let’s say that I have a very open mind. And, I’ve been living with my partner Jack Cohen, who’s the same age as me, since last September, after 19 years of singlehood. This loving relationship has brought huge meaning into both our lives.


For me, the interpretation of the word meaning, as seemingly an essential part of a fulfiled life - has to do with instinctive feelings – NOT necessarily with intellectual understanding.


However, as human beings, we’re stuck with total dependence on our minds, coloured by education, background and varying depths of life- experience.


London & South East Connection - August/November 2012 31


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