JSR: Everything in the world is empty and devoid of meaning. I go about my day doing things that have no purpose, feel no significance in anything, and everything seems like it would go on just the same had I never existed. Is there any purpose to life at all? Would not everything be the same had life never existed on the earth at all?

Ezekiel: Indeed there is no purpose or meaning in anything at all, but this is not cause for despair, but joy. The wise ones who realize that there is no purpose in anything, that nothing in the world has meaning, do not fight this, and it does not cause resistance in their minds as if they think things should have meaning after all. Nothing in the world has meaning, and yet the wise are only parts of the world, thoroughly devoid of meaning down to the bone; and so they merely stand and do a meaningless dance to no purpose, and live in that absolutely liberated, worry-free, meaningless life, knowing that even they, down to their very souls and bones, have no purpose anywhere in them. They and the world become one; the world is meaningless and they do not resist by thinking things ought to have meaning; they become the world itself, as free and meaningless as the world; and life, existence, which exists to no end at all, has no more power to make them despair; indeed, this is a moment of joy.

The one who constructs meaning within himself,

and projects it onto the world:

he has joy, for he sees meaning in everything, though he also has despair.

The one who sees that meaning is illusion,

and does not project it onto the world:

he has only despair, for he resists

and himself is made of purpose,

for he thinks the world ought to have purpose in it.

The one who realizes the world and he are one,

that he has as little meaning anywhere in him

as there is in the world,

and knows nothing ought to be any way at all:

he has only joy, for the world no longer has the power

to make him despair.

How many realize this out of a million? Probably half, for a brief moment, and then it is gone. How many can hold onto the consciousness, so that it is with them all the time? Perhaps one, or not even one. It is a difficult thing to know this fully, and never lose grip on this consciousness. Not even I can do it; not even my master could; I have never met one who could, but all seemed to go back to ordinary life as soon as they had some discomfort or grew tired of the concentration it takes to hold it in the mind.