In an authoritarian organization like the Catholic Church faith is largely a tool allowing those in power to remain in power. Right? It’s a way to get people to think/do what you want them to.
But the power and authoritarianism of faith-based organizations doesn’t interest me. (I’m hopelessly unpolitical!) What does interest me is the trust aspect of faith. Faith asks you to set aside your doubts and skepticism and trust something is true, perhaps even surrender to it.
Why set aside scepticism? What are you placing your faith in (that demands credulity)? And why are you placing your faith in it?
That might be part of the picture. But trying to reduce the ‘meaning’ I’m talking about to a simple formula misses the whole point of it.
I’m pointing at the meaning of meaning. Isn’t it all about you (to simplify even further)? You are free to try and unsimplify.
ie. is meaning necessarily subjective?
Setting aside doubt can unblock energy that doubt blocks. It can also open doors doubt keeps fully or partly shut.
What are you placing your faith in (that demands credulity)? And why are you placing your faith in it?
Say Renate has faith that she is an eternal soul that has been and will continue to be reborn in many other bodies. She believes this because a teacher she trusts said it’s true and she had an experience that (seemed to) verify it. By believing she is an eternal soul, many of the fears and pains of everyday life are lessened or disappear.
What matters, what is of value, what gets you up in the morning, these are all in the eye of the beholder, non? ‘Meaning’ is a man/mind-made conceptual construct. What is the meaning of a boulder that rolls down a hill on a planet with no sentient beings?
If by doubt, we mean the confusion due to conflicting presuppositions (beliefs/faiths eg secular vs spiritual) - this is a problem arising purely from faith (conditioned world views). Thus “setting aside doubt” merely means : freedom from faith/belief/conditioning.
It does not necessarily mean letting go of some particular forms of (unconfirmed) security/confusion for another - ie does not have to go from interpretation to interpretation - knowing (narrative of doubt) to knowing (narrative of doubt or certainty)
Another possibility would be to go from doubt (relation of confusion with the known) to “I don’t know” (which might require “true religious” faith)
Your example confirms that faith is motivated by the perpetual movement of fear/self.
Me defeats Truth.
Yes - so can there be freedom from the total authority of Me, Me, Me, I want/I believe? Or is that all that matters?
Either we all agree that what you want is best - and the only solution I see there is Reason (that you also must agree to compromise with) - or conflict (with the whole universe).
The Webb space telescope photos are being released and they suggest so far that we may NOT be the center of the universe…but still too soon to be definitive. Who decides where the ‘center’ is anyway?
Because the brain creates and constantly recreates “I”, the character one seems to be, life is all about I, and that’s meaningful. But without faithful belief in this character, one is life itself, simply alive, so who needs meaning?
I reckon for most people, not-I (others, world) matters, but only I Matter (with a capital M). I presume there are those relatively few for whom 1) not-I matters as much or more than I and/or 2) the division into I and not-I doesn’t happen.
So our life is just a continuous movement in the tiny circle of fear - and the stories fear tells itself.
Is it really worthwhile being fear? If the meaning of life is just the perpetuation of this movement, surely it is essentially worse than meaningless?
Surely the only true meaning lies in finding space for the rest of this amazing universe.
Yes! Discovering that the separation or division from it was a ‘stumble’ by this new-fangled brain creating an image that it somehow existed apart on its own.
And please don’t call me ‘Surely’ 
Yeah, not bad, all told. If it were a TV series I’d probably be a fan, though I’d need a crib sheet to remember all the settings and characters!
Two from John Lennon:
I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly
I’m crying
The claim that comes to mind is that we are tha contents of our consciousness - the settings and the characters are part of the known.
Both are projections : one whilst asleep the other during the day
Sounds like someone’s been hittin’ the Dogen!
As long as the brain has an image of itself , it is through that image that it will interact with the world. The question is can it become aware that it’s seeing the world, others, in that way, through the eyes of the image it has created and not seeing ‘what is’ directly. If the brain / I meet you and then based on that meeting form some image of you, then my self image will now be relating to the image I have formed of you which is no relationship at all! Just an interaction of images in my brain?
Actually Dogen is very new to me - Brad Warner/Hardcore zen (whom I read and watch on youtube) is doing his best to explain what Dogen is trying to say - but the original stuff just looks like murky poetry.
My literary introduction to zen came from ch’an, in the guise of Huineng and Huangpo.
If I am fear, the tendency to react, recoil, retreat, retract, recant, etc., am I capable of determining what is or is not “worthwhile”? Can fear think fearlessly enough to be rational?