Humans cannot escape the longing for truth. But truth, according to Heidegger, is not found in what is correct but through a process of unconcealing what has been hidden. Accordingly, the ultimate Truth that humanity yearns to unconceal is our existential purpose in the world.

Heidegger’s existential ontology, Dasein (Being), describes an anxious paradox: the awareness of our present existence and its linkage to the world’s past and future circumstances along with the awareness of a possibility for non-existence and non-identity. As Being is nurtured through dwelling in place, human beings naturally desire place and fear placelessness.

But if place is a physical or emotional environment where one can feel belonging and connectedness with other inhabitants, then placelessness is equivalent to the discomfort of not-belonging. Therefore, humanity’s ontological purpose and what we ultimately want to seek through knowledge and ethical choice-making is how to nurture our sense of belonging in the world.

Vulnerability is meant to be challenging. If it was easy, why would we need to exist? We could have stayed unmanifested in the love of universal oneness or manifest on Earth as another animal species that is more aligned with its natural state of beingness. So, why would the cosmos need humans?

It is through being human that the spirit of the universe can experience the poignant beauty and humility of surrendering to the intense fear of wholly being seen and unconditionally loved in a self-aware and conscious form. To reach this state, we need to accept our vulnerability to pain. We are at a time in humanity’s evolution when the stories we’ve created about who we are—our identities—can no longer hide our world pain. Some people will want to desperately hold onto the old world through more identification to greater elaborate stories. Some will numb themselves with distractions, while others will resort to manipulating other people’s truths. But all of this is merely the ego’s attempt at self-preservation.

Can we still find the sacred souls beneath the self-denial, the lies, the stories, and the illusions? If we peel back the layers and see through the lies, what is left is the tenderness of our human vulnerability. Our ability to feel pain can kill us, but it is also pain that can save us. So, when we come up against an enemy, someone so cruel whom we think we can never forgive, look past their facade and find that vulnerable human inside of them. The one who is so afraid of their own pain that they cannot even bear to recognize its sacred beauty. They may never recognize our truth, but our vulnerable hearts will recognize the one that they have abandoned and ours will grow even stronger.

To be inspired is to have something to live for amidst the darkness. People don’t like to acknowledge the darkness but without it there would be no need for inspiration. Darkness gives room for the spirit to shine. As our souls are inspirited by this spotlight, we know we have a purpose. The egoic-human world is built on comparison—who has more resources, achievements, attention, and even suffering (!), but the spirited-human world is built on contrast—the undeniable purpose of being alive, shining brightly through the darkness.

Why would we be afraid of the other? We are afraid because the other reveals to us the duality between existing and not existing. Since the universe is one, if an other exists, we will come to question our own existence. If this other is similar to us, we risk losing your individual selves in the shared togetherness. If this other is different from us, the insecure parts of our identity will struggle to maintain our validity to exist. If this other is better or worse than we are in any way as defined by our human systems, we will compare our worthiness to exist according to the other’s level of greatness. So, deep down, we ask ourselves, if someone else already exists, why do I need to exist as well?

While the other does not exist in the realm of universal oneness, the other in an embodied Earthly form presents to us the question of our existential purpose. Why do I, in this exact form, need to exist? And thus, the other leads us to seek and discover a sacred knowing within ourselves that we, indeed, do have a purpose here on Earth that is uniquely ours.