What does it all mean? What are we searching for in all these endeavors, these things we do? What does life, and growth, and development, and evolution mean? These are questions that thinking people are constantly asking, and which but few are able to answer even partially.
The end of all human endeavor and of life… is… to allow the soul to unfold until it reaches union with Spirit. And as Spirit is the divine part of man - the bit of God-material in him - this union eventually will result in what is known as Union with God - that is, the bringing of the individual soul into conscious touch and union with the center of all life.
Some may think and teach that the aim of human life is happiness, and this is true, if they mean the real happiness of the soul - the only true happiness. But if they mean the relative and transitory thing usually called happiness, they quickly find that they are pursuing a "will-o'-the-wisp," that constantly recedes as they approach it.
True happiness is not to be found in relative things, for these turn to ashes like Dead Sea fruit, the moment we reach out to grasp them. We may find a certain amount of happiness in the pursuit of things, but when we pluck the fruit… it withers. No matter how high may be the thing pursued in the chase for happiness, the result is the same. Relative things cannot help being relative, and, consequently, fade away. They are creatures of time and space, and, while they serve their purposes, they cannot live beyond their time. They are mortal, and like all mortal things… must die.
Only the absolute thing remains unchanged, and is deathless. And all this struggle, and pain, and life, and effort, really is directed toward the unfoldment of the soul, that it may recognize its real self. This is what it all means.
This is why we pursue first this thing and then that thing, thinking that we need them, only to find out that we need them not. We feel a hunger that cannot be appeased - a thirst that will not be quenched. And we try all the experience of life, sometimes feverishly and eagerly, sometimes listlessly and sluggishly, but find them all to be shadows and unrealities. But the hunger and thirst still remain, and torment us to further efforts.
And this will be so always, until we learn that the thing we desire is within us, instead of outside of us, and when we learn this lesson, even faintly, we begin to seek intelligently and are changed beings.
This is the meaning of life - of evolution.