Q: Why am I living?
A: Thanks for writing to us with this question—it’s a deep one. Since you have written your question to our site, I am happy to reply to you with a Urantia Book answer; my reply is largely taken from its teachings.
The information in The Urantia Book is revelatory material. It is information that you can use to help you formulate your own answer to the question “Why am I living?” It is information to help us-at this time and as we are-to become personally aware of the answer.
Starting from the basics: you are alive. You are alive because you have life. Life begets life and perhaps you’ll agree that your life was bestowed on you by a power greater than yourself. The religionist recognizes this power as the very Source of all life who provides the “spark” to lifeless matter. The materialist might think the universe is just mechanical or random and that life has no lasting meaning; that the spark of life is automatic. Those appear to be the obvious choices when deciding what to think about the purpose of being alive…
The concept of “life” itself is an interesting concept to study, even apart from its whole purpose. The Urantia Book is full of life. Here’s a study that condenses numerous instances from the book about the topic of life.
In the end, it is really you who must decide the why of your existence. Whatever else this life is, it is studded with choices, and deciding what you believe about your existence is an important one, so you can have peace and a purposeful direction in life.
Sooner or later, most people consider this question. If we think about it closely, here we are: small human beings, walking about on a large planet that seems suspended in space, along with countless other planets, blazing stars and galaxies. The more we find out about the vastness of space, the lonelier we can feel. Compared with geologic or astronomic history our human lives are so short, so transient and so precarious…what can it mean to be alive? Is there really an ultimate Truth that makes it all make sense? Is there a good reason that we are alive? A something that is NOT subject to decay and loss? Searching for this truth is a worthwhile endeavor because the sincere search for truth does eventually disclose good and sufficient reasons for life and for the decision to embrace something that transcends the material world.
Here’s another way to think about it: the person who has faith in Source chooses to believe that there is a part of all mortals that is immortal and eternal, and that this earthly life is only a part of the journey. Our material bodies are temporary forms that dissolve to dust following physical death, but the immortal soul resurrects to an eternal “voyage of discovery.”
14:5.10 Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony—these traits inherent in evolving human nature—were not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short sojourn on earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.
Your soul has been a lifetime in the making—a co-creation of you and God, dwelling within. Together, you make the choice for survival and prepare for it by your willing partnership in the active co-creation of your eternal soul. One purpose of life, then, is to develop a strong soul that possesses survival qualities. And that is done by aligning one’s will to the will of God .
Urantia Book readers learn that the realms of space are teeming with inhabited worlds, and that there’s a plan at work in all we see:
32:5.1 There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. We are all part of an immense plan, a gigantic enterprise, and it is the vastness of the undertaking that renders it impossible to see very much of it at any one time and during any one life. We are all a part of an eternal project which the Gods are supervising and outworking. The whole marvelous and universal mechanism moves on majestically through space to the music of the meter of the infinite thought and the eternal purpose of the First Great Source and Center.
The eternal purpose of the eternal God is a high spiritual ideal. The events of time and the struggles of material existence are but the transient scaffolding which bridges over to the other side, to the promised land of spiritual reality and supernal existence…
See more: The Eternal and Divine Purpose
But the only way that this becomes real to a seeking person is through living faith in God, and willingness to believe that this promise is true for them. This is where the materialist and the religionist differ, for the materialist finds faith unreasonable, while the religionist has personal spiritual experience of his/her faith. But the catch is that one can’t get that experience without having first exercised faith.
Finally, there is this thought from the book:
111:3.7 In so far as man’s evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true: What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity—if it is worth finishing.
Thanks for this very important question. I hope that this reply has been helpful to you in gaining a bigger understanding of your reason for existence.
