Finding a deeper meaning to life

''Eat, sleep, work. Eat, sleep, work. That's all I seem to do anymore,'' a friend recently commented. Sound familiar? Who hasn't thought to himself, ''Is this all there is to life - just living each day?''

Some people seek release from drudgery and boredom in alcohol and drugs. Others seek endless stimulation - cheap thrills, ''life in the fast lane,'' anything to escape the pain of ''just existing.'' But after the audio/video/drug/sex/danger/violence ''high'' is over, then what? Nothing has changed.

Are we doomed to just existing? To living the same old life, to thinking the same old thoughts? Is escapism the answer? No! The only escape from ''reality'' is escape to reality - to a whole new state of conscious existence. Perhaps an analogy would be helpful.

Imagine a deep valley surrounded by seemingly impassable cliffs and filled with a dense fog. In this valley are beings whose whole sense of life has been shaped by the ''reality'' of the cliffs and fog. They see nothing clearly. They've never seen the sun, moon, or stars. As far as they are concerned, their valley is the universe. That anything might exist outside the valley is deemed superstition, else the stuff of religion.

Now imagine an outsider descending into the valley. His senses have not been shaped by the valley's ''realities.'' He brings light to the fog dwellers and helps them see things as they really are for the first time. And this new vision of things brings freedom and healing. He tells the valley dwellers of the sun, moon, and stars, and limitless horizons. And best of all, he tells them there's a way out of the valley and its darkness into the light.

If you were a valley dweller, do you suppose you'd believe him? Would you long to be free and see for yourself the sun, moon, or stars? Or would you call him a madman, since anyone can ''see'' that no such things exist and that there is no way out?

Humanity, trapped in the dark valley of its own limiting beliefs and perceptions, has been visited by such a stranger. He was, of course, Christ Jesus. Jesus knew his true origin to be Spirit, God, not matter. He said ''I am from above: . . . I am not of this world.'' n1 The world of Spirit is the only world Jesus acknowledged as man's eternal home and heaven.

n1 John 8:23.

Through spiritual sense, transcending the unreliable reports of the physical senses, Jesus saw things as they really are. The physical senses could not fog his vision of man as actually the son of God, His image and likeness. This spiritual vision was divine light that destroyed the darkness of fear, sin, disease, and even death itself, by revealing the hidden (to fogged-in sense) realities of divine Life.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains this healing effect this way: ''Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.'' n2

n2 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 476-477.

In the Science of Christ we too can spiritually discern the infinite realities of life as God, infinite Mind, knows it. We don't have to stay in the dark fog of material thinking and living. There's a way out of the dismal valley. The light of God revealed in Christ Jesus shows us the way. We need only follow him in thought and deed to find a life of richness and variety beyond our present comprehension.

Didn't Jesus himself say, ''I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly''? n3 If we want such a life, life abundant in true love, satisfaction, companionship, health, right activity, we can have it. The way out of the valley of mists has been revealed, and Christian Science will help us along the way.

n3 John 10:10.

And think of the view when the mists part and we find the unlimited horizons of infinite Mind. What wonders to behold! What beauties to know! What love and brotherhood to feel with all creation! Isn't this the only life worth living? The only real life there is? DAILY BIBLE VERSE Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light. Ephesians 5:8