Our Mission
The mission of The Meaningful Life Center is to support the journey of those who are hoping to live a more meaningful life by exploring life’s great questions and the answers given by the sacred traditions, science, psychology, and the examples given by so many who eventually found meaning and fulfillment for themselves. The goal of The Center is not to give answers, but by using stories, poetry, music, general teaching, and conversation, the Center exists to create a safe place for others to find their own path toward a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
Our Purpose
For thousands of years, the world’s wisdom traditions have taught that there is more to life than the everyday things on which we spend much of our time. In ancient Greece, the quest for wisdom was captured by the admonition of Socrates: “Know Thyself.” He went further, saying, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Two thousand years later, the great mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “It is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are.” Continuing this theme, in the 20th century the humorist James Thurber said, “All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”
The Meaningful Life Center is a place where individuals can find resources, encouragement, and support for following this ages-old advice. The goal of the Center is to help participants know themselves well enough to discover a meaningful life for themselves and to facilitate each person’s ability to find it.
This mission is pursued through workshops, seminars, and lectures designed to encourage and support personal growth. Participants explore, study, and discuss the components of a meaningful life and consider what is most important for their own lives in light of the guidance of ideas from philosophy, psychology, science, art, music, medicine, literature, poetry, and the world’s spiritual traditions.
Some of the specific aims of the Center
- To promote life-long learning.
- To encourage the development in each participant of an image of how to live meaningfully and fully at everystage of life.
- To encourage service to others.
- To maintain a library of books, talks, and movies providing inspiration and information on how to pursuea meaningful life.
- To publish materials and maintain a web site containing information about how to live a fulfilling life.
Relation of the Center to the wisdom traditions of human history
The Meaningful Life Center offers those who are engaged with a specific belief system a place where they can share ideas and learn how people with other views understand life and living. (Whatever one’s beliefs, there is much that can be learned from people with different views and from the wisdom of other traditions.) And the Center is a place where those who do not belong to any organized belief system can learn about and engage with the collective wisdom of humanity.
In sum, the goal of the Meaningful Life Center is to support those who wish to live an “examined life” and to aid all those who are attempting to discover what is worth “running toward.” The Center is for those who wish to understand themselves and their world more clearly. It is for those who have established beliefs and it is for those who do not. It is envisioned as a place to facilitate the integration of all facets of life: career, relationships, spiritual life, health, service, values, meanings, ultimate purposes, and community. Through programs designed to help participants engage with life’s most important questions, the Center encourages the harmonious development of body, heart, mind, and spirit.
Our History
In 2015 the Meaningful Life Center opened its doors at 116 Carr Street in Knoxville, Tennessee with this Mission Statement:
In the four full years of operation before the beginning of the Covid pandemic, 20 different workshop leaders spent countless hours preparing and leading programs. There were about 2000 enrollments in Center programs over those 4 years, with many of the 600 different individuals who participants joining several programs. And over those 4 years, those 600 people spent a cumulative total of about 15,000 hours learning, reflecting, and growing. A lot of peoples’ lives were deepened and enriched in those years.
With the outbreak of Covid, some programs were offered on-line, but the in-person programs that had been the core of the Center were cancelled. Gradually a few in-person programs were added in late 2021 and 2022, but not many. But we are now ready for a return to full operation in 2023, with = a full set of in-person programs.
The Need for the Center Today
The need for the kind of programs the Meaningful Life Center offers is as great as any time in history, probably greater. In the broader culture, there has been an explosion of many kinds of programs all over the world designed to fill this need, but the demand has created its own set of problems: the more successful these kinds of programs have become, the more those who offer them have become focused on making money, selling books, gaining a large following, and otherwise collecting fame and fortune for themselves. Not everyone, but many.
This is not to diminish the fact that many churches provide a valuable spiritual home for a large number and alternative teachers and teachings are helping millions of people every day. But there are several factors, taken together, that made the Center somewhat unique:
1. We welcome members of every church and spiritual group to our programs. We do not compete in any way with them, but simply offer an additional way to pursue the inner journey, including the opportunity to learn about other traditions and the beliefs of other people.
2. For those who are not part of an established religious or spiritual tradition, we offer a place to explore the inner journey without the necessity of committing to a particular set of beliefs. The Center is a place to learn about the way people through history have engaged with the spiritual journey, practices them have used, and to hear about the journeys of others who are seeking in their own unique way.
3. We have offered our programs freely to anyone who wished to participate, without charge, helping us avoid the danger of using peoples’ longings as a way to make money. To date no group leader has received financial compensation for leading a workshop. This is not a fixed policy, but it has helped us in our early years to ensure that our leaders have a personal commitment to sharing what they have learned.
4. We have not sought large numbers of people. Because our groups are small, we are better able to avoid the dangers of becoming ambitious.
5. By creating small groups, many ow which meet over several weeks, we create the possibility of close interpersonal relationships between teachers and participants as well as between members of each group. These personal connections foster an atmosphere for each person to go as deep in their own journey as they wish, as well share their experiences with others.
6. Our groups are not only discussion groups but have leaders who have some knowledge about the journey in the area in which they are offering a workshop. This means they can guide participants toward deeper understanding and even toward wisdom in that particular area of the journey.
There are, of course, numerous churches, spiritual groups, learning centers, and teachers in East Tennessee that are doing things to help people with their inner journeys and to deepen their spiritual lives. But many require at least a minimal acceptance of a particular point of view or belief system. We are open to all: those who are members of a religion, those who already have a spiritual practice of some kind, and those who are not engaged with any religious tradition.
The Meaningful Life Center seeks to make its own unique contribution to speak to the need of people to find their own path on the inner journey and to find their way to a connection with something greater than themselves. At the Center participants learn about the inner journey as it has been understood in many different traditions, about the beliefs and practices of people in all traditions, and in some groups the participants can share with each other what they are learning in their personal journeys.
The only common thread all participants in Center programs have is the feeling or belief that there is something more to be found, to open into in their lives, and it is therefore worthwhile to undertake their own search for meaning, to the explore the inner journey, in a personal quest to have a meaningful and fulfilling life.