We might divide our world into two layers, the abstract and the physical. The abstract includes thoughts and that which can only be expressed in thought, such as structure or function, and the physical is what can be touched. Some spiritual traditions choose to hybridize the two, and create an abstraction with attributes of the physical, such as an absolute God, Word or Law.

Given more study, our belief might include recognizing the abstract as part of the physical world, as it exists only in thought, or alternatively, as the ancient Indians did, characterizing all of reality as thought, with the individual as a thinker in the thoughts of a larger mind. Either of these methods keeps the world whole; when wefragment a singular world into two, an external world of physicality and an internal world of perceptions, there is no longer any belief in process or consistency, and we are locked within ourselves as the confines of ou reality.

This becomes despair-oriented, as a philosophy, because the individual is mortal and fallible, and if there is not a larger whole in which to believe, the individual is left with only self-satiation, which has no meaning except comfort, and there is nothing to strive for, nothing left to create, and no cause to respect and love the world, thus we turn on it and cover it with concrete and plastic, as if the seeming immortality of those substances could compensate for our own declining hours.

It is better to see the process, and place the individual in it, than to alienate oneself from the continuity of existence. When given a part in the whole, the individual can define achievement according to its own terms and reach fulfillment by finding meaning in creation and in living that role as best possible, thus getting as much from life as can be done. To separate oneself from the process is to become a lonely world that dies with the individual, thus there is nothing worth sacrificing or fighting for, and a loss of both passion and reverence for life.

Our world is composed of our thoughts; we never experience what it is to be outside of the individual, but only representations of it as transferred by our senses and ideas. As the world is a mind in itself, we are like a thread of ideas within it, and at some point the mind moves on and we are forgotten, but the mind continues, and the same energy of thinking that gave us life continues to give life, both to other individuals and to the whole. To know and exhalt this life-force is to escape the bounds of the individual.

In this mode of thought, we are able to not escape suffering, nor to accept it into our hearts as a value, but to see that it has a reason for existing, which is the continuing process of the whole, and thus to realize that suffering while negative to us is necessary, and from it come good things from which we also benefit. Someone else had to die before we were born; something dies when we eat, and when we breathe, but that things die is not important, but that the process of life continues.

When one confronts suffering in life, there are several paths of thought that can explain it:
(a) one can numb oneself to suffering, at the cost of being also numb to joy;
(b) one can see suffering as the reason for life, and either embrace it or embrace avoiding it, at the cost of being unable to think outside of suffering;
(c) one can see suffering as necessary for the whole, and both detest suffer and celebrate joy, because the individual is one part of the whole and its suffering does not mean the whole, the source of life itself, suffers.

The fatalistic religions popular in declining societies favor the first two options, as these provide an Absolute view of suffering and a way to confine it to a mental space where it does not seem to touch the rest of life; however, by expending the most energy on the negative, what is achieved is a world centered around suffering. To take the third option demands a force of will and of self-discipline, but enables us to experience life to its fullest, and to determine to make our suffering meaningful by achievement. Since one suffers and dies regardless, it is better to give that suffering and death a reason by having it occur in the process of striving for greater strength, learning or character; for this we should be thankful for suffering.

Whether or not it seems diseased, varying with each era and the events that transpire in our civilization, the world always needs re-creators, who can take what is and destroy the useless while nurturing the stronger, thus ensuring that the day after today will be filled with brighter, healthier things. One can only achieve this worldview by understanding that suffering is part of the process of life, like day follows night, and birth follows death; suffering is a means to an end, and only we as a part of life that is an agent of creativity can imagine and work to create that end. This is the role of autonomous life in nature.

Another way to see this is that if there is good, and then bad, there is also a meta-good: both good and bad serve together as a continuing system by which we survive, which is the ultimate good. Since most of life involves boring and mundane tasks, it is no stretch of the imagine to group the tedium of suffering and inanity of death with those other meaningless things, and thus to focus on the meaningful, namely the good things that we can create and thus fulfill our role on earth. That which is good is that which adapts to our world and enhances it, thus it is essential to the meta-good as well as good in itself.

To understand this is to visualize the mechanism that unites all mechanisms, and to realize that mechanisms are but means, and the ongoing process of the uniting mechanism is our goal; we enhance its function by living, striving, and getting better, even if this does not occur in our personal lifetimes. However, we as individuals enjoy life, and nothing can be more fulfilling to an individual than that enjoyment continue, even if not personal enjoyment; to escape the self in this form is to escape the sting of death, although nothing escapes its inevitability.

In the same sense, when we consider that we are mortal beings subject to the will of the external, and that we cannot control our fate, we tend to separate the world into body and mind. Under body we group our own physical form, whose fate is controlled by external things, and thus also with it we group external forces and the world outside the body; under mind we place our thoughts and emotions and personality and will and spirit. We can thus explain all things in the cosmos as body or mind.

We are thus afforded several choices:
(a) see only body, and discount our inner world;
(b) see only mind, and ignore the importance of the external world and its sustenance of us;
(c) see the whole as a process, with our bodies being the means by which our minds can exist, and entirely part of the whole and inseparable from it.

The simplest way of living is to follow the first option, and to be pleased at better food, or sexual or intoxicating gratification, but this is empty since we deny our thoughts and feelings and thus become servants of something that is, in itself, not fulfilling. Food is dead things and the seeds of plants; sex is a mechanical impulse that brings brief pleasure but does not change our degree of pleasure in life as a whole; intoxication passes, and then we are more depressed since an artifical state of heightened pleasure is gone, leaving us lonely and more sensitive to pain. Only the third way is enduring, in that we are able to assign reasons for our body and mind to the same creative force, and thus to appreciate it as our source and destination, our means and our goal.

When this is realized, we are able to see death and suffering for what they are and as nothing more: they sustain the ongoing cycle of life. Further, we are able to appreciate that cycle of life, and thus not withdraw from it as if a member of a fatalistic religion, but to realize how we can sustain and enhance this cycle of life and thus fulfill ourselves, since we enjoy being alive and thus wish to sustain that joy, even if not had by us personally. Another way to see this is that the joy is not ours, and does not originate within us, but is an emotion that any thinking being will have upon seeing the whole and realizing how good it indeed is.

Crossing the threshold of the fear of death in this method frees us from unnatural fear at the prospect of death, and allows us to build our efforts around life; we have realized already that our lives pass quickly, and that we are not eternal, but that the reality from which we originated is eternal, and by acting for it we assert all that we have found joyful and meaningful in life. We are thus simultaneously addressing our lives as individuals, and our lives as part of the whole, and therefore are no longer in confusion, divided as self-against-world.

We can view this process by this thought: much as treating a symptom does not cure the disease, eternal life would not cure us of a need for meaning in life; death is external to us, and no amount of controlling it can replace our need for an inner motivation toward joy and beauty. Much as all situations have a dual character composed of destruction and creation, but also a continuous process which unites those two distinct mechanisms into a whole, we have ceased looking at the mechanism and begun to contemplate the origin. From this we are able to understand that we are not divided from the whole, but that all our enjoyment originates within it, and thus in oneness as agents of its perpetuation, we live for ourselves and cease cowering in fear of death and suffering.