The Meaning of Life and the Soma
Key Definitions
Soma — the living, perceiving human body
Intelligence — the capacity to know
Homeostasis — maintaining internal organismic stability for optimal function
Law — something that has a binding effect; a code
Living matter — breathes (respire), feels (sensitive), grows, moves, creates (reproduces), cleanses (excretes), eats (nutrition)
Non-living matter — anything lacking the distinct characteristics of life
Consciousness — awareness and perception of something
Abstraction — the idea of something as opposed to the thing itself
Nowadays we assume humans navigate life with their minds whilst animals and plants use their “organisms”. Whatever is the difference?
It is the human soma, the living body, that fundamentally navigates human life. It is from the soma that the mind emerges. Like a plant’s stem turns toward the sun and an antelope flees from a predator, the human mind develops as an innate knowledge, a purpose in being, as meaning. Life’s “meaning” is simple: to live in accordance with the law embedded within us. Animals and plants pursue food, survival, and reproduction—driven by genetic coding, regulated by homeostasis.
Consider this: the human mind is an fine-tapestry abstraction of homeostasis, a seemingly ‘higher-order’ version of the same principle.
Homeostasis is, essentially, the code of life’s meaning. It is what enables and drives life. From this perspective, life is both toward something as it already is something.
In the West there is strong experience of towardness—a sense of direction, meaning, and purpose. Consider inorganic matter—the elements of water, earth, air, and fire—they are the external environment, holding a quiet potential in service of this towardness, this pulsation we can call life. Elements, unlike humans, submit easily to the law of reality. They create conditions just right for living matter to emerge. Our somas are much the same. Homeostasis ensure an internal environment that is just right. Our (sub)consciousness of this internal environment form our minds. It is from this conscious and experiential relationship with our internal selfs that we abstract our meaning.
Homeostasis is the just right internal condition that produces our experiential satisfaction. Deep internal satisfaction is abstracted and labelled “meaning”. Homeostasis’ function is simple: return the organism to balance, to peace, to pleasure. This “return” is the internal equivalent of a “perfect” external environment.
The living body, the soma, with conditions just right is like inorganic matter submitted to the laws of reality, it yields life.
Non-living matter—rocks, air, water—has no DNA, no nervous system, no independent creative agency. They are by nature obedient emissaries, mirrors of the Law-of-Life. Trees, plants, animals, humans leap out of these waters and rocks, deeply dependent on the law’s of nature, of ordered reality.
Living matter appear as freer agents within this perfect external environment. We are not obedient emissaries of life but co-creators, even stiflers of life.
Are you beginning to see what nature, homeostasis, the soma, and meaning have to do with each other?
Quite a lot.
Homeostasis, coded naturally within living beings, abides in the law of nature. But plants appear to submit effortlessly much like the elements—they grow toward the light, extend roots toward nutrients. They don’t shape their environments to the extent we humans do when building cars or performing open heart surgery.
Animals appear more autonomous, but are still deeply instinctive. A lion may choose a particular mate intentionally, but chases the weakest antelope not out of creativity, but out of inherited pattern.
Humans have agency distinct from non-living matter, distinct too from animals and plants. We choose more. We learn more. We create more. Yet, when we look closely we are formed and kept by the same laws as the plants and animals, the fungi and rivers. The meaning of our lives emerge from this same code.
This is where the soma comes in.
Your body—what you may mistake as separate from your “self”—is the law of life, embodied.
If homeostasis is an essential embodiment of this law—quietly holding and sustaining life—then we can look to it to better understand the urges that we describes as towardness, from which our meaning emerges.
There is value in seeing animals as toddlers in the “household” of the living. They’re fed, warmed, and held by nature independent of their intellect. Their imbalances—hunger, fear, arousal—are released and resolved swiftly. After the chase, they shake off adrenaline. They return to balance. To peace. To life.
This rhythm—stress/relief, need/fulfilment, desire/satiation—is the pulse of life, and ebbs and flows naturally in animals.
I’m not an evolutionary biologist, and I can’t detail the evidence for animal deliberation—but even if it’s there, it’s not yet as developed as what we see in humans.
If animals are toddles, humans are out the house! We’re wandering the streets, exploring alleyways, playing with fire. Teenagers in the family of life.
Like adolescents, we long to define ourselves, to create and destroy, but we still require wisdom—an education in being alive, in the laws of life.
I’m not a nihilist. I can’t say with full conviction that life is meaningless, a chaotic dream. Though I understand why people can feel this way. I err, both bravely and scientifically, on the side that life is real. That it’s dynamic, creative, and purposeful. It must be—that’s exactly what it does. It becomes. Moment by moment, life creates itself through its own structure. Its essence remains unchanged, even as its forms evolve.
So—bringing it home:
The body, the soma, is created by this perfect law of nature.
The conscious human, like a teenager with a license, is now behind the wheel. And how bold of life to allow such wild creatures to drive!
But life guides us as we drive, by laws even within our own body.
Somatic intelligence is the capacity to listen to the law, the life, alive within you. Your personhood may be the magic that emerges from your unique body. You can either let this spirit live, fly and create, or you can stifle this life, shackle it down and never truly experience what you are.
Your meaning is discovered and enjoyed when you consciously listen and allow our body to live. Your highest meaning is found inside of you. Through your body life serves you—enjoy it! Through your body you serve others—let us enjoy you!
Becoming who and what you truly are lies in knowing the language of perception, that is experience. Refined perception and stewardship of its messages is necessary to satisfy the desires of towardness, that you will always have pulsating within you. Your meaning is wrapped up in experience. The ongoing return and deepening of embodied harmony and satisfaction this is the meaning of life, as much as we may think the abstracted alternatives serve us better.
Learning how to safeguard a perfect environment internally will help you experience your own discomfort, hear your own meaning, and become sensitive to the reality of others. This living knowledge ignites both peace and purpose.
Let your neck be free
Let your head sit gently forward and up off your spine
Let your back lengthen and widen
Let the front soften. Let your back support you
Let your hips be free, direct your knees forward and away
Let your shoulders be quite
Let your arms lengthen to the fingertips
