Turn Spiritual Emptiness Into Real Purpose | Rainn Wilson

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0:41Rainn Wilson:When I moved to New York City, basically, long story short, I didn't want any morality in my life. You didn't want any morality? I didn't want morality. I didn't want to. The Baha 'i faith has, like all religious faiths, it has some moral laws. some of which are very very uh challenging in the modern world so like premarital sex right so that was one that i really struggled with and um i was having sex with my girlfriend and feeling really guilty about it yeah even though in the by faith it's not there isn't really a concept of like sin and hell and damnation or anything like that it's like forbidden it's like a law it's like a rule it's a it's a rule however um i would say forbidden is a too strong a word it's a rule that helps one grow spiritually and helps one's soul not our body but helps our soul become more whole and spiritual and enriched and and and evolve that's the idea behind the laws um drugs and alcohol are something that Baha 'is refrain from because Baha 'is believe that drugs and alcohol get in the way of, again, evolving the soul or spiritualizing the soul.

2:00Rainn Wilson:So I moved to New York City to be an actor and I was 20 years old and I had a beautiful girlfriend and I was just like, you know, there were a lot of other reasons too. I wanted to rebel against my parents. I was annoyed with the Baha 'i community. A lot of really mostly immature reasons. But I just wanted to be an actor and live the bohemian lifestyle in New York. So I wanted to get up and have fun and be in Greenwich Village and do plays. And then it was a really interesting thing that happened where I met my now wife. We were together at the time. We've been together for a long time. And she's gorgeous and wonderful, Holiday Rinehorn.

2:40Rainn Wilson:She's fantastic. And I was starting to work as an actor. So really all my dreams were coming true, but yet I was really dissatisfied in my soul, in my heart. It's kind of the thing where you wake up at three in the morning, you're like, what am I doing? What's my life about? And I got really depressed. And I thought, well, maybe I've just discarded this whole religion thing too much. Maybe I jettisoned the idea of God and spirituality completely to dive into my art and my craft. Which in a lot of ways I'm grateful for. I learned a lot doing that. But I decided to kind of go on a spiritual journey at that time.

3:23So you kind of entered back into it or just re-evaluated and started practicing it.

3:26Rainn Wilson:I started reading the holy books of the world. All the books? I won't say all of them, but I read the major ones in the canon. I read the Bible and the Quran. Wow. The Bhagavad Gita and the writings of the Buddha, the Dhammapada. I read a lot of other books about religion and faith. And ideas I was, because I really, there's one, when we found it SoulPancake, we founded it on this, on pursuing life's big questions. That was how it started as a website. And now it's a media company and a YouTube channel. But it was about exploring life's big questions. And really, the number one life's big question, and I know this isn't a spirituality webcast per se, but the, I'm sorry to go here, but I'm going to go here.

4:11Rainn Wilson:This is greatness. The number one big question is, is there a God or not? Because as Thomas Merton says, who's a fantastic, one of my favorite writers of all time, Roman Catholic writer. He says, either everything is all spiritual or not spiritual at all. So there either is a creative life force that created us, has a purpose for us. Or it's random. Or we're all a random assemblage of molecules bumping together. And for some reason, evolutionarily, you and I developed these brains and we have these little headsets on. And here we are having this conversation. And this is all just random chance.

4:50Rainn Wilson:And it doesn't have any meaning whatsoever. And whatever meaning happens is because we put our meaning onto it. And then we're dead. And boom, lights out. And that's the end of the show. So it's either that or there's an all-loving creator. And this physical realm is just a way stop. You know, we were in the womb for a while. And then we're in our physical bodies in the world for a while. And then our souls move on to whatever is the next phase. And then the next phase and the next phase of essentially, I suppose, maybe meeting this creator. And so that, if that's what you believe, that puts your life in a very different context.

5:29Rainn Wilson:Yes. Um, not to say that atheists or agnostics and people of faith can't and shouldn't work together and that there's so much that we share. We want to make the world a better place. We, um, we want to bring joy and love and inspiration to people's lives, um, for the most part. And I think that the whole debate of, I never want to get into a debate with an atheist, you know, it's just so pointless. Like it's not going to convince anybody of anything. It's, but I think we have to find a commonality and a way to, to move together. But I do think that everyone has to go on that journey of deciding whether or not there is a creator.

6:04Rainn Wilson:Yeah. What they believe in. Yeah. They believe in.

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7:43Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

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