Eric Maisel quotes

Before you can make meaning, an odd kind of election process must occur. You must nominate yourself as the meaning-maker in your life and as the hero of your own story. Then you must consciously elect yourself to that position. (Eric Maisel)
You nominate yourself to be the one who will courageously do what you think ought to be done, even if everyone is pressing you to do something else.
Eric Maisel
To define what we are is to reduce and distort what we are: to say that we are nothing but our desires or nothing but our self-interest is to misrepresent us.
Eric Maisel
Few people actually nominate themselves in this way. Most defer to the meaning-making apparatus of their culture, taking comfort in the fact that others have built a meaning nest for them. This built-in cover allows them to avoid taking responsibility and at the same time causes them to grow grandiose, narcissistic, and egotistical. As soon as you put on the robes of your culture and add gravity to your mere humanness by wearing the badge of your profession, your club, your gang, or your clan, you ... refuse to engage in the process of personal meaning-making, with its requirements of honesty and self-awareness.
Eric Maisel
These doubts must be met in the following way. You announce that meaning does not exist until you make it, and then you don the mantle of meaning-maker. The minute you do this, all previous belief systems, both those that told you what to believe and those that told you that there was nothing to believe, vanish. You suddenly enact the paradigm shift that I believe we are now ready to embrace: the shift from seeking meaning to making meaning. You let go of wondering what the universe wants of you, ... and you announce that you will make life mean exactly what you intend it to mean. This is an amazing, glorious, and triumphant announcement. The instant you realize that meaning is not provided (as traditional belief systems teach) and that it is not absent (as nihilists feel), a new world of potential opens up for you.
Eric Maisel
You and you alone are the sole arbiter of the meaning in your life. The second you turn to someone and say, "What does life mean?” or, "What should my life mean?” you have slipped into a mind-set that courts inauthenticity and depression. The second you agree with someone simply because of her position or reputation, whether that someone is a guru, author, cleric, parent, politician, general, or elder, you fall from the path of personal meaning-maker.
Eric Maisel
This individual is regularly nominated not only by himself but by others as well: by the ordinary townsfolk who beg him to save their town, their world, or their galaxy because they see that he has the strength and integrity that they lack.
Eric Maisel
"I nominate myself” means "I won't follow.” This isn't hubris: it is simply the fruit of your decision to live on your own terms.
Eric Maisel
To nominate yourself as the hero of your own story is to step outside society, not with the intention of turning your back on it but with the intention of not allowing it to dictate to you.
Eric Maisel
We are on the threshold of understanding a shining idea: that each life can have meaning, even if the universe has none.
Eric Maisel
There are no gods (including God). Like all species, ours is a product of nature. This is not something either to celebrate or to mourn. But it can prove a transformational and mind-opening experience to put all gods, religions and supernatural enthusiasms aside and to explore the world from the point of view of a human being who lives, dies, and is as natural as a tiger or a dove. (Eric Maisel)
You are free to cut off contact with toxic people and to eliminate toxic beliefs from your system.
Eric Maisel
That is what is in our hearts when we conclude that the universe is meaningless. We don't doubt that it has order, but we recognize that it is not our parent, our sponsor, or our caretaker.
Eric Maisel
We need atheism to grow as a movement because we need to remove the god card from the hands of the selfishly self-interested.
Eric Maisel
On religion, many are destined to reason wrongly; others not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.
Eric Maisel
They are alive, but they are not engaged in the project of their own lives. No one has ever taught them otherwise. Why aren't we offered any existential training? Because one of society's unacknowledged goals is to minimize existential thought. A company making widgets doesn't want you to wonder about the meaningfulness of its widget. It wants you to be attracted by the widget's design and to buy two of them.
Eric Maisel
The smarter, braver part of you knows that a tradition is only of value if it is of value.
Eric Maisel
As atheists we have the opportunity to be more honest about the blues that we experience...We get to honestly look at the thing itself and not shift the issue to our relationship to some nonexistent god.
Eric Maisel
Meaning is a choice, not a lost object.
Eric Maisel
You will stand up and be counted, even though only you are doing the counting.
Eric Maisel
There is no way to complete the sentence "The meaning of life is...” without producing a small, sad result. (Eric Maisel)
The universe does not care about fairness; nevertheless, you may decide that you would like to advocate for fairness.
Eric Maisel
Want a guarantee? Join another species. Our species just makes decisions.
Eric Maisel
I hope that our discussion of meaning-making and ethics-making has made it clear why we must stand firm in disputing god-talk: god-talk is at once a betrayal of our common humanity and a barrier to both meaning and ethics. That is not to say that you rise up in arms when you are visiting your parents' home for dinner and grace is said or that you leap into the fray every time you hear some piety uttered. No one has the time or the energy for such vigilance, and no one wants to become a pariah. But you do need to pick some fights and then fight them. If you are upholding values such as justice, reason, fairness, equity, and decency-if these inform the meaning and the ethics that you make-then you are obliged to stand up to god-talk at least occasionally.
Eric Maisel