Imagine going to your mailbox and finding a special delivery letter personally addressed to you. You open it up and start to read. Who is sending you this message? What does it mean?
In the course meaningseekers, you will study passages from Logotherapeutic and other texts and ask yourself: If this was a special-delivery message, what would it be saying to me?
How do we listen for textual meaning in a meaningseekers course?
Objective meaning: We come into it clean, as unbiased as we can possibly be, listening to the nuances of language, the tone, and the plain meaning of the words. What does it sound like the author is trying to say? What makes the author say this? What seem to be the underlying beliefs and assumptions? Can you see from the author’s perspective?
In other words, listening to hear what a book has to say to you is very much like listening to hear what another person has to say to you. Most of the selections are from Viktor Frankl, who was my teacher’s teacher. So the person behind the words in the book is not so far removed from us. If you want to say something is implied in the author’s words that even the author was not aware of, that’s okay too. The meaning is still objective, since it is not my own invention.
Personal meaning:How do we listen to hear how the text is addressing us personally? In other words: Why is it important that I’m hearing this? How does it relate to what’s going on in my life?
The text addresses us by
- Value clarification: Do I agree or disagree with the message? What does that tell me about my values?
- Challenge: Am I living by my values? Does the meaning reflect a tension between who I am and who I want to be? Does this give me meaningful goals?
- Inspiration: Does this meaning give me hope, put things into a meaningful context or put things in a new perspective?