The meaning we give to our experiences
Two people can live through the same thing and come out with completely different stories. A break-up that for one is a failure and for the other a liberation. An intense experience in a non-ordinary state that one person interprets as a revelation and another as a mere chemical effect. A crisis that destroys everything for some and reorganises it for others.
Experience, on its own, doesn't come with its meaning included. We're the ones who supply the meaning. And that silent, constant process is probably the one that most determines how we live. That's why it's the sixth territory we explore at RILOFU, and in a way the one that gives meaning to all the others: the mind, emotions, consciousness, relationships and non-ordinary states.
We are interpreting animals
Psychology has spent decades showing that we don't react to facts, but to the interpretation we make of them. The same situation produces different emotions depending on how we read it. And that reading isn't neutral: it's conditioned by our history, our beliefs, our culture and the narratives we've been building about who we are.
We tell stories about our past that explain our present. We tell stories about ourselves that tell us what we're capable of. And we rarely stop to ask whether those stories are true, or whether they're simply the ones we've been repeating the longest.
Exploring the meaning we give to experiences is, to a large extent, learning to see those stories for what they are: useful constructions, sometimes necessary, but always open to revision.
When meaning breaks down
There are moments in life when the stories that held us up stop working. A loss, an illness, a break-up, a sudden change, an experience that doesn't fit any known frame. Suddenly the map we had is useless and the territory becomes strange.
These crises of meaning are painful, but they're also, often, the beginning of the deepest changes. When the old frame breaks, the opportunity appears to build a wider one, more honest, better fitted to what you're actually living.
At RILOFU we don't try to avoid those crises or close them quickly. We prefer to accompany them: to hold the uncertainty for as long as it takes for a new meaning to emerge, rather than forcing a premature answer.
Meaning after an intense experience
An especially clear case is what happens after a non-ordinary state of consciousness. Anyone who has gone through a deep meditative experience, a breathwork session or a psychedelic experience usually comes back with an urgent question: what does what I lived mean?
Here two opposite temptations appear, and both seem to us a mistake.
The first is to dismiss it all: "it was just chemistry", "it was just a hallucination", "it doesn't mean anything". This stance protects against discomfort, but wastes something potentially valuable.
The second is to believe it all: "I've seen the truth", "now I know how the universe works", "that entity told me what I have to do". This stance turns a subjective experience into a dogma, and often leads to rushed decisions or a disconnection from everyday reality.
Between the two there's a harder and more fertile path: taking the experience seriously without taking it literally. Asking what it reveals about you, which emotions it mobilised, which changes it suggests, and which of those changes hold up against daily life. That's what we call integration, and it's one of the essential parts of the support we offer.
Meaning, spirituality and science
Talking about meaning almost inevitably leads to talking about spirituality, and that's terrain worth walking carefully. At RILOFU we're interested in spiritual questions: what we are, what we can become, what place we occupy, what happens with death. They're legitimate questions that science can't always answer and that philosophy and contemplative traditions have been working on for centuries.
What doesn't interest us is dogma: the closed answer presented as unquestionable, the system that explains everything and admits no doubt, the authority that knows what you have to believe. We prefer a spirituality that coexists with critical thinking, accepts uncertainty and doesn't need to turn every experience into proof of something.
Science without reductionism, spirituality without dogma, experience without automatically turning it into truth. That's our way of approaching meaning.
Exploring meaning at RILOFU
Through conversation
Meaning is rarely built alone. It's built by talking, comparing notes, listening to how others interpret their experiences. That's why the conversation spaces of the community, from talks to sharing circles, are such an important part of what we do.
Through support
When meaning breaks down, or when an experience weighs too much to process alone, one-to-one support offers a space to pause, observe what's happening and explore new perspectives. Not so that someone tells you what your life means, but so that you can find your own answers with more clarity.
Through experience
And sometimes meaning isn't thought: it's lived. The retreats, immersive experiences and collective spaces we're developing at RILOFU are designed for that, so that certain questions can be approached from the body, from relationship and from presence, not only from the head.
Questions to take with you
What story do you tell yourself about why your life is the way it is? When was the last time you changed the meaning you gave to something important? Is there an experience you still don't know where to place? Which beliefs about yourself would you take as true without ever having checked them?
You don't need to answer them now. It's enough to leave them open.
How to keep exploring
Meaning runs through all the RILOFU territories: the mind, emotions, consciousness, relationships and non-ordinary states.
And if there's something you still don't know how to interpret, here are two ways to start doing it with company.