RSS FeedsA Purpose Driven Life
31. October 2008
One of the blogs I enjoy these days is The Illuminated Mind as hosted by Jonathan Nasman who also contributes to another fine blog Zen Habits. Earlier this week he posted an entry How to Find Your Purpose in Life offering us a few thoughts to consider. Naturally enough this got me considering.
He offers this wise insight:
…This took me a while to accept, but the purpose of life is to enjoy it. If you’re trying to find the purpose of life, by looking for something outside of life, you’re never going to find an answer. That’s because the purpose of life is life.
I couldn’t agree more and he also quotes from Steve Pavlina’s suggested technique to find your “purpose”.
It goes like this:
Take out a blank sheet of paper or open word, notepad or textedit. Whatever works best for you. Now write at the top “What is my true purpose in life?” Write everything that comes to mind. Don’t think about it too much, just write. Keep writing until you write something that makes you cry. That is your purpose.
Now I’d done a great deal of work on finding my purpose years before I ever saw this technique including a 3 day healing retreat and later 4 years of training at The Barbara Brennan School Of Healing and the results, at first, seemed less that helpful. I was hoping to find some defined job / career lurking in my psyche, a convenient little trodden path that I could follow without the vagueness and uncertainty that had typified my reaction to the question often asked when I was young, namely “what do you want to be/do when you grow up?”.
Then, I’d answer Marine Biologist to shut people up but all the while knowing that I did not have the due desire or determination to follow through with that course or any other defined career I could think of. All I really knew was that I wanted to live a happy enjoyable life. I wanted to enjoy living in a way that the adults around me, it seemed, did not. Their lives were all unfulfilling work, stress and worry. Not very inspiring to a young man such as I.
To this end I followed my joy which resulted in travel and all manner of unusual jobs, living in various countries and mostly having a darn good laugh. There have been times when I certainly haven’t felt so good or positive, when I’ve lost the plot, but they have only served to focus my desire back to enjoyment of the moment. My primary “career” thus far and certainly my biggest financial earner has been my Superyacht Painting Business which evolved out of the general happenstance of my life ~ one thing lead to another and next thing you know I have shed loads of risk and responsibility. Risk and responsibility actually turned out to be quite fun except when it isn’t..
What is my purpose then?
My three day retreat answer:
- to learn to integrate the spiritual world with the material world and share that with others.
My BBSH healing training answer:
- I want to shout from the top of the world _“It does not have to be this way! And I want people to listen.”
Both of those brought me to tears at the time. I also wrote this poem in my journal sometime before either of these events that speaks of this yearning within me for expression of purpose:
I drove down a winding road yesterday
The sun shone from beneath cauliflower clouds
Round a tight bend I flew but in my mind
I missed the turn
No one knew
I wept today, was it the sea,
the sky, the trees,
or was it me or maybe you
No one knew
That night I sat on the roof
and drifted to the moon
Not a bad place
No one knew
There is a music in side my soul that
flows with the sea and sky
A music that touches our hidden parts
I’ve not learnt to play it yet
When I do you will know.
So what about trying Steve Pavlina’s technique today? Previously I’ve avoided that because I felt that I already know my purpose, which is:
- To live fully truly, openly, honestly and courageously, deeply present, moment by moment, in spite of and without denial of any and all fears or concerns that this may not be a permitted way to live.
Having now spent quite some time exploring Steve’s suggestion I can add this:
- To feel and express the very essence of my soul and come to fully trust the workings of life confidently, abundantly, expectantly, free from any concerns of scarcity, lack or limitation and share this experience with others.
- To fully be Me and help you be You should you wish it. (As in my slide show)
Rather than being moved to tears by this exercise I grew to feel gradually calmer, clearer and inwardly, purposefully, joyful .
I’m hanging out here on this blog nattering away and I’ve no idea where it will lead but I also know its a creative expression of me that I have to release as part of my “purpose”.
Dare to share your purpose?
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My purpose is to fully accept and improve all that is good about me and all that is not. Through that process I extend unconditional acceptance and support to those I meet on the journey.