(4-minute read) – If you know the answer to this question, you’re probably deluded. Your purpose (delusion) is keeping you happy – like a mind-numbing drug. And it’s keeping you trapped, unable to think further than the ‘you’ it’s built around.
I say probably because there are people that know their purpose and see absolutely correctly. The light of truth has shone though to illuminate their deepest selves, where they’ve discovered the treasure of the only true purpose.
Purpose is intention
These few know there is no purpose other than one: to know self fully.
This one is not so much a purpose as it is an intention. It is not something you can achieve through a set of new-year resolutions and disciplines. It is a simple state of living with openness to knowing all there is to know about your life. It is a state of humble inward seeking.
The Christian mystic, Thomas Keating, says the purpose of life is to reach union with the ultimate reality, which is none other than the true self. He propounds a daily practice of affirming one’s intention to let go of the false self and all its habitual thoughts and emotions; the false self that may have latched onto some other so-called purposes (delusions).
Islam teaches that the purpose of life is to find peace within ourselves.
Buddhism talks of a happy life through being compassionate to all sentient beings.
Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, says the purpose of life is to live fully, which means knowing every dimension of yourself.
As can be seen, these wisdom traditions all point to an inward experience in the quest for purpose and meaning.
Outward purpose
The worst disservice of western culture is that we are brainwashed into believing we must have an outward purpose. We must seek this purpose.
We have wonderful success stories paraded in the media, especially autobiographies on social media, of those who have found their purpose. We compare ourselves to them, as we flounder around not knowing ours.
We are bombarded with positive psychology and quick-steps to success that talk of goal-setting and attainment. We feed the need for delusion – for the belief that we must have a purpose and that we are all destined for some outward success. It is our birth right to have a God-given purpose.
And so we expend undue mental and emotional energy seeking it. If we can’t seem to find it, we think there must be something wrong with us.
We call those who find life purposeless or meaningless, depressed. Or we say they’re just lazy, or unproductive – not contributing to our wonderful societies of success. Or, in religious-righteousness we look down on them as forsaken.
“Shame, she apparently has a chemical imbalance that prevents her from functioning in ‘normal’ life.”
“Poor guy, he has obviously not been blessed like those who know their purpose and are on the road to achieving it… like those prosperous religious folk over there.”
True self
But this ‘normal’ of society is defined by a culture that is deluded in the sense that it operates at the level of feeding the false self – a very limited and lower dimension of human being.
What is far more ‘normal’ for conscious, trans-personal beings like we humans are, is to be engrossed in the inner beauty of the true self. To know our selves more deeply. To find happiness in compassion. These are the endeavours we should be expending energy on for they point to a reality way higher than the physical… and coincidentally other life-necessities flow effortlessly after we have prioritised true self.
The journey
Those that struggle long and hard with the question, “What is my purpose?” are on a journey of true-self-discovery. For them life is not simple, nor easy, nor happy, for much of the time.
This is because they are not living in the consoling delusional dimension of false self.
Those that are cruising on a certain path, with sure purpose, are missing the real purpose of their lives. They are more likely to be well-adapted to life, to be achieving their goals and attaining success. But they are less likely to be learning much about their inner selves – about ultimate reality.
So, if you should find yourself struggling to find a purpose and meaning for your life, do not despair. Instead embrace it. Intentionally let go of what you’ve been told and allow yourself on an exploration of true self. There you’ll find true purpose.
Simply live in the present moment, and commit, again and again, to the intention to let go. An intention is much gentler than a purpose. It is largely out of your hands. All you have to do is practice affirming the intention. The rest is done for you. The beauty of your true self, and the peace of knowing every dimension of yourself, dawns upon you like a gift.
And when you have tasted that gift, you will see the mind-numbing delusion of life for what it is. You will have nothing to fulfill. You will just live.
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