What is your purpose?

Part 1 of 2

Hello Hedge Schoolers,

I hope your world is alive with deep joy and love. I'm currently in the throes of a renovation at home and spending my every waking moment with a paintbrush in hand. As it stands, it is a perfect metaphor for the focus of this week's penned letter, "What is your purpose?". My quests led me down many surprising paths this week and to honour that I want to spread the magic of this deep question over two weeks.

Our Primary drive

In What do you stand for? I talked about Zak Stein's concept of a time between worlds. A time where we feel unworlded. This liminal space or valley as David Brooks would call it is a delve into the unknown. Alone. It is a tumultuous time where we suffer through transition a death to the old ways. Meaning in these times is our anchor. A compass in a world where the path is misty and full of dark corners. Human beings seek meaning-making. Victor Frankl calls the human desire for meaning Logotherapy and it was his desire and drive to bring this theory to the world that gave Frankl the meaning he needed to endure his Holocaust experience. Frankl's theory, that meaning is the primary driving force of a person's life, was developed prior to his imprisonment in concentration camps but sharpened as he witnessed how prisoners with purpose and meaning were able to endure the horror of camp life more than those without.

Meaning provides the colour in life. Gives us direction through the finding of our Second Mountain. Unfortunately, many of us have no clue what our purpose is. I was most definitely in this camp a few years back. Many false starts. Much soul searching. And a ton of dark nights of the soul. Contemplation and expression were the two pathways I explored. Writing poetry (I write poetry here if you are interested - A wandering mystic) gifted me a compass point. Dialogue with wise souls gifted others. Silence in nature gifted me many more. The starts led to the exploration of many paths. But these are all external and transient callings. They will shift as I grow and develop. This is what makes the art of purpose finding so difficult. It is a moving target.

Or so I thought.

That changed for me this week. I discovered that I was spending all my time on the secondary purpose of life. I needed to reshift my focus back to the Primary focus. And the great news is that we all share that focus. And we can all start work on it now.

Two Purposes

Eckhart Tolle outlines the two purposes in his brilliant book, A New Earth. Each person has an inner and outer purpose. The Inner Purpose is our primary focus in life.

Put simply, our purpose is to awaken.

That's it.

Just like I've been doing the inner work on my house this past week, I will spend most of this week trying to unpack the inner Primary Purpose that we all share.

The secondary purpose or Outer Purpose is transient over time and works best when we are in alignment with our Inner Purpose. The Outer Purpose is focused on the doing component of our lives. How we engage with the form of our world. The outward expression of being awake and alive in each moment. We will take a deep run at this one next week.

Awakening...

Eckhart Tolle has a way of stopping me in my tracks. When I read his first book, The Power of Now, I was equal parts pissed at him and nodding vehemently in agreeance. There was resistance and surrender to his words that I didn't anticipate and like any great book, I was different afterward. With New Earth, which I read in a day, I had no such resistance. Tolle tied together so many threads for me and I'm still feeling the impact of the woven fabric.

I am not awakened. I don't pretend to be but I have had glimpses of oneness that I just couldn't explain. There would be times in nature, in ceremony, embracing my kids where I would feel the stillness and awareness that Tolle talks about in New Earth. The compulsive thinking that normally grips me would slow to a stillness. Like the pause between sets of waves, the water of the mind calmed to a gentle bobbing. Present but not separate. These glimpses are gifts that show up in our lives reminding us of another way. They are all about being. Being fully present. Being fully aware of the space between thoughts. Being unattached to any form in our environment.

So what actually is awakening?

Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate
Eckhart Tolle

We are awake and aware of our thoughts but not a slave to them. Conscious without thought. Awakening is something we can't force. Any attempt to strive for it is an egoic pursuit. For some, it can happen instantly but for most, it is a gradual process that unfurls over time. Like a rising sun, the light of being fully present in each moment turns up. We awaken to being.

Presence

Stephen Covey calls being our seeing. It is through deep presence that we are gifted sight. Open to the unfolding of the current moment. This presence is fully alive in children and as adults, we must find our way back to that magic. For many of us, the incessant chatter of internal monologue keeps us anchored in a certain narrative. Our narrative identity, as Professor Dan McAdams calls it, is a construct our ego makes to make sense of society. We are not our stories. We are in the stories but not landlocked by them. Being is seeing. And the mist can rise quickly when we dial up our presence.

Non-resistance

Our attachment to thoughts, circumstances, external form anchors us in suffering. The resistance of swimming upstream drains us with its relentless barraging. Tension, anxiety, stress, repression/suppression all start to build. Non-resistance is the acceptance of what is in every moment. Good and bad. We remember that all things pass and we accept. Tolle is quick to point out that this is not a passive submission to the world but an active and creative state where we dial up the colour in all moments. The world of improvisation is a perfect example of this. In the world of improv, the present moment is everything. Jazz musicians dial into the moment and let the spontaneity birth the next note. Improv actors accept everything that is given to them and run with it. The "Yes and..." mentality leads to wondrous creations and epic fails. And it is all perfect. Surrendering the resistance and giving into the moment with deep presence are huge catalysts for deep flow states. According to Professor John Veraeke, “flow is a self-perpetuating insight cascade - an extended "aha! Or the right thing at the right time in the right way.” Our brains self organise in the moment stringing insights together and as this is controlled unconsciously, it is way more energy efficient and feels effortless.

Non-resistance is the first step to building awareness and presence. Removing the anchor that connects us to constructed narrative allows us to be deeply in the moment. In this week's Quests, we will take a look a few ways to build our ability to surrender to the moment.

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Quest mixtape

1. What things upset or disturb you?

This is a journal exercise. Give yourself five minutes to free-write as many answers as possible to this question. Once the timer goes off, rate them Small, Medium, or Large in terms of impact. Look at the list and see how many small things have the potential to upset you. These are the first areas to work on. Bring awareness to the moments that they arise and practice non-resistance. Accept the situation and work with the grain. If you ask Tolle, all things are small and transient but we have to start somewhere.

2. Not minding what happens

This beautiful sentence is a gift from Jiddu Krishnamurti. When asked what the secret of his profound spiritual teachings was, we replied with the statement "I don't mind what happens." Non-attachment to the results is freeing.

3. Conscious breaths

There is a reason breathing is used in all meditation as a guide. It is formless and can allow us to drop into the space between thoughts. Three conscious breaths are a simple practice to embed in your day. When you catch yourself tied up in a story, breathe three conscious breaths. When you are completing something habitually, catch yourself with presence with three conscious breaths. Each time you do this, you bring more awareness to your day. You catch more moments of presence.

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This week’s poetic gift is from Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden back.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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Catch you next week for Part 2 of this Quest.

Regards,

Steve