The Paradox Of Seeking Purpose

"I am on a spiritual journey...I am seeking my purpose..." So many times in recent years I have enjoyed the sparkle in the eye of someone who is discovering a hearty appetite for personal truth. There is a vitality to these people, a focused yearning, a desire for insight and fulfillment that brings the very air around them to life. Sometimes there is also a sense of anxiety present, a feeling of having wasted time previous to this, the gnawing fear that time is passing quickly and will run out before this purpose is discovered and fulfilled. I feel the urge to pat them soothingly and say, "Relax. It's OK. Don't make everything such a big deal---you're doing fine."

And then I know people who are so relaxed and self-satisfied that they are in effect almost asleep. They have cut their little grooves with their habits and their schedules; they have perfectly adapted themselves to the bumps and fissures in their relationships, and they do not stray much from the predictable patterns that have been established in their peer group or in their own conditioned minds. They live like pleasant zombies, and it's hard to tell some days if any one is home. My hand twitches because I want to grab them by the elbow, shake it, and say, "Who are you?! Why don't you find out? What are you waiting for?"

Why does this bother me? Why do I notice it so much when someone is in a taut or a loose posture in relationship to the issue of purpose? Maybe because they mirror for me my own faulty state of tension in relationship to living my purpose. Faulty? Could there be a right and a wrong about this? Not really. This is more a matter of aesthetic appreciation: one can live one's life like a well-strung violin in the hands of a master or a slack and dusty old fiddle lying in your grandfather's attic. Each of these has their points of interest, but I prefer the first way---the way of self-mastery. Because, simply put, a human being who is fully living their purpose with relaxation and focus is a beautiful thing to see.

Spiritual maturity is a state of being that can embrace the paradox in life. For each and every truth you discern, there is an equal and opposite truth that is operative in another situation or in the same situation at another time. And there is a great Truth contained and balanced between all of the lesser truths you can think of, a Truth that is not told in words. A mature mind that expresses itself peacefully from the center of this Truth, while maintaining a full awareness of paradox is as precious as a full-blown rose, blessing its surroundings with its pure essence. This intrinsic beauty is the "why" behind seeking one's purpose.

"Seeking purpose" is a paradoxical activity. It is both necessary and unnecessary to seek it. The key to discovering and fulfilling one's purpose is to just relax and love what you have --- no, it's to get going and create what you truly want --- no, it's to relax sometimes and get going at other times --- no, it's to do them both at the same time in different areas of your life --- and as the saying goes, nothing that you do really matters but it's very important that you do it anyway." You see the challenge here? There are paradoxical truths about seeking one's purpose that we need to understand and live by if we want our souls to sing well in the chorus of human expression.

So, you don't know what your purpose in this life is? Relax. You haven't missed the boat. Your purpose cannot leave without you. You have time. In fact, unless you are out cold under the bed with a bottle of vodka in your hands, there is a 95% chance that you are fulfilling your purpose just beautifully. (Even if you are hiding under the bed, who knows what God-like role you play for the dust mites?!) Maybe you just haven't noticed yet what it is you are doing here. Give up your anxiety and relax into the effortless flow of expression that is simply you. Accept the true limits of your particular personality and don't try to be anyone else. Between the moment of your first breath and the moment of your death, there is plenty of time for you to fulfill your purpose.

You don't know what your purpose in this life is? What are you waiting for? Get going! Today is a good day to start. Time is passing quickly. There are ways of being yourself that you desire but haven't dared to do yet. Don't waste this precious opportunity to be alive and experience things that you want. There's nothing stopping you but false limitations. You can use your will and your Higher Wisdom to discover and fulfill your purpose. Our world desperately needs your gifts and service, freely given. Don't hold back!

In fact, both of these directives are correct, in different ways, for there are a number of levels to the subject of purpose. Everyone from a mossy rock to a human being is fulfilling at least one level of purpose by the mere fact of existence---I call this existential purpose. You exist because you exist. You can add a few skills on to that and leave society in a little better condition than when you arrived: that is social purpose. This is about what job you have or what career you pursue. You can engage with life as a classroom of learning, loving, and service, and you have a spiritual purpose. You can pair up with other people and share your complementary skills, and you've got purpose in partnership, or symbiotic purpose. You can choose to call on more of your unused brain capacity and advance the whole thing farther along---yes, the human being alone has the power of enhancing the evolution of our species. You can consciously serve our collective evolutionary purpose.

The relaxing thing about this way of looking at purpose is that you can do any amount of it that you choose. You can have a wonderful career and be a fairly decent person and touch some lives in a pleasant way, and never once ponder a greater meaning than that. You can "hang out", and take the path of least resistance, and be someone's loyal son. You can embrace the new technologies of body/mind transformation and take yourself higher and higher into the clear mountain air of consciousness despite the fact that you have a mundane job. You can be born with Down's Syndrome and live on government aid, and warm the hearts of people around you with your innocent and loving disposition. On this level, we are all doing just fine.

And yet, there is something about the nature of a human being that insists on asking "Why?" and clamoring for more. There is something creative wired into our genes that bides it's time and eventually explodes outward in a surprising moment of genesis that initiates a period of Divine restlessness and growth . Who knows what or who governs these cycles of rest and creativity? It's a mystery. I invite you to explore this mystery.. . Relax–and get going!