Let’s take a completely different approach to finding and living your purpose.
What if it’s not something you find, but something you live?
And what if it’s not really ‘you’ living it, but life expressing itself through you?
The search for purpose is often a way to avoid the present moment. Things aren’t the way we want them, so we create an imagined future, and we distract from what’s right here, right now.
We silence the true expression of our being.
Purpose often feels like something that will save us. We believe that when we finally find our purpose, there will be joy, ease, freedom, and success.
But life isn’t just positivity, it contains everything.
If you haven’t clicked away yet, let’s explore.
The Problem
Grab a pen and a piece of paper, or simply answer these questions on your computer or phone, but take a moment to contemplate.
What is making you need to find your purpose?
Notice everything that comes up.
When you find your purpose, what will it give you that you don’t have now?
And when you have that, how will you feel?
Now compare this to what is going on now. Notice how you want to jump away from this moment into an imagined future.
The Mystery
What if this isn’t about finding a some-thing (your purpose), but about letting life express itself through you. What if you embraced the mystery?
The habit will be to divert from this moment, but the more you bring your attention back here, the more you can feel what is going on in your body.
Notice the labeling of emotions, which makes them seem like things. Let go of those labels, and instead become curious about what the sensations are without any labels.
They move, dance, and want to be felt.
Can you, just for a moment, feel?
The Freedom
At first, feeling is not pleasant, because you’ve been conditioned to not feel certain feelings, and definitely not express what you feel in certain ways.
The feelings that weren’t allowed by the people around you during childhood are usually the feelings that are most avoided, because they feel dangerous.
And they could have been dangerous at one point, but now you have the capacity to feel it all.
This doesn’t all have to happen at once. Just dip your toe in the water to see what happens. Thoughts will pull you into stories, but keep coming back.
As courage builds, you begin to taste freedom, because no longer do you have to distract with an imagined future. Instead, you re-discover the aliveness of what is here.
The Presence
Notice your breath going in and out.
Thoughts pull you away. Return to the breath.
See. Hear. Feel. Smell. Taste. Right here.
There’s aliveness in you when thought isn’t labeling, dissecting, judging, and comparing. This aliveness is life itself wanting to move through you.
It will blast through any resistance, if you allow it. All you have to do is welcome whatever comes up.
There’s more to this, but this is the beginning.
The Takeaway
Purpose is an idea. What if you let go of that idea, just for a moment, and noticed what’s here without it?
This is a new way of approaching life.
Don’t rush it, but feel into it. Instead of jumping into the future, begin to notice what’s here right now.
What resonates with you?
What feels magnetic?
Do you want to go for a walk, read a book, or express yourself creatively? Don’t limit yourself. Allow the exploration to happen.
In this way, you collapse past, now, and future, because you tap into the aliveness that has always been here.
Explore this. Allow it to be uncomfortable.
It’s okay.
All the best,
Henri
Sign up to the free newsletter for exclusive articles, offers, and to make sure you never miss an update.