Many successful persons advise you start your day with a list of what you intend to do and achieve during your day. This is extended to include a week. It moves forward at specified time intervals until you advance through the years and the decades.
At the end of each day you are instructed to look at your list and tick off the items that you have achieved. This is in essence is how you are to achieve a successful purpose driven life. You are in effect giving yourself a "good ticking off."
Many people are using this approach to find a purpose driven life.
They long for meaning in a world that is full of confusion and sorrow. Unfortunately this drive to purpose becomes another goal. It is another thing to be achieved. People then drive themselves forward toward some future goal. In the end they miss the experience of feeling fully alive.
The latest technique instructs you to envision a dreamed of future and believe in it. You are instructed that if you so believe then you will attain all your goals and, I presume, the ultimate goal of lasting happiness.
We live in a society that is driven. It is becoming faster and faster and less and less supportive of total well-being. It is a society that is always doing and always progressing. It is the society of "never enough." It tells you that you are forever "not enough" without some product that will give your life credibility. This is what we educate our children to become.
You buy the future via an increased burden of debt. You are informed that you are entitled to have what you want now because "you are worth it." You have to be told, "you are worth it" because this is not your real experience. You will "be worth it," or at least you will be "worth something" once you have the product you are told you must have.
You may even be encouraged to "find your sense of purpose."
You may be encouraged to "follow your bliss." This takes immense courage and discipline. More than anything else it requires that you allow it. You cannot drive purpose. It is something you unfold. It is intrinsic to who you are and not so much about what you do. You can only have a purpose driven life when you adopt a more feminine attitude to living.
This means simply trusting that you are enough.
A purpose driven life is not something to be achieved. It is a life of allowing the very essence of who and what you are to manifest in this world. It is more of a flowering than a making. You simply allow yourself to be embraced by life. You become more and more erotic in the sense that you enter the dance of life. You and Eros partner each other.
The purpose driven life is a life of allowing. It means allowing yourself to be who you are. It is the wiliness to accept that just as you are right now is enough. It is allowing the fact that you are perfect as you are. How many of you can say with hand on heart that you accept yourself as perfection incarnate. I doubt that there will be many.
Most of you cannot and will not accept this perfection as your moment-to-moment reality. You think you are to be fixed. Once you fix this bit of you then maybe (and it is a big maybe) you will be all right. OK, not all right, but more acceptable provided no one looks at you with an open heart and sees the vulnerable you. Even if you feel OK this will not last. There will be adverts and products that come along to convince you that you are not OK.
A purpose driven life is less driven and more directed.
It means holding the reigns lightly and with trust and faith in your relationship to the divine. This relationship you can call God, the Beloved, or Universal Mind. Or you may not give it a name at all. It does not matter. A life lived on purpose is a life of trust and faith that you are OK just as you are. This trust and faith is developed until it becomes your reality.
It is the true reality of your life. It is knowing that you are love and that you cannot and will never not be loved. There is nothing to be added and nothing to be taken away. It is knowing that the river flows and the grass grows by itself and you are forever a part of this creation. You do not need lists and goals and you do not need to achieve. Being is simply enough.
A purpose driven life is based on the values of being and not doing. Being is discovered by asking yourself deep questions. These are questions that humanity has posited throughout time. These are the questions asked by the teachers of human kind. These questions come from a sense of deep compassion for the suffering of you and I.
These instructions on finding your purpose include such as "to they own self be true," "Know thyself" or "Be still and know that I am God." This is too list a few only. This asking of deep questions is not the approach of the achiever. This is not the approach of the list maker. Nor is this the approach of the driven personality. This is not the approach of the one who late at night takes their list and gives themselves a "good ticking off."
Your purpose filled life is already here waiting to be unfolded.
It is not a goal. It is a listening with deep compassion to your heart's voice. It is a willingness to listen to the longing that lies within you. This purpose is not to be analysed and constricted within the limits of the rational mind. Your purpose is known through how you feel moment to moment.
You will know your true purpose when you open to allow your feelings their full range of expression. This allowing takes tremendous courage. It takes tremendous courage to stop doing your life and simply be. It means leading your life as you intend it to be devoid of all pressures from outside that say you are not enough. Simply begin to allow yourself to feel enough now and forever.
Tony Cuckson is an Anam Cara. This Celtic term means "Soul Friend." He specializes in providing insight for the spiritual journey, Blessings for YOU, words of wisdom and finding inner peace. Visitors to Irish Blessings Matter website and Tony's Blog get the opportunity to develop a purpose driven life through articles, newsletters and other programs.
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