7 Responses to “When Will I Know My Purpose? - Part 2”

1. James Shewmaker Says:
   August 30th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

   Knowing ones purpose, does require abandoning an egocentric worldview, but it also requires a healthy self-assessment. A person who is tone deaf is not going to be an Opera Singer nor is a blind man going to be a school bus driver. Yet a person who loses his hearing (such as Beethoven) may have a significant impact upon the world of music and a person who is blind can have a positive impact upon the education of children.

   In my Reading Assignment ( my anti-blogroll, ) I recommend an article by Adrian Savage. This is what I write about his article:
   

   Selecting a vision for your life requires assessing your resources, strengths and potentials. It is self-defeating to focus on a vision desire for which you have no potential and which neglects the strengths which you do possess.

2. Michelle Says:
   August 30th, 2006 at 9:35 pm

   YES!!!

   Purpose does indeed “find” us when we stop fussing over looking for it.

   I do also believe there is a very singular difference in pursuing a vision and ones ‘divine’ purpose. Sometimes the two intersect but it seems to be a rare thing when that happens. Some of us may need to be content to just know we HAVE a Purpose even if we can’t write it down on a piece of paper.

   Vision is our internal aspiriation to achieve something that we see as of value. I do think Vision is both at once selfish and purposeful in that we seek both benefit for ourselves in seeing its fruition come to pass.

   Divine Purpose on the other hand is at its very core the reason we each exist! Just being human creates its own intrinsic Purpose that affects history in inumerable ways.

   It may be that there are many types of Purpose too. For one person out there, their sole purpose in life just might be to soothe a lost soul on a train journey once in their lifetime, i.e. making a difference in just one person’s life or it maybe to create a revolution in technology that will change the lives of billions of people! For someone else, it might be both.

   Purpose is pragmatic. It is a “doing” thing. Its expression gives us each a reason to be as we are with all our skills and talents, flaws and clumsiness.

   We have all have ‘a’ Purpose. We are also given a choice to find it and do it, find it and not do it, not find but do it anyway, not find it and not do it.

   If we spend too much trying to find it - we may never get around to the doing it part!

   Its nice to know the name and reason for ones existence and I’m not implying that we should not seek to find out what our Purpose is. What I am saying is that where there is too much self-focus and not much else, there can be no real purpose that benefits others.

3. Dick Richards Says:
   August 31st, 2006 at 8:08 am

   James - In my language there is a difference between purpose and vision, as Michelle points out. Purpose is to me very close to what Michelle wrote, “…at its very core the reason we each exist!” Vision is a specific and perhaps temporary picture of what we hope to create in order to fulfill our purpose.

   I was ready to disagree with your statement that finding purpose “requires a healthy self-assessment” until I realized that you were not making the same distinction that Michelle and I make. I do not believe that self-assessment in the way that you speak of it is a particularly good starting point for finding purpose. I know people who developed the skills that they needed, or overcame handicaps, only after accepting a sense of purpose in their lives. Very often, after finding a sense of purpose, a person veers off in a direction that neither they, nor anyone who knows them, might have predicted, and that no self-assessment would have revealed.

   This is not to say that life prior to accepting a sense of purpose was meaningless. I do believe that it is preparatory; but usually not in obvious ways that will reveal themselves in any self-assessment that I know of.

   By definition then, finding purpose is not about “self” assessment but about listening for a call from without that compels you and drives you forward or, as I suggest in this post, about getting out of your own way.

4. Debbie Call Says:
   September 4th, 2006 at 10:27 am

   Your post feels like a breath of fresh air, Dick. In matters of personal development, our egos can easily highjack us on a mistaken journey of defining our purpose as if it should be blazoned across some sort of movie marquee. In short, we end up trying too hard, and fail to “remember” what lies within, as Michelle alluded to.

   I’m realizing for myself that living out my purpose has more to do with my just showing up, and standing in my own power. When I do that, I fall into alignment with what I’m meant to do, and that’s part of purpose in my book.

   Thanks for challenging us to look at this from a different angle.

5. Dick Richards Says:
   September 5th, 2006 at 9:40 am

   Thanks Debbie. I particularly like, “just showing up, and standing in my own power.” I think you are right about that being the essence of purpose when done free of ego.

   There is another barrier to finding purpose — other than ego, I mean. I plan to write about that here soon, so stay tuned for Part 3!

6. biren shah Says:
   September 13th, 2006 at 3:20 am

   james - there is no response from you to dick’s message - probably you haven’t yet seen it… probably you are groping with the words purpose and vision.
   like you, for me too, those two words were a picture of the same thing that i felt inside. for me, they represented the same stirrings.
   but this changed, and that is why i can see the difference dick and mitch are trying to convey. and it has changed because of the conversations they have been having with me (on the google group).

   i used to feel my vision IS (’must be’ is more correct) my purpose.
   my vision came from what i had expereinced - the sublime and the gross. it came from my past. and it was taking shape in the only area we are usually in touch with - intellect.

   but then i realised, i am more than i can ever know. that life is more than i can ever know. (know, as in ‘intellectually’). that, the self-assesement i can do is limited to what i know about myself - from past experiences and moments i have lived - and doesnot (and can not) include that which lies untapped, unused, not-called-forth.

   and it became clear to me - that purpose could be god’s vision of me (my life). its the life god lives through me. or, it is the life that wants to live through me.
   and, if i know god correctly, he will always prevail
   and in that condition, i may not even know that i am living my purpose. that my life is already ‘on purpose’. it is a different matter that i don’t realise it.
   let me give a wild example - hitler.
   what if his purpose was to teach. to teach the effect of hate rising from fear. or, to teach us about love by showing us the effect of its absence.
   if that is true, who would refuse that he lived a life of purpose - by design and not desire.
   or, take osama.
   what if his purpose is to unite the world?
   isn’t he doing just that?
   it is a different matter that he is doing it indirectly. he is following the divine design, because he was not able to feel the presence of his purpose consciously. (other wise, he would have been a great integrator, or inspirer of integration)

   yes, it sounds preposterous… which is not mutually exclusive with ‘possible’.

   in that (above), i resonate with mitch - we may never know our purpose. we don’t need to. because, it may be being served by the mere fact that we live and engage in this life. it may be served, irrespective of what we do.

7. Dick Richards Says:
   September 16th, 2006 at 11:49 am

   Interesting Biren. You raise the question of whether a noble purpose is ever truly served by evil means.

   In the underlying structure of the I Ching lies the idea that the natural balance of human endeavor conains 12.5% negative energy. You are suggesting that that energy also serves a positive purpose.

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