How to find your deeper purpose
Here’s an interesting contrast for you - lottery wins and near-death-experiences.
In both cases, there’s a massive external change and life suddenly looks, and feels, completely different.
But whereas lottery winners are often penniless and depressed again in no time at all, many of those who undergo near-death-experiences change their lives for good - overnight.
It's a helpful distinction because we’re brought up to believe that a ‘life-changing’ sum of money has the power to do just that.
But clearly something is missing here.
Why do lottery winners undergo a huge external change without becoming healthier, happier versions of themselves?
And what is about a brush with mortality that is so much more powerful in terms of bringing about real and lasting change?
The answer in both cases is the same: purpose.
What Really Matters
To understand how this works, consider another helpful distinction: ‘life situations’ and ‘life itself’.
Life situations are things that you do. Life itself is simply your state of being aware.
The two are not the same, and reflecting on the difference between them helps you discover what really matters.
All of us want more love, joy, inner peace, creativity, connection, fulfilment, and feeling ‘at one with.’
If you check, everything we do is in service of these experiences.
But here’s the thing: these are not possessions or objects obtained ‘in the future’ but things that occur naturally when we adopt a particular state, here and now.
In particular, they come forth when we lessen our identification with Doing and Thinking, and become present Being - to what is - here and now.
Increasingly, we have a tendency to get caught up in Doing and Thinking, and miss out on the deeper reality of Being altogether.
Being and Doing are both crucial aspects of human life. Doing acquires the necessary resources and conditions for happiness and fulfilment - but in itself it isn’t the source of what’s most important.
Let’s take a closer look at these two aspects of human experience to understand the difference between them.
Being is:
Your natural state of feeling at one with all things.
The sense of connection with something immeasurable and indestructible.
The source of inspiration and creativity, from which fresh new insights and deep transformation arise.
In its purest state Being is experienced as ‘flow’, as epiphany, and as the Three P’s of peace, presence and possibility.
In contrast to this, Doing and Thinking are more divided and conceptual, and when over-emphasized can lead to:
A state of separation leading to a sense of lack.
A background of fear, worry, and anxiety leading to cravings and addictions.
An ongoing pursuit of an idea of happiness that’s disconnected from what truly matters.
When we get stuck in Doing and Thinking in an unhealthy way it can easily produce the Three S’s - the experience of feeling stressed, scattered and shut down.
What’s your purpose?
The distinction between Doing and Being helps us to understand the difference between lottery winners and those who undergo near death experiences.
With a sudden influx of material resources Lottery winners get more into Doing and less in Being.
And with a sudden influx of the ‘existential truth’ near-death-experiencers get more into Being and less into Doing.
The purpose of life looks very different from these two different perspectives.
Doing-related purposes - like acquiring more ‘stuff’ or following cravings - are easily motivated by the Three S’s and can’t produce deep positive change.
They keep us trapped in unhealthy mental patterns and put severe physical stress on the body.
Being-related purposes naturally come from the Three P’s and thus carry with them the source of positive change itself.
When our mind relaxes our body does too, allowing our innate capacity for health and wellness to come forth.
So even though we need Doing and Thinking, and even though we need material resources, as a real-time experience it is Being and the Three P’s that are the real lottery win.
It is Being - the experience of the Three P’s right here and now - that is an abundant source of inner wealth, making health, happiness and transformation possible.
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