The Purpose of Life

Purpose is a moment to moment experience. The word purpose is synonymous with motive, cause, reason, and intention.  Our life's purpose has everything to do with how we choose to live. Yet like life, our purpose is ever changing.

When we seek to understand our purpose we seek to understand our reason for being alive 

Maybe our life's purpose is to be a father, a mother, the mailman, a teacher, an entrepreneur, or a seeker of knowledge.  Our life's purpose can be expressed in infinite ways and it is multi-faceted by its nature.  Our life's purpose is the foundation of our intention...and this is our declaration to the world.  So we must honor what we do, think, and say, because these mediums are the gateways to the experiential relationship we have with ourselves and others.  But I wonder, is there something about the "purpose of life" that transcends our individual pursuits?

Is there a purpose to life that is all encompassing... a universal intention that is beyond us?

I believe that if we ask ourselves this question we peer deeply into the "fabric" that holds life together. I feel that asking ourselves this question is imperative to breaking free from our egoic isolation.  Pondering beyond ourselves, I believe, will actually bring us deeply in touch with who we are... and who we are be becoming on a planetary scale.

What is it that we are becoming anyway?

I have no idea!  I could propose a few ideas, but they would fall short because my words and ideas can never touch the ultimate truth; the ultimate experience of what life is.

There is a philosophy that proposes that the ultimate purpose of life can only be understood from the perspective of the collective.  It is the proposition that the sum total of all of our intentions, including the intentions of seemingly unconscious entities (the Earth, the stars, and everything in between) determines what life, as a whole, is creating.  This movement of creation then is the ultimate purpose of life.  It is "on purpose," and meaningful beyond comprehension.  It is a view that holds that nothing is "random" and that everything is born out of intelligence.  If it a purpose beyond definition, but a purpose of the upmost significance.

Ultimate purpose, what is that?

The ultimate purpose is largely out of our control.  It is cosmic in its scale.  And although the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension that does not mean that we cannot sense it.  Our intuitive sense is what brings us into emotional communication with the ultimate purpose of life... and if we listen to this calling within we will see that our life becomes meaningful to a greater degree.  

When I hone in on this sense I feel that I am in communication with the universe, with God, or the movement of creation (call it what you will).  It is comforting to me because it makes me feel connected to something greater than myself and it frees me from the imprisonment of my egoic isolation.  It is a sense that makes me remember that I am never alone - even when my mind tricks me into believing I am or that my life is of no consequence or meaning.

The root of our forgetfulness and disconnection from Ultimate Purpose

It seems that we are so overly concerned with self image that we forget to see life beyond the self (or life beyond humanity).  I fear it is our narcissistic tendencies that blind us from seeing the interconnectivity of life's purpose.  I feel that narcissism and our obsession with status, image, control, and power, is at the root of all social dysfunction.

Could it be that our narcissism is a coping mechanism?  Is narcissism our attempt to block ourselves from the loneliness and or guilt associated to being blind to our inherent unity and how this perceived separation has caused all the destruction and division we see in our world today.  We deny our ability to communicate with the universe, with god, and the movement of creation.  Thus, I feel a deep existential lack is born because we deeply believe in our separation.  Our differences are real, but our similarities are much more profoundly similar.

Becoming conscious of how our disconnection has led to so much destruction can be saddening.  It may make us feel like our individuals life's purpose is vain, meaningless, and unimportant.  However, even that in it self is self destructive, because our individual life is part of the cosmic whole.  Our lives, our passions, and our individual missions are very important!  Yet, when we align our life's passion and purpose with a deep sense of connection to the world, with others, the Earth, and the cosmos, we will actually feel deeply rooted to a purpose greater than our own.

No one person is to blame for for the human condition as it is.  It is a way of life that we have become conditioned to live.  It has been going on for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, but now in the dawn of a forced new age our technology has clearly made us see how connected we.

Harmony is possible

We now have an opportunity to move towards something more unified, sane, and responsible (in fact we always have).  If we can understand and remember that the purpose of our individual lives is inextricably tied to the ultimate purpose of life we can create a more harmonious life.  Peace is possible, but we must get out of our own way and get in touch with our inner most senses.  It is the collective purpose that we must move towards.  This does not mean to lose our sense of our individuality, but rather to incorporate our sense of self with the unified whole of the collective.

In reality it is all much simpler than how I make it out to be.  It is about seeing that our individual differences are petty in comparison to our sense of connection.  It is about seeing that no one or no thing is more important.  It is admitting that we do not have all the answers.  And it is living from an ethic that is sensitive to nature and strives to be considerate of all things.