purpose
August 20, 2022purpose – an awakening of a way to be in the world, to live by our gifts
From ‘find your why’ (Senek) to ‘you don’t have a purpose’ (Sanford), no wonder many of us (or maybe just me?) get confused at times, and would rather numb our brains and hearts just to manage our day to day living.
If you are able to have the energy or time to look up and think ‘why am I, what am I here to do?’ you will have questioned ‘purpose’ in your life.
Your inner spirit has gifts intended for the world.
I really like Michael Meade’s mythology perspective and an original meaning of the word ‘purpose’ – that which awakens the heart and leads us in the right direction in the world.
We step into change (through the limin or over the threshold), while at the same time ‘purpose’ is coming towards us (coming into being).
To me, this means learning to trust your inner spirit and aim to identify the direction to travel (where the passion lies). Life is so complex and many things can happen on the path to actually name a fixed destination. We need to, like animals do, keep sensing the signs in the current situation and sniffing the direction we want to follow.
You are not alone, you are an interconnected being in the world.
‘once purpose awakens, it begins to reveal how each one of us can serve the world that we are in…be agents in the ongoing creation of the world’ Michael Meade
Here is Jeremy Sutton’s more prozaic perspective on meaning and purpose from a positive psychology perspective with some practical activities to help.
Try to remember the difference – Meaning refers to how we “make sense of life and our roles in it,” while purpose refers to the “aspirations that motivate our activities” (Ivtzan et al., 2016).
https://positivepsychology.com/find-your-purpose-of-life/
and a more poetic prose from Bill Mollison, world maker from a Permaculture perspective.