Do You Know What Your Purposes for Living Are?
Have you ever felt that something is missing in your life, that your life-quality is less than it should be? So many of us walk through life, experiencing periods of listlessness and we yearn for a deeper connection with life to make it all worthwhile.
Whether we respond to that yearning is our choice to make.
There will always be occasions when we experience high points in our lives, and in those times it is easy to feel our reasons for living are being fulfilled. We then feel contentment and in turn experience joy, love, connection, freedom, hope and fulfillment. We smile, laugh, twinkle our eyes, dance and dream of more of these times in the future.
Yet, nothing in this changing universe lasts forever and inevitably these high points will fade into memory. However, if we have persistence and patience, we will search and seek to re-connect with them. In the more ordinary times our purposes and reasons for living come under challenge, but these times can also present opportunity to address and refine our beliefs—and reinstate our purpose for living—if we can only recognise that perfection continually surrounds our lives somewhere.
If we are not mindful during our ordinary times, and those times of challenge, it will be depressingly easy to fall into boredom, desperation, illness, loss, tragedy, alienation, defamation, aggression, poverty, loneliness, resignation and other poor states of mind. It will be depressingly easy to re-define our lives in less-then-complimentary terms. It will be depressingly easy to lose our major purposes for living.
Life-quality is framed by a dynamic tension between, on one hand having predictability, familiarity, comfort and permanence, while on the other hand, having surprise, randomness, impermanence and challenges. It is shaped by the dynamic tension between being agreeable and disagreeable; between being efficient and being easy-going; between doing more and doing less. Each of us defines life quality differently so as your pendulum swings, if you regularly allocate quiet times to re-focus on what quality and higher purpose means to you as you go through life, your life will appear happier to you.
All of our experiences add to the nature of our lives—our life story—how we have responded to the changes confronting our lives. What is the purpose of all this? Why do we wake each morning? Why are we breathing? What is the purpose of knowing about ourselves as being alive?
What, indeed, is the purpose of being alive?
All of us ask this at some time in our lives, and if we have created an answer that gives us personal satisfaction and comfort, then our lives will more than likely have a passionate pull to help us live at our own satisfactory level of excellence, self-recognition, fulfillment and happiness.
If we cannot answer this question we will more than likely be thrown around like a small boat without a sail or rudder in a stormy sea of souls pushing this way and that.
Your purposes for living will be individual. There will never be simply one purpose for living, there will always be several. Some of your purposes will change and have a different emphasis at different times and circumstances of your life. Some you will take with you forever. If you can voice and understand your purposes for living, you will have greater insight into your life’s sweetest path—that runs through your changeable life. It will drive an urge that will make you want to re-live your moments and to never waste time. It will ensure that any negative emotions and negative states of mind are fleeting and it will allow you to return more often to the highs of your life.
Quality Life-Purposes
There are several ‘categories’ of life purpose, and there will be several ‘subcategories’ in each. From my understanding, each of us will have a number of subcategories and be inclined to emphasise one or two—but most don’t feel they have the courage to fulfil all of their purposes.
If you desire to know—and achieve—more of the life-purposes that mould your life-story, you need to be mindful of the following qualities:
A Quality Vehicle
Most of us will need a remarkable vehicle to experience our life purposes—our body. When we are mentally or physically unwell—when we feel tired, have pain, feel sick, hungry, or weak—it is unlikely, and certainly more difficult, for us to live our life purposes with any quality. We need to maintain both physical and mental health as well as fitness in order to increase our chances of achieving the highest of our life-purposes.
Quality Fuel
Most of us will need productive fuel to experience certain of our life purposes—and this fuel is money and assets. If we lack these our options can be reduced. We won’t feel we have the freedom to expand and soar when we need to shift and change our lives. We need to know how we can effectively contribute financially to both ourselves and to others, within our means. We need to find a profession that we feel not only competent in performing, but also one which gives us enjoyment and fulfilment—and for some this will require immense courage to keep seeking for the ‘right’ profession.
The key as you seek, is to aim for the stars but have developed the state of mind to accept the mountaintops.
Quality Character
Your character is built on knowing how to integrate four processes—your senses, your intellect, your emotions, and your intuition. Together they produce synergy which can evolve the necessary characteristic personality traits that buffer even the most desperate of life challenges. If they are not integrated, you will be pretty well guaranteed personal suffering. The techniques for evolving higher purpose character traits are ancient in humanity and are effectively masked from those not open to searching.
Quality in Relationships
We use our body, our fuel and our character traits to roam throughout the countryside of humanity—connecting with a partner, our children, our extended family and friends, within an ocean of others we call community. Some of us aim to go further and experience a connection with all living things.
At times we can feel connected and happy and at other times we can feel disconnect and sad. The secret to remaining close to our sweet path even in the sad times, is in the framing of our thoughts, words and conceptual projections, as we mirror ourselves in others.
Quality in Culture
We also use our body, fuel and character traits to flourish our participation in culture. The word “culture” derives from the Latin “colere” which relates to tending, growing, cultivating and nurturing the earth. It is a balance between that which is of nature and that of nature which we modify for our own needs—our material world. Each of us daily has the opportunity to connect both with nature and our material culture.
Fulfilling life purposes in the context of culture requires knowing where you as an individual, have to reside to satisfy a balance between the importance of nature in your life and the importance of material needs in your life. For example, fulfilling life purposes for some requires, integrating their dwelling with their landscape.
We are an animal that survives well or poorly through our individual ability to create order and predictability through becoming familiar with change. Even in the most confronting times suffering can be reduced by knowing and putting effort into living our higher purpose life-qualities. You will probably surprise yourself when you do this, because you will be able to draw on inner reserves that help you ride the storms of your life.
You can more fully understand your life purposes as well as uncover and replace limiting beliefs and character traits that cause more suffering as we go through the storms in life at our Hatha & Raja Yoga Retreats. Contact Us for more information.