Subscribe via RSS“To follow the Fourth Instinct is to obey the law of human development. It is a universal law, but it expresses itself differently in each individual. Indeed, there are as many paths to wholeness as there are those who would walk them, threads through the labyrinth of life that we can follow to the center of ourselves and of all existence.”….Arianna Huffington, The Fourth Instinct: The Call Of The Soul
Making our way through the so-called ‘labyrinth of life’, the question of Passion and Purpose commonly arises. It is usually accompanied by a profound expression of desire to fulfill something larger than oneSelf, bigger than what we are currently engaged in or that with which we are presently occupied. Here, I would like to step away from our usual description to take a perspective from the law of human development referred to in Arianna Huffington’s quote.
What if we consider that we are living our Passion and Purpose every single day in our solitude, our relationships and our activity in the world – whether we are conscious of it or not?
In our pursuit to define these two factors, we are asked a multitude of questions that generally instigate more looking, sometimes frantic. The more we look, the more frustrated we can become. For what Purpose am I here? What is my great Passion? Why am I unable to experience knowing of these aspects of my humanity?
From a true human development perspective, it’s just not that complicated.
I invite you to try on these ideas and to consider that Purpose and Passion may be staring you in the face, simply asking you to stay present through the process of living your very own unique life.
Purpose is the reason for which something exists and what it is used for. It is NOT foreign. We do not need to go out finding Purpose – Purpose is finding us. We are not in need of determining Purpose – Purpose is distinguishing us. We are not fulfilling Purpose – Purpose is fulfilling itself through us. Calling for acceptance of what IS, Purpose is given by collaboration with circumstances and conditions as they are. Purpose presences surrender to what is so today and through the process of living.
Though we live separating ourSelf from events, circumstances, conditions, and things, life is continually integrating these externalizations with our internal experience. As we surrender to and collaborate with each expression, fulfillment proceeds. Want to distinguish your Purpose? Ask yourSelf three questions whose combined responses will give you a clue to your unique Purpose:
What’s intolerable to you?
What are you unwilling to compromise on?
What gives you pleasure?
It is the combination – the triad of these responses that is the container of Purpose.
If Purpose is the front of the hand, Passion is the back. Passion has so many connotations in today’s language, we seldom know if we are in the same ballpark in discussing this topic.
Passion is infinite desire and compelling motive for something. It is NOT arbitrary. Its context matches that of Purpose: We don’t choose Passion – Passion chooses us. We don’t have Passion – Passion has us. We don’t fulfill Passion – Passion fulfills itself through us. Shedding light on what IS NOT yet seen and understood, Passion followed expresses revelation.
While we seek what we consider to be perfect, life demands attention to what we deem flawed. As we allow the existence of both, revelation occurs. Integrating the flaws of ourSelf, other, and world is Passion’s essential process of defining ‘how’ our deepest desire is to be realized. Like Purpose, Passion is distinguished by a triad of questions, the answers for which you need not go seeking:
What are you passionate about?
What are you always doing?
Where do you consistently get results?
The responses you give to these questions do not require deep thoughtfulness. If anything, they call us to notice what we generally don’t see in our habitual searching. Why? Most generally, because we miss noticing what is here right in front of us in our daily living and our natural orientation to life.
Purpose and Passion are two exquisite elements inextricably connected in our individual Blueprint through the commitment we already carry and the desire that is intrinsic to the design of who we are.
What are your responses to the Passion/Purpose question triads? Can you see their activity in your daily life? Are you willing to follow your personal ‘threads through the labyrinth of life to the center of yourself and of all existence‘? Leave a comment – I’d love to hear from you!
An interesting and arresting set of questions. So what am I passionate about? Learning in a word. Each day, I believe, adds to our fund of experience and enables us to see the world differently. Every experience shapes what we subsequently see. And what am I always doing? Re-evaluating the world in the light of growing experience. I wonder, indeed, if the process of re-evaluation is something approaching wisdom rather than knowledge? And where do I consistently get results? From the re-evaluation. This is a wonderful process that engages with the essence of what I am In the words of Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha: “No, I am telling you what I have discovered. Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom. One can find it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” Wisdom flows out of engagement and re-evaluation. And it is this which is the bedrock of our purpose: to see the world differently each day.
Thanks for your comment, Ron. I agree with Hesse’s proposal that we see the world differently each day.
In the work of the QuintessentialYou Blueprint, we do not use any “un’s” or “re’s”, “dis” or “mis”. We don’t
use them because they tell us what a thing WAS or what is it NOT rather than what it IS NOW. So, I wonder,
in the re-evaluation…evaluating again, as it were…. what is it NOW without use of the ‘re’? And in the case of
where you always get results…. ‘from’ the re-evaluation ….. what does that consistently impact?
I’d be interested to hear what you see when you get underneath these.
The abolition of these prefixes changes everything. Am I right to understand, then, that by not using these prefixes we are in an eternal present and unable to compare?
Yes! … and eliminating any prefix that means ‘not’ …be it not now, not this, or not there
has us present to what IS. In being present to what IS, we are in touch our Self, Other,
and World as each shows up now, as this, right here.