The Purpose of Life, Part 1:  The Fundamental Question

At the Raja Yoga workshop I attended a few weeks ago in Cambridge, one of the activities for the two small discussion groups was to consider the following questions:

i) What is the purpose of life?
ii) What are the obstacles which get in the way (or might do so)?
iii) What are possible solutions which may allow these obstacles to be overcome?

These are big questions, and perhaps there are no easy answers. I’ll be writing about the obstacles and possible solutions in later posts to this blog, but for now I’ll just address the first question: What is the purpose of Life?

This is not the sort of question most of us are used to thinking about, and everyone in my group struggled with it – no one wanted to be the first to speak. I thought that this was interesting in itself; there is surely a reason for all of our actions, even if it is often subconscious, yet we do not consider the big picture of how it all fits together into our overall purpose.

When we did get the discussion going, there was some debate as to whether the question referred to individual purpose (which would obviously be different from person to person), or some all-encompassing divine or universal purpose. We decided that the question could refer to either, and so gave our answers accordingly.

Some of the responses given were as follows:

- “My purpose is to help people”
- “My purpose is to find peace”
- “My purpose is to resolve problems”
- “My purpose is to raise healthy and happy children”
- “My purpose is to live a happy and healthy life”

These are all good and worthy purposes, but I found the last person’s suggestion the most thought-provoking:

- “My purpose is to look for my purpose – to be a seeker for the truth, open to the learnings which come to me along the road of life”

When I first heard this, I thought it was a circular statement, or some sort of riddle like a Zen Buddhist koan.

Then, after some more thought, I came to the view that, yes, perhaps this does describe quite well the purpose of many of us who are looking to develop ourselves. We may have other purposes which give meaning to our lives, including those listed above, but as we seek to grow through personal development, then we are in fact seekers and perhaps what we are looking for is our real purpose – what we sometimes refer to as “The Meaning of Life”.

It seems to me that the answer to this question of ‘bigger’ purpose probably lies not in the outside world but within us, and that we are most likely to find to find it by harnessing our mind. The reason-for-being of the Universe may be beyond our comprehension, but we can still become more attuned to Universal Laws through mind entrainment and bring about great benefit to ourselves, those we love and the greater World. Perhaps it is our soul which is searching; but even if the search never ends, there is great value in the learnings along the way.

Bob Proctor makes reference to this in his description of all humankind as being - not “having″ – souls, and the perfection of the searching soul. It is clearly something to which he has given a lot of thought, and I plan to read (and, most likely, comment on) more of his writings in the near future.

This is a challenging subject, I know, but an important one. I’d be interested to hear from you and to know what you see as being the purpose of your life and, if you like, the ‘bigger’ purpose for all of us. Please add your comments below.

Until next time,

Warmly
Chris

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Philosophy, Universal Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.