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The big question every philosophy, every society, every religion concerns itself with and comes up with a different answer: what is the purpose of life.
And depending on what they, what you come up with, your life is going to be happy, productive, or unhappy, full of pain and dissatisfaction.
We could safely say that…
…this could be the linchpin upon which the quality of your life depends.
So let’s look what purposes people have come up over the ages, I am quoting from various sites:
- –…Islam is the response to humanity’s search for meaning. The purpose of creation for all men and women for all times has been one: To know and worship God. By the way, Ramadan, the 30 days of fasting begins tomorrow…
- –…Nirvana is the term used to describe the end of suffering, the ultimate goal of Buddhism. It is a state of complete bliss, liberation from the limitations and desires of the physical world, and the end of the cycle of rebirth and suffering.
- –…Therefore, for the Christian, we are to live to bring glory to God–how we do that is through prayer and study of His Word, the Bible, so that we might better know what He has for us. Here are several ways to glorify God in your everyday life.
- –…A religious Jew tries to bring holiness into everything they do, by doing it as an act that praises God, and honors everything God has done. For such a person the whole of their life becomes an act of worship.
- –…The meaning of life is to live. It is a simple answer and is so appropriate in that the complex interactions and causal reactions that make up our existence are summed up in something that is both so simple and very difficult to quantify.
- –…The meaning of life is ‘freedom from suffering’ through apatheia, that is, being objective and having ‘clear judgement’, not indifference.
As you see, the meanings vary… but the results don’t… humanity’s history is, for the most part, is the history of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Thus the life purpose ‘freedom from suffering‘ nowadays said as ‘happiness‘.
Your dreams are a few levels above where you are. You don’t have a staircase, a ladder to get there?
This article is about two different approaches to life: one is of the masses, the other is of the achievers who are reasonably happy much of the time.
And… of course this article is also about a distinction or two…
I resonate most with the meaning through bringing the divine to everything, and also with a meaning that is not listed above, and it’s from my ex teacher, Robert Plank: the purpose of life is to jump hoops.
The Purpose Of Life Is To Jump Hoops
I like that meaning, I like that purpose. Why? Because it makes the action, the doing of life central, instead of some result, like avoiding suffering, or glorifying some deity.
Moreover, if you adopt this view of life, your actions in the present will be vastly different. How you will feel about your actions will be even more different.
What do I mean?
Most worldviews that I encounter in my work abhor doing anything that doesn’t bring immediate gratification as a result… belying a philosophical worldview where action and result are NOT separated by time.
This is one of the most important teaching of Kabbalah that is missing from current worldview: that action and result are separated by time… so that your free choice, the only law in creation, can be practiced.
- If you get immediate feedback, then you’ll always do what benefits you.
- If you are rude and get immediately an electric shock as a result, you’ll refrain from being rude, because you don’t like the pain.
- If you get a cookie every time you perform an act of kindness, you’ll do it for the cookie… won’t you?
You don’t choose, you learn to pursue pleasure and avoid pain… and never become even human, let alone human being.
So, if there is any design in Life, Time was factored in to give people the freedom of choice about their actions and no immediate feedback.
Every single failed life, every single failed attempt at any growth is the result of expecting immediate feedback and not getting it.
What is missing is the ability to live by design and not moment to moment, for the immediate gratification.
Living by design is requires other capacities: courage, persistence, foresight, curiosity, planning, doing things for the sake of increasing skills and gaining experience, and resilience.
These are spiritual aka DNA capacities. And, of course, most people have none of these capacities activated in their DNA.
In my programs every practice I teach and ask you to do, regularly, and persistently, every practice is designed to keep a capacity open if I turned it on for you.
I am enabled to turn on a capacity for you, but to keep it activated: that is your job.
And to no one’s surprise: without those capacities you’ll live a life of happenstance.
You will not be willing to invest in anything, because investment, by its nature is deferred gratification, and it is against your worldview.
You will create a statement for a future you’d like, but are unwilling to take any steps to build a staircase to it.
And no matter what anyone says: you are sticking with your worldview: unless I can see immediate result, I won’t do anything…
One of my favorite movies is Bob the Butler.
Bob is a serial failure in everything it tries. He finds jobs by going through the Yellow pages in alphabetical order and takes a job that needs some skills and has some training to acquire them.
He gets fired from all his jobs. But he built a wide array of skills that finally lands him in a dream job where all of those skills turn out to be useful.
Although I like Bob’s innocence, he still misses a big piece of the puzzle: he has no desire for anything, he has no plan other than I’ll find what I want when I find it.
Compare that with best selling author, Robert Greene, a very Bob-the-butler-like character, with a twist.
He knew early on that he wanted to write. What? He didn’t know.
He took 80 jobs, all writing jobs, and was fired from them or he quit.
And then, after 18 years of that, he finally had an idea for a book that 1. was of interest to others, 2. he was capable of writing with the skills and knowledge he had amassed in his 36 years.
It didn’t happen randomly. It was planned, it was prepared for, the only thing that wasn’t clear is the timeframe. And it came when he was 36.
My path was more hodge podge. I dreamed of healing people. But how? Doctor? Psychologist?
Neither were attractive enough for me, but in my gut I knew I just hadn’t seen the exact path.
So to prepare for many eventualities I learned as many skills I could. Most outside of formal education, many inside.
I spent 21 years in formal education, and no, I didn’t have to repeat any years, for the most of that time I was an A or a B student.
But I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
In addition to that, I got a brick mason license, I built furniture, hung wallpaper, laid wood and tile floors, learned plumbing, electrician work, seamstressing, two musical instruments, ballet, competed in swimming, ping-pong, gymnastics, learned photo lab work, learn typesetting, learned six languages, you name it… I attempted to learn it and take it to fluency.
Much like Bob the Butler.
Robert Greene’s life was a whole lot designed than mine, mine was more on the ‘wing’, on the fly vs designed. I was preparing for an occupation that I saw no models for, no one taught what I saw myself doing.
Was I causing my life? I did. And in hindsight, my philosophy, my meaning for life was much like Robert Plank says it is: I jumped hoops… and if you look, that has been my life.
If you want to be exact: I am still jumping hoops.
Waiting for something, hoping for something to come my way, expecting someone to give me something, including knowledge is not in my worldview.
The question is that you should ask now is this: Can I change my worldview to one that encourages me to acquire skills that may earn me nothing in the immediate future, for the sake of eventually having the skills that a probably yet unseen profession needs me to have?
The answer is a mixed bag: you can, gradually, by starting to learn skills… Eventually you’ll experience the joy of having skills and you’ll want more.
But changing your worldview by itself… no. You can’t do that. This is the reason people don’t hold onto DNA capacities I have activated for them.
But the student who learned two skills to some level… (to level 1%, which shows that you don’t have to have mastery for a skill to make a difference in this regard) is now going to 1. add more skills 2. increase her skill level in these two skills, and 3. be able to hold onto DNA capacity activation, if she gets one. If she gets more than one then all bets are off… You can’t work on two capacities/skills at the same time effectively. Unless, of course, an activity needs two… for example. But even then: you’ll work on one and then work on the other.
In the Integrity Workshop we work on some skills, one at a time.
Completion is a skill. Getting things done is another skill. Setting priorities is also a skill.
The recorded workshop goes in tandem with the live workshop. You get the recordings, the homework, and you even have access to me through email.
And you have access to the Discussion Forum, where you can post accomplishments, where you can share your process, where you can ask questions.
There are still two weeks till the second session of the course so you have enough time to catch up.
Get into skill building in the Integrity Workshop
