Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth differentiated between your inner purpose and outer purpose, which is a useful way to stratify the concept of purpose:
“Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity.”
“Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose – what you do – with your inner purpose – awakening and staying awake. Through awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe. Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.”
To simplify Tolle’s sentiments further, our inner purpose is to be and our outer purpose is to do, where being is ‘consciousness’ and doing is ‘whatever the universe had planned for you’. So figure out if you’re a jackrabbit, and if you are, start hopping and chomping carrots.
With respect to inner purpose, “awakening” may seem mysterious. Regardless, one needs to arrive at the true self, whether it a chunk of the universal intelligence or an individual soul or set of preferences. We are born as our true selves but quickly learn how to ‘behave’ which, interestly, derives from the Old English word behabban, which was defined as self restraint. Our learned behaviour in tandem with our acquired sense of self (ego) tend to obfuscate and suppress our true selves, and even our awareness of or distress in this suppression. The good news is that the soul speaks to us often, whether it’s craving a pickle or compelling you to quit your job and start blogging, it can help to illuminate the true self.
With respect to outer purpose, being who we are, apparently, is a very challenging undertaking for most of us. We act only after having considered the likely outcomes of various behavioural approaches. We consider how to manipulate the situation to arrive at the outcome we want, and then put that plan into action. I want someone to like me so I feign interest in their story. I want to avoid potential conflict so I lower my head on the subway when the mentally ill guy starts ranting. I want to avoid negative impressions of me so I lie about my spoon collection.
Living authentically means being who you are at all times irrespective of the predictable outcome. Why? Because the manipulated outcome doesn’t belong to you. Your outcome is the one you would receive being yourself. Really think about this. If you are innately a miserable person, should you be miserable outwardly and have everyone react to you in this way? It’s unpleasant, but it’s your authentic life. Same for recipients who would encounter miserable people. In the absence of judgement, misery is just another thing that exists and should be addressed authentically and not through thoughtful manipulation and life contortion.
People believe they should be happy all the time, as in ‘the pursuit of happiness’. This will be addressed in a different post, but the general sentiment is that happiness is not a worthwhile pursuit, nor is comfort or ease. There is only one path and it’s to be exactly who you are, at all times, untainted by the ego, irrespective of the predictable outcome you may encounter, because that is your authentic life. “Be yourself, because everybody else is taken”.
So we can rewrite our inner and outer purpose as follows and add a temporal dimension since we live life moment to moment:
Your inner purpose is to ensure that you, the soul, are the being present in your moment.
Your outer purpose is to unwaveringly be the being you are in all moments irrespective of circumstance or predicted outcome.
