If you don't know where you're going… Any road will take you there…

George Harrison
Musician, film producer

‘What's your purpose in life?’

I was attending a workshop in 2007, and the trainer had invited us to direct this question to the person sitting next to us. When I was asked, I trotted out something I'd come up with a few months earlier, but it no longer rang true. I told my partner, ‘That doesn't feel right; I have to be true to myself’. I tried several times to get my ‘pre-prepared purpose’ to fit, but each time it sounded hollow and empty. Finally, I approached the trainer and told him there was something wrong; that each time I spoke my purpose, it felt ‘off’. ‘I have to be true to myself’, I repeated for the fifth time, before suddenly realizing what I'd said. In that moment, wisdom was speaking…

You have to be true to yourself.
This is your purpose right now; to be true to yourself.
To be guided by intuition, realization and authentic desire.

This is the essence of the shift from a life driven by the conditioning of the past to one guided through connection with your own authenticity; to the living wisdom of the moment. Wisdom is constantly guiding us, if only we have the ears to hear its gentle urging.

While I'd been looking outside myself, trying to figure out some suitably grand purpose, the voice of the inner self was speaking the simple fact of my purpose in that moment… You have to be true to yourself. You see, it turns out that you don't find your purpose; purpose finds you. In this chapter, you're going to be getting in touch with your inner source of evolutionary purpose; the guidance system that can keep you on track today, and 20 years from today.

Your inner source of evolutionary purpose

While you may not be founding an exponential-growth business, a sense of purpose and direction are innate; as natural to you as breathing. When you were a child, a purpose would find you, captivate you and guide you until you transcended it. This is the sense of evolutionary purpose that has already motivated you…

• To crawl, to walk and to talk.
• To explore the world and learn about what fascinates you.
• To throw yourself into pastimes, hobbies and other activities.
• To develop skills and master them.

A purpose finds you, captivates you, then guides you until you transcend it.

That sense of evolutionary purpose is what has me writing this book, and may well be what has you reading it. Stop and consider that for a moment. Are you open to the possibility that your innate capacity for purpose and direction is guiding you in this very moment?

As you reflect on your life, you may be able to identify a number of different times or periods when you were captured by a particular passion, purpose or enthusiasm. In fact, the word ‘enthusiasm’ comes from ancient Greek, and literally translates as ‘the God within’. The ancients recognized the wisdom of your passions, enthusiasms and authentic desires.

So what gets in the way of realizing your purpose?

There's an old Sufi tale about the wise man, Nasruddin, who was observed one day racing his donkey through the streets of Baghdad, frantically searching for something. The townsfolk called out, asking what he'd lost. Nasruddin shouted, ‘I’m looking for my donkey!'

You may have been told you need to ‘find your purpose’, but how do you do that? It turns out that a more valuable question to ask is, ‘What gets in the way of your realizing purpose?’ What gets in the way is looking for it where it isn't…

The misguided search for purpose is the biggest obstacle to finding it.

It turns out there's only one thing that ever gets in the way of you knowing what's right for you in the moment: contaminated thinking. The source of contaminated thinking is the outside-in misunderstanding; the mistaken belief that you're feeling something other than THOUGHT in the moment.

Your feelings don't know anything about your character, your circumstances or your sense of direction.
Your feelings only ever know about THOUGHT in the moment.

You can't find something where it isn't

Consider these phrases:

• ‘I’m stuck. I've lost my sense of purpose'.
• ‘I’m looking for my purpose'.
• ‘I’m trying to find a sense of direction in my life'.

They imply that ‘purpose’ is something external; something you can find, have, lose or lack. If purpose was a material object (like a pen, a phone or a bunch of keys), then losing it and looking for it would make sense. But your purpose is not a material object. It's a fresh new thought that arrives as an insight; a realization that brings you closer to the reality of life that you're part of.

Imagine a whirlpool or eddy in a fast-flowing river. While you could name the whirlpool and describe its characteristics, it has no existence independent of the river. While you can perceive the whirlpool as distinct and separate for practical purposes, it is never actually separate. The whirlpool is inseparable from the river, part of an undivided whole.

While you have a name and can describe your characteristics, you have no existence independent of the oneness of life.
While you can perceive yourself as distinct and separate for practical purposes, you are never actually separate.
You are inseparable from the intelligence and oneness of life, part of an undivided whole.

We'll be referring to the oneness of life as the principle of MIND. You, your life and your purpose in the moment are all an expression of this formless principle.

So what is ‘purpose’?

Purpose is a thought, and like all thoughts, it comes with a feeling. Your evolutionary purpose is less likely to be something you ‘figure out’ so much as something you glimpse or realize; a function of your innate capacity for insight. When you have such a realization, it may have some of these qualities…

• It may come with a feeling of gentle certainty or knowing.
• It may come as a sudden flash of realization, or as a slow awakening.
• It may strike you as extremely obvious, with an ‘Of course! How did I not see this before?’ quality.

So how do you create the conditions for this kind of realization?

Stop looking for it where it isn't.

Of course, this doesn't just apply to purpose; it applies to all our innate qualities. When we look outside ourselves for that which can only be found within us, it sets up an ‘outside-in’ dynamic that generates contaminated thinking. But when we subtract that misunderstanding, our innate capacities emerge. Do you remember the CLARITY^® Equation from Chapter 2? Here's a slightly expanded version of it.

We're always living in the feeling of the principle of THOUGHT taking form, moment to moment. THOUGHT creates your perceptual reality and CONSCIOUSNESS gives you an experience of the totality of your THOUGHT-generated perceptual reality in the moment. Your whole experience, moment to moment, is powered by the principle of MIND.

A paradigm for psychology

MIND, THOUGHT and CONSCIOUSNESS are the principles behind human psychological functioning, first articulated by Sydney Banks. While they're pointing in the same direction as many wisdom traditions of the past, Banks was able to go further, stating them as ‘principles’ in the scientific sense of the word (i.e. fundamental laws of reality such as the principle of gravity). Whenever humanity discovers the foundational principles behind a field, it creates a shared basis of agreement for future explorations which then transforms that field. The shared basis for agreement is referred to as the field's ‘paradigm’.

• Newton's realization of the principle of gravity formed the basis for a paradigm that transformed the field of physics.
• Lavoisier's realization of the principles behind combustion formed the basis for a paradigm that transformed the field of chemistry.

• Semmelweis' realization of germ theory formed the basis for a paradigm that transformed the field of medicine.

Sydney Banks insightfully realized and articulated the foundational principles behind psychology; principles that form the basis of a paradigm for a field that has been awash with conflicting ideas, concepts and theories until now.

• Banks' realization of the principles behind human psychological functioning form the basis for a paradigm that will transform the field of psychology.

Your perception is like a desktop

In his fascinating TED talk, Do We See Reality As It Is? cognitive neuroscientist Donald Hoffman uses your computer's desktop as a metaphor for perception. He explains that we don't see reality ‘as it is’. Rather, what we experience is an internally generated model, informed in part by our sensory data. We can think of time and space as our desktop, and the various ‘objects’ in our world (e.g. bananas, buildings, bodies) as symbols or icons on that desktop. Just as there are implications to interacting with an icon on your computer or smartphone, there are implications to interacting with the ‘icons’ in your world (e.g. people, pythons, poppadoms). 100% of your computer's desktop and the icons are generated from within the deeper properties of the device. Similarly, 100% of the desktop and icons of your perception (i.e. space, time and the physical and non-physical forms/objects you perceive) are generated from within the deeper properties of life. These deeper properties are by definition formless, i.e. they are what generates the forms of your perception (the desktop and icons). At the end of his talk, Hoffman says…

When I have a perceptual experience that I describe as a brain, or neurons, I am interacting with reality, but that reality is not a brain or neurons and is nothing like a brain or neurons. And that reality, whatever it is, is the real source of cause and effect in the world – not brains, not neurons. Brains and neurons have no causal powers. They cause none of our perceptual experiences, and none of our behavior.

The metaphors of MIND, THOUGHT and CONSCIOUSNESS are a way of referring to the deeper reality Hoffman is pointing to… the real source of cause and effect in the world and in your life. The principles of MIND, THOUGHT and CONSCIOUSNESS generate your perceptual reality and the sense of a ‘you’ that is experiencing it.

Purpose can give you a glimpse of the future

In late 2008, I was feeling off-track. My most recent purpose had found me and guided me, but I'd transcended it and I was feeling frustrated and directionless. Then, I started exploring the principles behind clarity. As my understanding deepened, my head started to clear and I had a series of realizations. The first realization came to me while I was asleep and dreaming…

Everything you've been looking for outside of you is actually to be found within you.
External results can be wonderful, but they can't give you a feeling.

I awoke with a start, feeling better than I could remember feeling in months. I'd suddenly realized that peace, security and fulfilment can never be found in external circumstances and accomplishments. While external results can be wonderful, they can't give you a feeling; that can only come from within you. The second realization arrived a few weeks later…

The fact that you can perceive anything means you have the source of peace, fulfilment and wellbeing already within you. You already have the ingredients of a high-quality experiential lifestyle.

This shocked me, and had an immediate impact on my work with clients. When you know with absolute certainty that a person is fundamentally OK, it influences how you experience that person and how they experience you. The presence of sane human beings has a positive effect in its own right…

The third insight arrived a month after that, and revealed something truly extraordinary. You see, purpose can give you a glimpse of a possible future.