Life Purpose

For years now I have looked at the issue of life purpose as if trying to plot a successful life story.  I now see that my life is not a story.  Life is a present moment experience, and it isn't “my life,” it's just “life.”

If we look at life as a story we can't help being pulled into the ego's game of trying to control the future and regreting things about the past.  But if we see life as a present moment experience, then all our karmic conditioning for how we are to judge what we are experiencing simply falls away.  There is no way to judge without comparison, and yet the present moment can't be compared to past of future moments.  Whenever we are comparing we have stepped out of present experience.

So I can't have a successful life story or an unsuccessful life story. And without a story, there is no such thing as success or failure at all. 

All I get is life.  I am consciousness.  When I drop my stories, I experience the presence of an infinite intelligence, a measureless love, complete compassion and generosity, unlimited power and eternal existence.  Greeting this with an open heart and a mind unclouded by preconceptions about what it should find, I discover an experience of awe and love.  I weep actual tears, I am so overcome by emotion.  This is beyond words, though I attempt to use words to share it with you.  Really this can only be an invitation.  I invite you to say “yes” to this moment, right now, just as it is.  I invite you to embrace life and call that “enough.”

Do not strive for enlightenment, anymore than you strive for riches or fame or any other phantom.  There is nothing to attain.  Even your confusion is your enlightenment, merely having taken a form that makes it difficult for you to comprehend your true nature.  Embrace even your confusion as your enlightenment, and be free.  Whatever “It” is, this is “It.”

Re: Life Purpose

I have been in love with my stories so long, it would be hard to leave them behind!
Of course i tell them over and over in different ways, for different reasons different ears, and i know that history changes every time it is retold.
Telling stories for an audience is different from the plot lines i use to describe my own life.
With an audience i have a script but i'm never really in control of the story which comes from somewhere else. If some one asks a question the the story leans in that direction. Sometimes something new appears. There is a duck in the story. Tell about the duck. I may be thinking about lunch or wonder why one child never smiles, but i trying to remain in the present non-grasping.

I read some where that studies of people who described themselves as happy also revealed that those people  felt that they were in charge of their lives and in control. Comparison revealed that happy people in control had just as much randomness in their lives as people who were discontented.
Similar circumstances different outlook.

I thought that this was a very fragile kind of happiness, because it was based on the illusion of control. Surrender to the present, releases our grip on the karmic plotlines we follow, but it also releases us from this sense of purpose and control which is a strong component of well-being for many people.
I feel a little sad, to let that go.

Re: Life Purpose

“I read some where that studies of people who described themselves as happy also revealed that those people  felt that they were in charge of their lives and in control….. I thought that this was a very fragile kind of happiness, because it was based on the illusion of control.”

So very true.  Even our conception of what happiness actually is turns out to be a delusion. People confuse the absence of worry and presence of optimism as happiness.  But that is all about the future.  Happiness is not something based in the future.  Basically these people are describing themselves as happy, but not only is their happiness fragile due to its predication on a deluded belief that they are in control of their lives, but on top of that, what they are calling happiness isn't even happiness to begin with.  It is, of course, possible that they are also experiencing true happiness in addition to the optimism and productivity they feel about their ability to make their future according to their desires.  It's just that one has nothing to do with the other.

“I feel a little sad, to let that go.”

I sometimes feel sad in thinking about this also.  There is a disillusionment we must all go through when we think about the meaning of life.  It's an existential issue we all face.  Life truly has no purpose other than being alive.  We have succeeded as much as we ever will as soon as we are born.  The rest is just a series of happenings and experiences of those happenings to which we apply meanings we create.  We use various standards to manufacture those meanings, such as social conditioning and lifetimes of karmic conditioning, but ultimately the significance of anything that happens in our lives is all made up by us.  There is no ultimate judge somewhere deciding who lived a good life and who did not.  All life is equally good, to anyone other than the person living it. We are the only judges and so we must value our own judgment enough to seek no other.

That can be a lonely feeling, and even a hopeless one.  That's just it.  There is no hope.  We really have to be hopeless.  The sadness that comes with hoplessness, however, is just a phase.  As my lama says, it is always frightening and very painful if we only go part of the way towards letting go.  It's like you jump out of a plane with a parachute but you keep holding onto a rope attached to the plane.  The parachute can't open and meanwhile you're getting banged against the underbelly of the plane. Ouch!  And pretty darn scary.  But to let go all the way is freedom.  You can't fly free so long as you remain on the plane.  You have to jump, and you have to completely let go.  What happens next isn't scary or painful, but you can only know that once you get there, because it isn't a story.