Cont’d from Neutral Observers? Yes, We Are!
Brisbane – Australia – May 2021
When it comes to one’s owns ‘purpose’, for the most part, we think about it in terms of doing our job as consciously as possible.
After all, that job is the means by which we earn the money needed to make life safe and a bit fun for ourselves and for our families.
We also find ‘purpose’ in doing our best to raise our children according to what we perceive is the ‘right way’.
In ‘purpose’ we often feel ‘duty-full’.
That said, within or beyond our mundane responsibilities, we all have a higher purpose to identify and to fulfil.
Our higher purpose doesn’t need to be obscure.
It doesn’t have to be brazen.
It doesn’t need to be humble.
It doesn’t need to highlight us in a magical/spiritual glow that’s out-of-this-world either.
Here’s the thing: however mundane it might be, that higher purpose will always demand endless empathy for our selves and others – along with a coherent determined devotion to it.
Therefore, once identified, our higher purpose will be free of our ego-persona’s reactive tantrums and posturing.
Therefore, it will be free of partisanship.
It will be free of ego, therefore, it will not consist mainly in a quest for potential, personal wealth and #1 rankings.
Heads up: however holistic our purpose might one day be, it will be challenged by uncontrolled slides.
The course will be bumpy.
At times messy and demanding, it will stretch us.
But, when our purpose is holistic, it is never depleting.
Paddling through rips and tides towards our true purpose makes us happy.
As it was in the past, it is still true today, and it always will be.
Human nature remains unchanged.
Now, on the topic of purpose by way of personal agency without which we will fail to energise our purpose, let’s see to which conclusions a neutral observation might eventually lead us.
Just like so many words in European languages, ‘agency’ (agens) hails from a very distant past where Latin was the language of a very long era. And, on the topic of long-forgotten periods that still mark us, Earth dwellers of the 21st century, thoughts of our prehistoric ancestors now come to mind.
But, before I allow these thoughts to filter down in a clean swoop, they’ll have to flutter in the breeze until this current little mind-meander on purpose and agency is coherent enough.
Agency is generally defined as the ability to act in a manner that represents our best interests. So, our first task is to wade through the debris that floats on the surface of our mind to eventually reach down and pull up what ‘best’ might mean for us.
As an ideal best friend would do for us, we help ourselves make our own choices.
Our next task is to choose to make ‘best’ happen incrementally in our day-to-day.
And then, of course, we need to trace a careful course that will, hopefully, lead us to what, in the fulness of time, would be truly ‘best’ for us.
That begins with us choosing to work out whatever complications that arise with determined calm and care.
Really coming of age is a prerequisite for finding our purpose, the answer to the question, ‘Why was I born and what is my karmically intended purpose for this current lifetime?’
And so, coming of age, means optimising our ability to attune – or to tune our selves to a level of confidence that grows every time we mindfully choose our response to What-Is in the moment underfoot.
Heads up: our understanding of Self grows every time we manage with centredness each of the complications and each of the possibilities that face us in real-time.
Whether we perceive them as manageable or challenging, ours always is the freedom to choose how to respond. We have ‘agency’.
With our minds off the logistics of life that weigh us down, we find time to search within for wonder and awe.
We become curious about possibilities.
We respond not with the future in mind because the future is elusive.
Serious question: ‘When does the future begin? When does it end?’ One might ask.
Serious answer: the ‘future’ is an illusion.
Planning purposefully with the future in mind suggests that – in the present moment -we don’t trust ourselves, our skills, or the possibility of ‘lucky’ synchronicity.
In fact, we might not even believe in the possibility of simultaneous occurrences of events coming together for our greater good.
And so, too often, we do ‘life’ like a leaf bobbing on the back of a little brook.
One minute ‘life’ is flowing nicely, the next feels stuck between two rocks.
Maybe the force of wind will help free it.
Maybe not.
Either way, then, what?
In the absence of any sense of genuine purpose, so slip by the days of our lives.
Similarly, we might not trust our heart-based coherence.
We don’t trust that Soul (or God or the Universe) has our back.
We are not open to real intuition – not available to catching Soul’s whispers.
Not ready to listen for that voice, we sense no sense of purpose.
That’s OK. Most of us weren’t raised to think differently than we have been doing for so many decades.
In the book entitled Self-Realisation – Life and teachings of Sri Raman Maharshi by B.V. Narasimha swami, the Hindu sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi, said, “Everything consists in not forgetting one’s Self and all the misery is due to the forgetting of this Self.”
Within the context of the meander, let’s say that our ‘Self’ is our soul – our purposeful, karmically engineered, cosmic entity that is far greater than who we are as bodies of flesh and fluids – water, mostly.
In the gap between our inhalation and exhalation, we soften.
We allow Soul’s whisper to drift into our awareness.
Then, once aware of the feelings and thoughts observed, we choose to engage in courageous conversations with our selves … about our selves.
If we take Sri Ramana Maharshi’s thought as a two-pronged hint, first, we need to accept the role of Neutral Observer of our selves.
We need to become curious about what there is to … observe.
To observe neutrally.
Free of judgement.
Free of labels.
In doing so, we choose to become lucid about our triggers.
Lucid, too, about our style of reactions and inactions.
About what and how we give and how and what we receive.
We choose to review how we connect with others as much as with our inner self.
We observe how we engage with those who are nearest and dearest.
And we observe, too, how we interact with those who are visible or invisible to us, near or far, known or unknown.
We do that with agency.
We do it most particularly any time we feel frazzled, vulnerable or depleted.
Bottom line: as Neutral Observers of our selves, our mission is to observe whether we react, opt for surface disengagement from What-Is or respond in a manner protected by heart-based clarity of intent.
Keep pondering & Keep sharing, too, dear Reader 🙂
