Living On Purpose
by Cyprien Clerc
A special series on Meaning, Mission, Passion, Purpose, Vocation, Profession, and Vision
From the mouth of professors, spiritual teachers, entrepreneurs, life coaches, mental health workers, philosophers, scientists, doctors and artists.
Prologue
I have been reading everything I could put my hands on when it comes to the topic of purpose and meaning. As I move forward on this journey, I am starting to distinguish different angles from which one can look at this question. We all know from our own experience that the topic of “Life Meaning”, or Purpose does not appeal to everyone. There seems to be two categories of people who reject the idea: those who reject it because they don’t feel the need for it, and those who reject it because they take part in a particular school of thought in which Purpose or Meaning is seen as nothing more than a Human-made concept, a mental construction which should be relinquished just as everything else in this worldly existence. And then, there is the third kind of people, those who are thirsty for accomplishing their life task, their mission, their calling.
As I read books and watch talks, one thing appears clear to me: the answer to the question depends on the level of consciousness of the enquirer. I’d like to point out that in no way is this a judgment on the quality of a human being. I believe that we’re all on the same road but we tread it at a different pace and take different detours, and that is our birthright, it is the ultimate freedom that Life gives us.
When I was young and on my own spiritual journey, I met an Indian Guru, the real thing, just like in the movies: a 93-years old master, with an incredible life behind him, and a massive following of disciples who worshipped his existence with all of their hearts. One day, this master asked me: what’s the goal of your life? I was 23 years old and didn’t know what to reply so he said: “You see, in our culture, we believe in reincarnation. There is no good or bad goal, but I must tell you this: whether it is in this life, or in 10 lives, or in 100 lives, every man eventually gets to the same goal, which is to know himself. So you can start now or later, this is your choice, but know this to be true.”
I am now 34 years old and those words still resonate in my mind. The subject of knowing oneself could not be more massive. There is no other topic that stirs the mind in all different directions like this one. However, Indian Wisdom (and most of ancient Asian Wisdom) has it that the Self cannot be defined with our conventional Western concepts. “Personality” isn’t even remotely close to the depth to which Indian scriptures point to when speaking of the Self. The Self is something that exists as a substratum to our thoughts. Indeed, when we are not thinking, we still exist.
And so I went on with my journey. It’s been 11 years now. There is no doubt that I haven’t taken the monk style of life. Even though meditation and other modalities of spiritual enquiry are a big part of life, I cannot say that I have focused all of my energy on the deepest Truth. I am a young man discovering all the joys and pleasures of life, all of the complexity and sophistication of Nature and Relationships, all the wonders of the Mind. And even though I recognized the depth in the words of my master, I believe that the lessons are learnt along the way, that the insight into the Self deepens as we act, decide, invest ourselves, make mistakes, learn, re-direct and move forward again. Those who wait for realization to happen, who stand still until they actually understand what this is all about, those ones (except for a very few) never actually start. You’ve got to start and act, and fall and weep, and realize while you’re doing it, by sheer experience, that your goals are only partial and that the end goal actually always eludes you. You discover it, bit by bit, as you walk the path.
This is my offer in this essay: that life is a game. One does not “figure it out”, one experiments, every day, until the end of his life. One lives fully by being bold enough to try things and to believe in oneself. This is a topic I dedicate a whole chapter on later in this book, “Believing in oneself”. There is no magic recipe if that’s what you are looking for. But there are toxic beliefs that hinder your potential for being free to experiment everything that life has to offer, for being everything which you can be. And of course, much of these restrictions are due to our Education, due to History, due to Culture. We are haunted by the Invisible shackles that bind us to the group, the danger we perceive in being marginal, the fear of being excluded from the tribe. Culture both supports us and binds us; it raises us but also conditions us.
Alan Watts – philosopher, writer and Zen Buddhist – speaks about “The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”. Terence McKenna, the infamous ethnobotanist and mystic, made a speech he titled “Culture is not your friend”. Eli Jaxon-Bear explains how the ancient system of Enneagrams essentially describes all of the mind’s strategies for finding its place in the world, in the human group, in the tribe, and how much of it is a construct rather than our True Self. Alessandro Jodorowsky addresses more specifically the conditionings inherited from our family tree; his book Metagenealogy is indeed subtitled “Family: a treasure, a trap”. Finally, Carl Jung said this very famous sentence “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” We are, at large, a conditioned being, especially when living an unexamined life. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates went a step further, going as far as stating: “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
The Origin Of The Quest
Yet here we are, searching for an answer to the meaning of life, or even more humbly just a purpose, a direction for our limited lifetime. So the first question this poses is: “What part of ourselves is interested in this quest?” There are only three possible answers to this question:
- The quest for purpose or meaning is itself part of our conditioning, it has been instilled by our environment.
- The quest for purpose or meaning is the glitch in the system; a deeper truth is trying to arise from the depth of our being.
- The quest for purpose or meaning arises from a false source. The Mind requires a meaning or purpose because it requires justifying its own (seemingly) separate, individual existence. And it is trying to justify its existence because it is indeed void, it has no substance. When the mind subdues, and only silence remains, the question of purpose and meaning also disappears.
The aim of this book isn’t to elucidate the question of the origin of the quest though. I hope the present work to be more of a practical guide. Throughout this book, I will explore different perspectives on the topic of Meaning and Purpose, referring to findings in multiples disciplines. However, all throughout this exploration, and all the way to the conclusion of this book I will keep bringing back the complex and mysterious question of the Origin of the Quest, as I believe that any serious inquiry requires to keep our mind alert to the necessity of doubting not only our answers but also our questions.
Without further due, let’s dive deep into these matters.
Table Of Contents
- Prologue
- Definitions
- A Wide Horizon
- A Spiritual Teacher's Perspective
- A Psychology and Mental Health Perspective
- A Business Person's Perspective
- An Artist's Perspective
- Conclusion
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