The secret of seeking your purpose

For most of my twenties and thirties (although I still have some of my thirties left) I have been a seeker. I’m always seeking something or someone, seeking my purpose, seeking my passion, questioning everything but never truly finding what I thought I was after.

There were times when I was seeking slow, and there were times I felt pressure and panic, because there was such a conflict within me and a deep desire to do something else. Those years I longed to find out what there was to be known, I longed to be somewhere else, be someone else, but I didn’t know what, where, who or how. So I kept running and seeking. I found bits and pieces of peace, some in yoga, some in meditation and some in life coaching. I sought answers and truths in spiritual books and in personal development courses, and although I felt I was making progress, the journey I was on came without an end in sight.

Stuck in seeking improvement

I guess you could say I was stuck in seeking. I was stuck thinking that there was something out there for me to find, something outside of myself that would show me what I needed within. Somehow I thought that the next course or spiritual book would show me the light I knew I had inside.

I was stuck thinking that a place or an experience would wake me up and show me the light. And although intellectually I knew it’s more about peeling layers than adding them, I could not switch from being a seeker to becoming a practitioner.

Until recently.

Something has shifted in me lately. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it feels like a huge wheel has turned in my life, I am back to square one and I get to start again, wiser and calmer. There is an inner peace present I have been seeking all my life, and although I love it, it confuses me.

Why now? What changed? Why can’t I tribute this calm light to any specific moment in my life? It seemed to creep in silently without bells and whistles. All of a sudden I just noticed I wasn’t seeking anymore. I am practicing.

Spiritual development in the rain and the wind

In my physical life it looks like I have stopped running, stopped searching and returned to the box so many are living in. I have left my ‘free’ island life and returned to corporate, but somehow everything is different. I am realizing that spiritual development needs to be actualized wherever we are, in the grittiness, among other people, in the rain and the wind, and not only in endless lazy days while enjoying sunsets over the ocean. But I needed to sit on an island for 3 years to realize that spiritual lightness needs to be grounded wherever I go and in whatever I do, including the corporate.

But about this peace within. For the first time there is no inner conflict. There is no panic, no fear, no other place to go to, no other version of me to be. I feel like my personality has finally made a pact with my soul, and the two are now working together. And it has nothing to do with where I am or what I am doing for a living.

Life itself is the purpose

There is no great corporate ambition, only sheer joy of working. There is no larger life goal I need to find, because life itself is the purpose, life itself is the goal, the way, the path. I don’t have to spend my days searching for meaning, I don’t have to find my passion, nor do I have to save the world. Meaning and passion are here, in everyday life, and I feel at peace. For the first time there is no tug of war within. I don’t have to strive towards anything, I’m free to enjoy life, to enjoy whatever it is I’m doing, as if none of it really matters, as if the only thing that really matters is choosing joy.

All of me is out, all of me is loved and I wish to be nothing more. What a strange feeling, contentment. It feels like I finally understand what this is all about. And it is so incredibly simple. It is light, it is love, it is beauty and it is peace.

I am the way, I am the path.