Find Your Purpose, Free Your Ego: Stop Reacting, Start Responding

Once we understand that focusing on our own purpose in life is the most important task we have, we can live up to our full potential. That purpose may be different for every one of us and it shouldn’t matter to anybody else. Somebody may be good at gardening, another may be good at plumbing, another may be good at teaching pottery. The list is endless. Finding our purpose in life and sticking to it to the exclusion of everything else is going to heal us, fulfil us and make us happy. Keeping grudges and pondering on the raw feelings of inner wounds is a waste of consciousness resources as we will heal on our own time, once we have learned our lessons. Thinking about the people who hurt us or how we get back at them doesn't lead to healing. Instead, we become more aggravated, more polarized and hurt more. Justice is not revenge and neither is up to us. Not thinking about these people isn't easier compared to thinking about them, but this conscious practice will yield its rewards in time. We are all imperfect characters interacting with each other in imperfect settings on imperfect information. That's all. Consciously withdrawing from polarization is what will bring us peace. And if all people would do that, it would bring peace to humanity. Following our passions in life is automatically elevating us above all the chaos around us, that’s affecting all of us, to the degree that we allow it. Let’s remember again, that events in life are neutral. The more we immerse ourselves into these events, we can either learn from them or allow them to torment us.

Let’s examine our reactions to such events, specifically those events that occur within relationships, which are more prone to create suffering. Typically, we react to those events and don’t respond to them. Our ego feels betrayed and hurt, even if we believe that we are selfless and that we are guided by our true Self. The result is more suffering. You might have noticed that this is no rocket science. I am just presenting what all of us have felt in our lives. However, what if I told you, that there is a way to avoid this type of suffering altogether? There would be no hurting each other, no blame assigned and no hard feelings wearing us down. You might have guessed how to do that. The solution is obvious. We need to train our ego, however strong or weak it is, to release its boundaries as much as possible, short of taken advantage of or physically assaulted. If there are no boundaries they cannot be violated. You might object at this point, and say that if we have no boundaries, we might become easy prey for others who perhaps want to exploit or attack us. True, but I chose my words carefully. I said we need to train the ego to release its boundaries. These boundaries belong to our limited self. Our true Self, that infinite, luminous being that we are, has no boundaries. It is infinite. It commands respect without offense and radiates sovereignty without threat. Think about it. Imagine, when you are truly happy, following your passions in life, does your ego feel intimidated, offended or threatened? No. You simply brush aside any effects that a potential negative event has on you and focus on the lessons it conveys – that is if you can manage to stay cool and not polarize. If you do, then your ego takes over. If your ego is in charge, your limited self can be hurt. If your true Self is in charge your ego cannot be hurt. It might sound idealistic, but it is true, nonetheless. I dare you to test this on yourselves and prove me wrong.

You might ask now, how do we practically stay in that state of being? How do we continue to be our true Self and cease to be our limited self? Good question. Everybody must find their own way. Myself, I prefer meditation to take off the edge of the pain that my ego feels, question myself how this happened, why it happened and how I can revert to my positive state of being. After meditation I follow my passion, which is my purpose in this life.

Today, I heard something on YouTube from a content creator I follow. He said, some souls were born to make mistakes, suffer for them and then heal themselves and, in the process, heal others. It was something that surprised me, because that’s exactly what I am doing now. I am sharing my own experiences, so that others may learn from them and heal as well. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I will happily share with everybody those answers that helped me overcome my own suffering, if they want to hear them and integrate the essence of those answers into their lives.

Being able to consciously learn life lessons leads to sovereignty, which is easily recognizable. It is based on compassion and understanding. If we understand our situations, we can avoid reactions and choose to respond instead. If we tear down our own ego’s boundaries we develop compassion for others, who still uphold their own ego-based boundaries. This will hopefully disarm their potential aggression towards us. If not, then our true Self will guide us instantly on how to sustain our self-preservation, not through reaction but through response. Reaction is like using a sledgehammer – it applies brute force; response is like using a claw hammer or a ball peen hammer, which are designed for tasks that require finesse rather than brute force. Reaction is absolute. Response is tempered and shows moderation and self-restraint. If wielded properly, it imbues fear and hesitation in our fellow humans who haven’t evolved enough spiritually. In those who are more advanced on the spiritual path, it will evoke joyful recognition of a kindred spirit, generating respect.

Therefore, it is imperative to cultivate our ability to understand our selves and others in any situation, avoid reacting and prefer responding in all situations of our lives – even in dangerous ones, where our lives may be in danger. Responding appropriately in all situations is what elevates our state of being. It may determine whether we create karma or not, and potentially whether we live or die. Let’s not forget, that the more we advance on the spiritual path, the more challenges we face – both in intensity and in numbers. Yes, I agree. Life can be harsh sometimes, but let’s remember that we ourselves set those challenges for ourselves. We can’t blame life in general, as if it is something tangible that we can accuse or blame. Life is the environment of our consciousness projection. It is not alive itself, much like the stage in a movie is not alive.

These insights naturally seem to distance ourselves from others and the effects that life exerts on us. And for good reason. Our insights and conclusions from experiencing life transform us. We constantly evolve, either consciously or unconsciously. Let us strive to evolve gracefully and avoid the pain of suffering.

Naturally, after we understand that nothing is more important than consciousness evolution, we tend to focus on inner work, to achieve just that. In a relationship it is also having the effect of keeping ourselves from burdening others with finding solutions to our own issues and challenges. This must become our prime concern in any relationship. It doesn’t matter whether it is romantic in nature or if it is a business relationship. Keeping our fellow humans insulated from the work we perform to resolve our own issues, to overcome our own challenges and to make our own efforts to change for the better, might be the most insightful gift we can bestow on them. That doesn’t mean that we gaslight them or shower them with white lies to create the impression that everything is perfect in our lives… It is not. It just means that we own our issues and our challenges and root the efforts we make to overcome them, in honesty and integrity. It means that we respect our own selves as well as our fellow humans enough to refuse burdening them with matters that are our own responsibility to address. This process fosters accountability. Finally, it means that we are honest with ourselves and have no inhibitions or restraints when it comes to asking for help if we really need it. We ask for enough help to advance on our path and overcome stagnation. We don’t ask for other human beings to fix our own issues. It is not their job to fix us, as much as it is not our job to fix them. The reason for all this is rather obvious. We don’t want to bother our fellow humans with our own issues, so that they may be more clear-headed in addressing their own issues, without worrying about other people’s issues. This becomes even more important the more personal the relationship is. A spouse, a sibling, a parent, a child or a friend will typically express a much more loving interest in our issues and challenges compared to others. They are prone to worry about us more than anybody else.

Continuously understanding our situation objectively and without illusion and self-deception is something that most of us don’t know how to achieve. Believing that we have the situation well in hand, doesn’t mean that it really is. And believing that we are at the precipice of imminent disaster is probably not true as well.

So, what can we do to obtain objectivity? The conditioned mind is not helping. It can interfere in our thought processes as anything from a distraction to a nuisance, keeping us further from perceiving reality objectively. The only thing that can help here is to pause and recollect. Stillness has a magical way to center us. It can build a virtual wall around our core being, impervious to the conditioned mind, if we allow ourselves to surrender to it over the objections of the conditioned mind. If we cannot bring ourselves to surrender to it, then we will just increase our suffering. Stillness is impartial. It will either allow the conditioned mind or the Heart to rule our state of being – not both.

Once we achieve stillness in the Heart, where we are nurtured and supported, regardless of the chaos in the external world that burdens our limited self, we can distance ourselves from that chaos. Distance creates objectivity. The physical body reacts to the stress that’s created by the conditioned mind, reacting to the chaos of the external world. When something negative happens, we feel bad, and our bodies immediately fill with cortisol to confront a potential threat to the existence of the ego. That threat can be mental, emotional or physical. This confrontation takes place with brute force if necessary. We are primed to react. When something positive happens, we feel relaxed and content. We have a broad range of options to choose our next steps from. We are primed to respond.

It is understandable, that all this might be hard to swallow, the way I present it. We can’t remember every little detail that may be helpful in walking our path in life. We can’t regulate our life straining further our burdened mind. Fortunately, we don’t have to. The only thing that matters is following our passions in life. It is a complete consciousness evolution toolkit to reset our life and place it on a more solid, more positive track. Purpose has a miraculous way of dealing with the chaos affecting the conditioned mind. It simply bypasses it, and deactivates it, thus offering us a quality of life that we never had. We don’t have to remember to distance ourselves from the issues that aggravate us. Following our purpose will do that. We don’t have to go into stillness to allow our Heart to push away the conditioned mind. Following our purpose will not allow the presence of a conditioned mind. We don’t have to remember to respond to life’s situations, instead of reacting to them. Following our purpose will gift us with a state of being that will make every one of us see the world as our oyster, with abundant choices to respond with. It is that simple. It is that liberating. And like everything worthwhile in life, it is neither for the timid, nor for the idle.