The Engaged Purpose

The True Source of Human Creative Power

Our world is a dynamic creative endeavor in which we are part and parcel of the creative impulse of the universe, part and parcel of the mind of God. To know ourselves as that impulse is to find the power of our purpose.

Introduction

Humans are often in a great confounding confusion about what we are supposed to be doing. We know we should be choosing our actions but we’re not sure why or to what purpose. We are often just following along, step-by-step, through some established pattern. We often joke that we will soon figure out what we are going to do when we grow up, but for the most part, we don't really think that will happen. We spend much of our lives just following out a track we have started down: school, family, a particular job, a particular society and culture. We just follow along the path begun. At other times, we allow ourselves to be caught up in what is occupying others around us, their concerns and interests. Their momentum picks us up, and before we know, we have spent a decade in their shadow.

But there are times in our lives when we have lost the momentum of our previous choices. We need to make a new choice and we find ourselves at a loss, without guidance. We find we do not have a basic understanding of the intent of our lives. Most of us who live in a secular, scientific world have little meaningful guidance on our choices. This comes from a primary flaw in our understanding of our relationship to the cosmos, which is, simply, who we are and what it is we are doing. Even those of us on a religious path don't always experience guidance when it comes to secular occupations, what to actually do in the world, as if our daily activities were not a religious or spiritual matter. We are missing the tools or understanding we need to find our purpose---a basis on which to make choices.

Humans on the planet today are the most advanced representatives of our species, so how can we be in such a pickle? It's almost a cosmic joke. The gods and goddesses up in heaven must be having a great laugh at our predicament. We have this beautiful planet and tremendous capability, but we don't know why. Most of us don't have even a basic model for why the world is evolving and what our part of that process is. We're like a painter lost in a rainbow complaining about his lack of colors. If we truly understood the cosmic, universal picture, many of us would be chagrined with some of our daily worries and concerns.

Many of us are aware enough to realize that we want to do better, want to know more, want our lives to be of value to ourselves at least, and maybe we even want to create value for others as well. We subtly know that there is a great project afoot, and we'd like to get in on it, to participate. So what is life about? What's the point? How should we choose?

Here is the point. Or at least, here is a model of the world we can use to find our way to our personal purpose and the great power inherent in that.

The Universe as Creative Expression

The universe is a creative expression. It is a joyful experiment in what can be created. What dazzling intricacy can be caused to arise into being as the universe? We, the human species, are the newest, most powerful artistic creative force. The universe is asking: How can we consciously experience and participate in the arising of a beautiful living complexity? And, for us, the challenge is: what can we ourselves create of this grand opportunity?

Foremost, it is wondrous to be alive in the universe. Life is a method and an expression, a tool and a result. Allowing and enabling life to continue is part of the art. For humans to participate we need to be alive and this determines part of the answer to our daily choices. We need to do what is required to support life for our families, our communities, the world, and ourselves in general. Our bodies require safety, water, food, rest, some clothing, some shelter, and we need to do what is necessary to provide that. Our communities require our participation and support for them to thrive. We have to learn to live together, and finding ways to live in very large complex societies is clearly a challenge for us these days, something we need to better understand and evolve. The planet itself doesn't seem to require us for its life and its creativity to thrive, except that as we lack understanding about the meaning of it all we threaten our very own presence on the planet as well as all other species. A new understanding of our relationship to our world is critical. For all of these challenges we need to learn, think, act, teach, lead, follow, and express---all critical ways of supporting the evolution of life. Any of these approaches can form the basis of our life's work above and beyond the need to maintain our individual life, for all can be used to further the creative expression that is our universe. We only need to discover which part of this process is particularly ours.

Additionally, there is something more expansive about what the cosmos is attempting to create here than just to keep life ongoing. The universe has evolved itself into a vast array of differentiated parts: forms, structures, living entities, individuals. There is, seemingly, an infinite intention to generate increasing complexity and daring, intricate dependencies into an artful web of creation. In creating differentiation, what lovely and elaborate structure can we create of matter, life, individuals, communities, and ecologies? What kinds of elegant and efficient creations can we evolve as culture, economies, lifestyles, art, music, theatre, science, and technology? And with our conscious participation, what inspired intentions can we cause to arise in the world? The movement of the arising universe is like a river of many currents flowing into the future with astounding momentum and potential. Our world is a dynamic creative endeavor in which we are part and parcel of the creative impulse of the universe, part and parcel of the mind of God. To know ourselves as that impulse is to find the power of our purpose.

Lost in Self Preservation

Most humans are lost in the first challenge, maintaining their physical selves. In some cultures in the world, this is the only meaningful focus: to obtain the minimum amount of safety, water, food, shelter, and community. These must be the focus for life to continue. But even those of us with far more than the minimums continue to focus solely on maintaining or increasing our access to ever more safety, water, food, shelter, and goods in ever more refined states, as if these things were the primary goal instead of merely the necessities to sustain life. It does not support the creative growth of the planet for resources to be used for inordinate development of our personal fortunes in those things that are merely in service of the life force and the creative endeavor. In fact, those of us in the industrialized world, instead of contributing, are destroying the creation and its resources. The resources of the planet, including our personal bodies, minds, and energy, are here to take part in the creative endeavor of the planet, the means to an end and not solely a result.

Many of our resources and most of our attention is caught in self-preservation without establishing why we are to be preserved. That is, what is the purpose of our life? For if we do not find our contribution to the creative process on the planet, then we are not realizing our intent in participation. We are missing the point. And, in truth, we are not going to be fully realized until we find the power generated by engaging in our true purpose. Because the momentum of that purpose is the freshening current that the universe has prepared for us to experience, and nothing will ever exceed that grand possibility in our lives.

For it is not about each of us as individuals, but about the creative endeavor as a whole. While this seems frightening to the self who is habitually worrying about staying alive and maintaining its stuff, to finally understand this is truly liberating. If we are liberated from the tyranny of fear, self-concern, and the small personal view, and fully engaged by the cosmic creation, we can ask the big questions: what would we do if our goal is to contribute to the creation of a wonderful, beautiful, bountiful world? In all seriousness, we can ask: what is it we should be doing to live the most joyful and creative life we can imagine? What engages our hearts in the creative impulse? For where and when we are fully engaged by our purpose, we are in the current of the universal creative impulse, and that is the place of potency. And wherever that is for us will the creative stance from which we can make the most of our efforts to affect the world.

If we accept this model of the world and our place in it, choosing what is to be done is in part clarified. First, we should find the creative current that we in particular can ride in this lifetime. Second, we should enable (and not destroy) life and its processes wherever we can (human life, the life of the planet, and the lives of all other creatures on the planet). And we must measure, with our very best intentions, one thing against another with the view to the creativity of the planet as a whole. Third, we should stay alive, that is, within reason do what it takes to remain as a productive part of the creative force of the universe. While this all sounds very daunting, in execution we will find that it simplifies our choices, and that in aligning ourselves with the creative impulse of the universe we will find our source of pure inspiration and power.

Discovering Purpose with Power

Sometimes we think of purpose as an idea that we can adopt. Purpose implies an intention or goal that we set before ourselves to keep in view while we work towards it. This assumes that we know what the purpose is. Defining or discovering the purpose itself is less straightforward, for we want to know that our purpose and our efforts can garner enough power to effect a change in the potential of the world, allowing our goals or intentions to be realized. The found, chosen, or developed purpose will not just be an idea or, worse yet, someone else's idea. We cannot just adopt someone else's purpose, or even an acceptable "good" purpose. In this context, true purpose is not an idea that we can adopt. True purpose arises from the original creative impulse of our lives.

What does that mean? The world is arising moment by moment from its own creative potential. And we, as a part of the world, also have creative potential that includes those things that we are meant to engage with. Since it is arising from the potential of our lives, we don't have to create it or invent it. We merely have to allow it to arise, recognize it, and then choose it. How will we recognize it? It will arise in our inclinations, events, and opportunities; it will arise in people and places; and it will arise in every day activities. And when these opportunities and inclinations surge into a compelling current, it will carry us into the realization of our purpose. We will have caught the mainstream of our lives, and then we continually choose to stay in the current flowing with the opportunities and power inherent in that.

Individuals who do this, no matter what particular thing they are doing, are leveraging their efforts in the world with the vast potential of the original creative impulse. You see, everything needs to be done by someone. It doesn't matter what we are doing in any other measure, except that we are finding that creative effort meant for us and our time. In that effort, we will know full engagement with the creative impulse and our efforts will be magnified by the fact that we caught the current. Our purpose will reflect our true interests, capabilities, and situations and we will experience it as a powerful and meaningful life.

Would the world be better off if Bach had decided that farming was more important than writing music? Not likely. His power in the world arose directly from his acceptance of his creative impulse. Would the world be a better place if Gandhi had decided to take on the traditional role of lawyer and worked solely within the legal system of India? No, he followed his inclinations into a powerful current of change. Would the world be better off if Sam struggles to get his MBA and work in finance because he thinks it will be more lucrative, instead of following his love of mechanics and automobiles into a local repair business, where he can be a leader in his community? No, not necessarily. The creative power of the world requires that we find our special occupation---not necessarily an occupation that any given personal or societal "idea" tells us would be good.

To Create the World Anew

Sometimes, these days especially, we see that the world is not as we would like it to be. Many of us would not have chosen this state of the planet to materialize. We think we need to “fix” the world and that we need to take on an aggressive project to battle those people and institutions that we feel are creating the catastrophes we see arising in our lives. We all see the enemies in different shadows, and we end up working at cross-purposes. This creates a particular stance towards our current world and our future, a stance that acknowledges and reinforces the very things we want to neutralize. Our efforts and our aim are diluted and distracted by our focus on what is wrong, and our attention to attacking that. Instead, we must be guided by what it is we want to create, which may starkly contrast with what currently is. We must find the most direct path to the next creative goal, which may not be through a destruction of what is and may be disabled by resistance to what we are experiencing. The world as it exists is what arose from the creative potential of the cosmos itself. What we do now will generate new potential for what happens next.

To create a new beginning, we need to all find the most powerful expression of our talents, interests, and skills, our part of the creative impulse that will arise most undeniably and directly only through us. But it will arise fully only if we recognize it, surrender to it, and choose it. And we consistently choose it again, and we act upon it with all the power and creativity we can muster. A engaged purpose arising in the world is the most influential expression of a human being. When we hook our selves into this force we can accomplish miracles. We are responsible for our choices and our actions in every moment, for it is those choices and actions from each of us that emerge as the next version of our world. Powerful people have a strong vision of what they are creating. They have found their particular creative effort and they focus on their vision of the future containing the realization of their creative work. They choose in every moment to be the source of that future with their actions.

Note that they are creating the world anew, not saving it, and that distinction gives them more power, because the creative act carries with it a proper stance that leverages the power of the universe. While “fixing” assumes that something is wrong and puts one into a state of resistance to that creative force. The goal can be the same, but the power of the stance is very different.

In a creative endeavor, it is normal that things might not yet be right; that we have something else to do, somewhere else to go with this creation. We don't have to be dismayed or discouraged at the state of things for this is our journey. They are what they are as we have created them together. But we also don't have to be satisfied. We can envision a new expression of the world and ourselves, and then, and this is the big challenge, we have to choose to participate in that evolution.

To Surrender

So if the goal is to allow the creative power of the cosmos to be expressed most effectively through us, how do we choose to do that? First, we must understand that learning to choose is part of the creative process that we are exploring. It is our life's work to evolve a basis for choosing and then to test it. It is somewhat an experimental process for each of us, finding out what works. We have to choose again and again, and measure against our results. The choices we make are our destiny and our legacy to the world and they all contribute to the evolving future. They are, in every sense of the word, our responsibility.

Second, we choose to surrender to the potential that is arising around us, which turns out to be a compelling and entrancing orientation to life. In surrender we give up any small personal ideas about our lives, and engage with the momentum of our creative inspiration. To surrender we carefully observe and experience what is arising in our lives sensing what those things mean and how they engage with our talents, inclinations, and skills. Then we choose each action with that engagement in mind. Our lives are arising from their very own potential, from the original creative impulse that has brought us into the world, some would say, from God. Our lives as they arise carry their own logic, their own meaning, and their own methods of expression. These things are inherent in the life we are living and to surrender is to be still and see what our life force is expressing, and then to choose to engage with that expression as the basis of all our actions no matter what. In this way life generates its own powerful momentum and we find our place in the current. We are then a realization of the creative process of the universe.

Surrender takes practice. It requires that we experience our life as a part of the great creative enterprise of the all, and we allow our desire to participate in that adventure to override any ideas of our lesser selves. Surrender will provide us access to inspiration and creative potency that otherwise we could never find. We will learn to live in a state of not knowing what will happen next, but wanting to explore every nuance of the arising life force, as if we are catching the main current of a river and going powerfully with the flow into whatever experience it encounters. Every bend, every eddy, every drop is the glory of the result. It is a creative adventure, and not knowing the end result is part of the art of creativity, part of the practice of discovery.

So, we go forth to engage our purpose, not to save the world but to create it anew, to be joyous, enjoining, fearless, and awake; to see in every moment, from what we have attempted in our beautiful world, what happens next. To be fully engaged in this way is to find true power and joy in our lives and experience our purpose in the creative endeavor that is our world. To be engaged is to live up to the responsibility for our choices in every moment, and to be joyously experiencing what becomes of our ongoing endeavor to express the intent of the universe anew.