I Think Therefore I Am … Purposeful

In the second part of her semi-autobiographical book, Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert travels to India where she learns the devotion of her faith in the practice of yoga. During her three months of dedicated practice, Liz exposed more about herself, discovering her worth, potential, and validity. However, her journey in self-discovery subjected her, at times, to growing pains and circumstances that would convict her spirit and test her strength. For Liz, she underwent the bulk of her growing pains in refining her practice of yoga. Liz described this practice of devotion and how it affirmed her purpose in life, saying,

“Yoga is the effort to experience one’s divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you. True Yogis, from their seat of equipoise, see all this world as an equal manifestation of God’s creative energy- men, women, children, turnips, bedbugs, coral: it’s all God in disguise. But the Yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity, because only in a human form and only with a human mind can God-realization ever occur. The turnips, the bedbugs, the coral- they never get a chance to find out who they really are. But we do have that chance. ‘Our whole business therefore in this life,’ wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, ‘is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.’”

By mere virtue of being human, we each have significance, worth, and purpose. Because we are human, because we have the capacity to think, feel, dream, achieve, and inspire, our lives have meaning. In light of our humanity, we are powerful and impactful. It is what we choose to do with our power and impact, then, that will define the purpose of our lives. Until we believe in the power within us, in the purpose that is driving us, we will not see our lives lived to their fullest potential. For Liz, her trip to India summoned her to discover her purpose. As much as she tried tirelessly to force herself into a pure devotion of meditation, she could not arrive to a presence of self-awareness; she could not see who she ought to be. It was not until the moment she surrendered that she ultimately found herself. The same, in a sense, goes for us. We can try as relentlessly as we will to arrive to the people we want to be, to force ourselves to climb up the corporate ladder, to impress our family, to find the love of our lives, and to acquire whatever American dream we have reinvented for ourselves. But, until we believe in the purpose inherent in who we are, until we come to discover who we truly are, even attaining those aspirations will seem void and incomplete. While these dreams, aspirations, and habits that we create for ourselves may not be bad in and of themselves, they still will not lead us to realizing the purpose we wish to live out. So, instead of being driven by the dreams, ambitions, and ideals we wish to achieve, we should be driven by the people we believe to be. When we reorient our mindset so that we see our purpose and our worth first, we may begin to see the journey of achieving as an achievement in itself. For, when we come to believe in our worth, we will notice opportunities we may not have seen otherwise. When we are driven by our worth in this moment in time, rather than in any future time, we will find purpose in any circumstance. When we discover and believe in our worth, our purpose, and in the people we have come to be, we may not be easily faltered by disappointment, discouragement, tragedy, heartbreak, or failure. Instead, in light of our purpose, and in realizing that we are being refined in each moment that we live, we will hold fast to our worth and we will believe in our inherent power to use that worth to influence the people, places, and situations around us. You may have found yourself asking, “What do I need in my life to find purpose?”, “Who do I need to become in order to be worthy?” When we assure ourselves of our inherent worth, when we believe in the power within us, and when our eyes are opened to all that we are, those questions become irrelevant. Instead, we may find ourselves asking, “According to my worth, what can I make of this moment?” “Because of my purpose, what will I do with this instance, with this year, with this life?” Our purpose, then, does not become something that defines us, but it remains something that continually enlightens us. So, instead of waiting to arrive to our destiny, we may use our own power and the belief we have in our purpose to redefine our destiny. In the power of our conviction, we may, just then, ask ourselves: “What is my purpose? And, how can I use my purpose to influence the way I live?”