How Do We Discover Our Transcendental Purpose?
This blog revolves around a question for which I do not have an answer! (Maybe you can help me?) One of my Facebook contacts (Nikhil Kripalani) just published a quote by Patanjali that states:
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
I think this is an absolutely wonderful quote. (It sounds a lot like the one attributed to Goethe, doesn’t it?) This is why I have always admired (and to be honest envied) people who have found–or just seem to be born knowing–what their great purpose is.
One man I know–Ettore de Conciliis–is a superb artist in Italy. Ettore was born knowing he was an artist and has spent a lifetime just getting better and better at it.
My two biggest heroes are Greg Mortenson and Muhammad Yunus. Greg is the American author of two amazing books (Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools) that detail his successful efforts to build schools for girls throughout the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. About 16 years ago, he just happened to stumble into the Pakistani village of Korphe after a failed attempt at climbing a mountain and ended up promising to return and build the people a school.
Muhammad is the Bangladeshi (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) who started the microcredit movement that has now moved thousands of people (mainly women and children) out of poverty around the world. Thirty some years ago, Muhammad just happened to loan a few dollars out of his pocket to a poverty-stricken group of women who wanted to start their own business. They paid the loan back with interest, and a worldwide movement began!
In other words, both of these men “accidentally” discovered their life’s mission and look where it has led them!
What about those of us who aren’t sure what we born to do? Who struggle throughout our lives to find the big “What”? How do we find a purpose that so inspires us that we transcend our limitations and literally move mountains, too?