How to discover you Life Purpose

[Original Poster]

This is a very simple exercise I read about Here. Bascally you just open word processor and write the question "What is my purpose in life?" and then just type the first answer you think of and keep going until you type the answer that makes you cry. There may be certain things you type that make you swell up a little, these are close. It won't be easy for everyone, some can find it in about 20 minutes, others have a lot of preconceptions to get through first. Your life purpose will come from somewhere besides your head and it won't come until you can clear it of all your old notions. At a certain point you'll want to give up, this is normal, you need to just keep going, feel free to take breaks to refocus your mind on what your trying to answer, and don't get discouraged if you find yourself typing the same stuff over and over again.

[pj]

Interesting exercise. I don't even need to write to get there. The answer to that question surrounds me. It is my family, which includes all those I care for and provide for. When I write music, I know something is "real" when it either gives me chills or chokes me up. Precious few of the things I create can do it, but that is always the goal.

[Neruo]

Also, if you want to understand what electrons are made of, you just have to open word, type "what particles are electrons made of". Then, just type whatever comes in your head, until you find an answer that makes you cry. Then write a scientific report about it, you might even win some cool award, because it is totally true what you wrote down.

[Rainman]

If someone really has to spell out to you that your post does not apply to what Omnius was saying, which deals with (uh oh, big word here) psychology, then I am really disappointed. Yet amused.

[♥Mark]

Also, if you want to understand what electrons are made of, you just have to open word, type "what particles are electrons made of". Then, just type whatever comes in your head, until you find an answer that makes you cry. Then write a scientific report about it, you might even win some cool award, because it is totally true what you wrote down. I'm going to have to try that some time.

[Xaqaria]

I'm going to have to try that some time. The only thing worse than a dumbass troll is a baby dumbass troll that looks up to him.

[Serkat]

Steve Pavlina does have quite a lot of very good content but I do think that for execises like these to work you actually have to have reached a certain level of psychological health and maturity. Certain requirements need to be met. For example, a high level of consciousness, a good connection to the unconscious and a very accepting attitude towards everything you discover about yourself. You can't just pull such things out of a hat. Steve himself uses journaling, meditation, hypnosis and various psychological techniques in self-analysis. He has decent psychological knowledge, he's physically and mentally healthy, he has good knowledge about himself and can maintain a high level of concentration due to practice. If you are such a person, then it is entirely possible to sit down for 20-30 minutes and make yourself cry by pondering a philosophical question. If you are not, then you should probably work on the basics of psychological health first before you go all the way to the core of your life.

[M-Cat]

People should stop linking to that Pavlina nonsense.

[Alban]

The only thing worse than a dumbass troll is a baby dumbass troll that looks up to him. Haa Haa *Nelson from the Simpsons voice*

[♥Mark]

The only thing worse than a dumbass troll is a baby dumbass troll that looks up to him. Mmmm, food.

[Belisarius]

Ask yourself, "Why would I choose to be born?" and the answer is your purpose in life.

[Original Poster]

Hey... it worked for me.

[Never]

Neruo may be close-minded and annoying to more lateral thinkers, but he is certainly not a dumbass.

[Replicon]

Hey... it worked for me. Are you sure? I think assuming that something is your purpose because writing it down made you cry is kind of dangerous. Let's say you just got dumped by a girl you really cared about, and are sensitive about it. When you write down her name, you might cry. Do you mean to say that that's your purpose in life? Also, it seems like at different stages of your life, you might cry about different things. Can there be more than one purpose? And if so, should they be discovered before you're ready? And what if your actual purpose is not something that you currently understand? Typing it out won't make you cry, and so you will skip over it. It's an interesting exercise, but I think you should take the results with a giant grain of salt (the kind you need to grind before putting it into food). Omnius, I'm curious though: what is the purpose you found through this exercise, if you don't mind sharing?

[Original Poster]

Yeah I am sure that it couldn't have been anything that came from my mind or my mental associations.

[Xaqaria]

Neruo may be close-minded and annoying to more lateral thinkers, but he is certainly not a dumbass. I disagree.

[♥Mark]

The purpose of life is to discover the purpose of life. You may now die.

[Neruo]

Neruo may be close-minded and annoying to more lateral thinkers, but he is certainly not a dumbass. Errreee, thanks! : ) I disagree. Well, at least I am not as close-minded, annoying and stupid as you tend to be (or maybe even permanently are) , dear sir. - Also, I wonder, would I be less 'close-minded' if I thought with the same certainty some people here believe in their psychic powers, that aliens really did landed in roswell, and that they assassinated JFK? I find it extremely amusing that the term 'close-minded' has been high jacked by certain people to depict everyone that does not find the 'proof' they present about their supernatural-hard-to-believe-in-story convincing. What is the definition of close-minded? It seems the definition of 'open-minded', seeing what kind of people label other people as 'close-minded', mean "to believe in something furiously, while you are having a hard time convincing scientists and rational people, probably due to lack of proper proof". At least, I don't really see what makes me close-minded. Is it the fact that I don't just believe everything other people think, unless they provide me with proper proof, that if possible could be empirically tested? How does that make someone close-minded? Does it mean I couldn't believe ghosts exist if one came to me, and told me where his hidden treasure was, something I could never know about? No it doesn't. Have those who use the word ever even thought about what it implies?

[Never]

The reason I called you close-minded towards lateral thinking (quite a stupid over-generalization I admit) was because this thread is entirely subjective; focusing really on finding what makes one "happy" in my best guess, though I did not click the link or care to try this. You made it entirely literal and used an example that doesn't really apply IMO. I enjoy logic and reason over nonsense, trust me, but things such as these are personal explorations of emotions and such; not attempts to prove anything, and certainly nothing as dangerous as religion and other ridiculous belief systems that have crushed our chance to have a worthwhile existence.

[Neruo]

The reason I called you close-minded towards lateral thinking (quite a stupid over-generalization I admit) was because this thread is entirely subjective; focusing really on finding what makes one "happy" in my best guess, though I did not click the link or care to try this. You made it entirely literal and used an example that doesn't really apply IMO. I enjoy logic and reason over nonsense, trust me, but things such as these are personal explorations of emotions and such; not attempts to prove anything, and certainly nothing as dangerous as religion and other ridiculous belief systems that have crushed our chance to have a worthwhile existence. I was actually just making a joke by ridiculing as -in my opinion- extremely silly way to, purely emotional, find "the meaning of (your) life". Especially since the ancient question "the meaning of life" doesn't apply to subjective emotions, but seeks some Higher goal. Thus, pretty confusing. Also, you actually aren't one of 'those' people that I find extremely hypocritically when they call someone close-minded. You are just that Never-dude.

[Rainman]

Not meaning of life. Purpose of life. As in, what are you supposed to do with your life. I don't find that confusing at all. It's completely internal, and psychological.

[Xaqaria]

Errreee, thanks! : ) Well, at least I am not as close-minded, annoying and stupid as you tend to be (or maybe even permanently are) , dear sir. - Also, I wonder, would I be less 'close-minded' if I thought with the same certainty some people here believe in their psychic powers, that aliens really did landed in roswell, and that they assassinated JFK? I find it extremely amusing that the term 'close-minded' has been high jacked by certain people to depict everyone that does not find the 'proof' they present about their supernatural-hard-to-believe-in-story convincing. What is the definition of close-minded? It seems the definition of 'open-minded', seeing what kind of people label other people as 'close-minded', mean "to believe in something furiously, while you are having a hard time convincing scientists and rational people, probably due to lack of proper proof". At least, I don't really see what makes me close-minded. Is it the fact that I don't just believe everything other people think, unless they provide me with proper proof, that if possible could be empirically tested? How does that make someone close-minded? Does it mean I couldn't believe ghosts exist if one came to me, and told me where his hidden treasure was, something I could never know about? No it doesn't. Have those who use the word ever even thought about what it implies? If you'll notice Neruo, I wasn't calling you close minded; Never was. I was calling you a dumbass.

[Original Poster]

The purpose of this exercise is to strip away the emotional baggage that would subjectify what we know is objectrive to ourselves personally. That is, I know anyone could deny my purpose, quite easily. However, after a good 3 hours of wanting to give up but continually typing away, I found my brain had run out of emotion. I was drained, both intellectually and emotionally, focused on some stupid exercise that had lost all meaning. I had taken like 20 breaks trying to refocus on the meaning of the question but it was all in futility, I felt like I was involved in some retarded exercise that served no higher purpose at all by that time, but I kept going, and it was not long after I hit that conclusion that I just typed it out like it was the most obvious thing in the world. You can choose to believe you have a spirit, or not. You can believe your spirit was shoved into this universe based on the state it was in, in whatever previous plane of existence you were in, or you can believe we were all thrust meaninglessly and randomly into our current positions with nothing standard, nothing predating us except what we make ourselves. Both are true to an extent. The nature of truth is contradictory and illogical to a mind that is wrapped up in the material world. They will always be able to argue against spirituality but in folly because spiritualists realize the human language is too limited to find any resolute understanding through argument alone. The nature of the divine must be felt, before that it is only faith and speculation, two things that are virtuallity meaningless in this universe. So I can argue that "I felt my soul" or something but it doesn't matter, to you I could be misinterpreting it as some psychological thing. There is nothing I can say to convince anyone of spirituality, the thing that turned me from atheism was an unwillingness to accept the universe as an uncaring, desolate, arbitrary existence. I thought it had to be here for a reason, and so I researched NDEs, I researched our myths, the origins of our myths, and basically the origins of most of our religions and where all the dogmas came from. It didn't take me very long to see how certain things appeared contradictory and to realize their true meaning. I don't pretend to have felt any divinity because I only started insight meditation months ago and it would probably take me years to even get a sense of existence beyond the physical universe. I might say that if anyone who resolutely believed there is nothing beyond only researched a little with an open mind your opinion would change quickly but at the end of the day you believe what you want to believe. And faithfully, I do want to believe I have a purpose, and I can never say that it's really my purppose or not, but it feels like it. EDIT: Put more concisely, I don't understand one thing about this exercise but for some reason I know how it works. Knowing things and understanding things are very, very different, though.