purposefulness

To be or not to be is the existential quest; however, unless there is meaning & purpose life becomes meaningless and there's an existential abyss, emptiness, despair. Many people seem to be groping for the purpose-driven life but much too often there's nothing except a vacuum, an inept caricature of what could be.
 
Ennui and boredom, therefore, develops till the person becomes inured and conditioned to the point of no return. The most fundamental, essential question, is to be or not to be! But, unfortunately, we do not generally aspire to this destiny; no, the time in which we live, it is inordinately more important "to have" instead of "to be," as it should be. In this sense we impoverish ourselves, short-sight ourselves, and create an intense paradox toward life, toward our destiny.
 
The true measure and goal should be an integral transformation in which everything is evolving and developing... and this more profound meaning is already there latently, in all things, in all beings, waiting to be worked, forged into complete fruition, to the optimum reaches... Waking up is really the seed of perfection, of personal and transpersonal realization - involution precedes evolution.
 
The core issue, then, is finding, discovering optimum growth and development in whatever task we may be involved with. Interestingly, Jungian psychology deals with man's evolutionary progress towards an integrated, tranformational consciousness (archetypes, individuation) - Carl Gustav Jung's process of transformational change is revitalizing, energizing, exemplarily humanistic and biophilic, in its scope and perspective, i.e., in integral research, methodology, and dynamic.
 
Likewise, bodhisattvas or walk-ins, are those who finally see the light and are metamorphosed integrally, holistically, in the humanistic sense of service to others. Life is continuous and it is, therfore, preeminently useful to see it in terms of how through successive lifetimes - each one of us is unraveling karmic ties that are necessary and essential which - sanguinely - are experiences needing to be positively disentangled.
 
 
 
 

I think, like you Bernie, that the 'American way of life' has tried (and done a very good job) to steer us towards having rather than being. We Americans do not know how to 'be'. We did as children, but much of it has been bled out of us as we have grown up. As adults jaded by excess or need, and having or want, now needing to find real purpose, we must learn how to 'be' all over again.
It is all so simple, but all so hard. We expect complex answers, puzzles to untangle when it is all right here, inside. We have everything that we need to be whole and live lives of purpose right here inside of our hearts. All we have to do is re-learn how to listen to that Still, Small Voice
with love . . .
sparrow
 

everything counts... ♥