Quotes about Purpose

The soul is awakened through service.

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

"Boast not of tomorrow, for you know not what any day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1).

Brethren, let us not boast of that which is not in our power. The Lord has placed the times and the years under His power and He disposes of them. Only God Himself alone knows whether tomorrow's day will number us among the living or the dead. Some have died on the eve of their marriage; again, others have descended into the grave on the eve of their coronation with a royal diadem. Therefore, let no one say that tomorrow will be for me the happiest day of my life; tomorrow, I enter into marriage! Or, tomorrow I will be crowned with a royal diadem! Or, tomorrow I am going to a great feast! Or, tomorrow a great gain is coming to me! O, let no one speak of the happiness of tomorrow's day. Behold, yet this night your soul may depart your body and tomorrow you will find yourself surrounded by black demons in the tollhouses [Mitarstvo]! And yet, even this night, a man can be separated from his relatives and friends, from wealth and honor, from the sun and the stars and find himself in a totally unknown company, in an unseen place and at an unexpected judgment.

Instead of boasting of tomorrow's day, it would be better to pray to God to "Give us this day our daily bread." Perhaps today's day may be our last day on earth. That is why it is better to spend this day in repentance for all our past days on earth rather than vainly fantasizing about tomorrow's day, about the day which perhaps will not dawn for us. Vain fantasizing about tomorrow's day cannot bring us any good, but repentance for one day with tears can save us from eternal fire.

O righteous Lord, burn up the insane vanity that is in us.

+To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.+

From Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nicolai Vilimirovich

Listen to what your higher wisdom has to say about how you can deepen your participation in the global shift--through personal healing, changing your worldview, or finding ways to help others and the environment. This is how you can both heal yourself and help humanity. At their deepest level, the two are joined and ready to awaken to a new world.

Somewhere in our search for reality we have passed something by, something important that we no longer find amid the bits and pieces of disassembled matter--something vital that we cannot build out of these parts. There is surely something else, some piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and that owes no homage to the sun.

Healing from our past is an essential aspect of expanding our sense of self and awakening our capacity to love. This shift often manifests as a change in the questions we've been asking ourselves. Instead of What do I need? we ask, How can I serve? Instead of What am I getting out of this? we start to ask, What can I bring to this situation to promote the highest possible outcome for everyone involved?

To embody a new paradigm of civilization - to learn to think like a planet in order to heal and nurture a planet - is not a typical hero's task.  It is more the task of a gardener.  The planet does not offer us challenges to be overcome to prove our worth or individuality; it presents us with a community to understand, a community with disparate needs and identities that are nonetheless intertwined in mutual dependencies.

 I think we each have a personal sweet spot as well.  It's the state of mind in which we experience the most joy and satisfaction in being ourselves.  And from that place of pleasure and joy in being ourselves, energy arises to flow out into our day bringing with it the depth and resonance of our own beingness, bringing with it blessing.

No psychological message is so open to question as that which tells us that we have nothing left to do or to give.

To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization.

Our purpose is simple as we who make it complex. 

And with the passing years, what had once seemed like a miracle or the luckiest of chances and which he had always promised himself he would never become enslaved by, has gradually become his sole reason to go on living.

Normal is:

1. Anything that makes us forget who we are and what we want; that way we can work in order to produce, reproduce, and earn money.

2. Setting out rules for waging war (the Geneva Convention).

3. Spending years studying at university only to find out at the end of it all that you're unemployable.

4. Working from nine till five every day at something that gives you no pleasure just so that, after thirty years, you can retire.

5. Retiring and discovering that you no longer have enough energy to enjoy life and dying a few years out of sheer boredom.

6. Using Botox.

7. Believing that power is much more important than money and that money is much more important than happiness.

8. Making fun of anyone who seeks happiness rather than money and accusing them of "lacking ambition."

9. Comparing objects like cars, houses, clothes, and defining life according to those comparisons, instead of trying to discover the real reason for being alive.

10. Never talking to strangers. Saying nasty things about the neighbors.

11. Believing that your parents are always right.

12. Getting married, having children, and staying together long after all love has died, saying that it's for the good of the children (who are, apparently, deaf to the constant rows).

12a. Criticizing anyone who tries to be different.

14. Waking up each morning to a hysterical alarm clock on the bedside table.

15. Believing absolutely everything that appears in print.

16. Wearing a scrap of colored cloth around your neck, even though it serves no useful purpose, but which answers to the name of "tie."

17. Never asking a direct question, even though the other person can guess what it is you want to know.

18. Keeping a smile on your lips even when you're on the verge of tears. Feeling sorry for those who show their feelings.

19. Believing that art is either worth a fortune or worth nothing at all.

20. Despising anything that was easy to achieve because if no sacrifice was involved, it obviously isn't worth having.

21. Following fashion trends, however ridiculous or uncomfortable.

22. Believing that all famous people have tons of money saved up.

23. Investing a lot of time and money in external beauty and caring little about internal beauty.

24. Using every means possible to show that, although you're just an ordinary human being, you're far above other mortals.

25. Never looking anyone in the eye when you're traveling on public transport, in case it's interpreted as a sign that you're trying to get off with them.

26. Standing facing the door in an elevator and pretending you're the only person there, no matter how crowded it is.

27. Never laughing too loudly in a restaurant no matter how good the joke.

28. In the northern hemisphere, always dressing according to the season: bare arms in spring (however cold it is) and woolen jacket in winter (however hot it is).

29. In the southern hemisphere, covering the Christmas tree with fake snow even though winter has nothing to do with the birth of Christ.

30. Assuming, as you grow older, that you're the guardian of the world's wisdom, even if you haven't necessarily lived enough to know what's right and wrong.

31. Going to a charity tea party and thinking that you've done your bit toward putting an end to social inequity in the world.

32. Eating three times a day even if you're not hungry.

33. Believing that other people are always better than you--better-looking, more capable, richer, more intelligent--and that it's very dangerous to step outside your own limits, so it's best to do nothing.

34. Using your car as a weapon and impenetrable armor.

35. Swearing when in heavy traffic.

36. Believing everything your child does wrong is entirely down to the company he or she keeps.

37. Marrying the first person who offers you a decent position in society. Love can wait.

38. Always saying, "I tried" when you didn't really try at all.

39. Postponing doing the really interesting things in life for later, when you don't have the energy.

40. Avoiding depression with large daily doses of television.

41. Believing that you can be sure of everything you've achieved.

42. Assuming that women don't like football and that men aren't intersted in home decorating and cooking.

43. Blaming the government for all the bad things that happen.

44. Thinking that being a good, decent, respectable person will mean that others will see you as weak, vulnerable, and easy to manipulate.

45. Being equally convinced that aggression and rudeness are synonymous with having a "powerful personality."

46. Being afraid of having an endoscopy (if you're a man) and giving birth (if you're a woman).

We might well believe that the law of universal gravitation whereby each physical reality attracts and is attracted to every other physical reality has its correspondence in the hidden or overt attraction of all human beings and all human societies to each other. This attraction takes place within a functional balance of tensions whereby each is sustained in its existence by all the others even as each sustains the others in existence. This seems to be demonstrated in the extensive and continuing efforts of humans to encounter each other and to establish a universal network of communication throughout the human order.

I, ever knowing the living beings
Who tread the Path and those who do not
In response to those who may be saved
Preach to them a variety of dharmas,
Each time having this thought:
'How may I cause the beings
To contrive to enter the Unexcelled Path
and quickly to perfect the Buddha-body?'

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticise others. Rather, we must criticise ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.

There are three types of people in the world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who stand around asking "What happened?"

I love Jesus, who said to us:
Heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were one word:

Wakeup.

I don't know quite how to say this.  I want to wake up.  I don't want to live half-assed anymore.

'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess.  'Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.'

How strange is the lot of us mortals!  Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it.  But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people - first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies are bound by the ties of sympathy.

Every life is precious. Every life is important. Every life has a purpose.

Expansion of Perspective, Unity of Purpose

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?

The purpose of our lives is happiness

Life is too meaningful to die.

I know what the world exists for, but I know not how it came into existence. I see the design, but not the designer. I understand the question, but not the questioner.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.