In the West, many of us have taken on finding our life’s purpose as if it’s our most important assignment.
We can spend years wondering what we are meant to do, what contribution is uniquely ours, and whether we are living the life we came here to live. We can attach purpose to our work, our relationships, our families, or the roles we inhabit. And when those circumstances change, we can feel as though our purpose has changed or even disappeared.

Yet whatever roles we inhabit, we are already putting something forth. In every conversation, every decision, every encounter, we are participating in life. There is always something moving through us and taking form.

During my years as a student at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, we spent our entire fourth year exploring the energetic dimension of intention. It was my favorite year. I remember thinking, We should have learned this at the beginning! It was so fundamental, so useful to the actual living of life.

I felt as though I had discovered a secret to living a fulfilled life.

Barbara taught me to understand intention as “the state of my purpose at any given moment.”
That changed something for me.

Purpose was no longer only something out in front of me that I needed to discover or fulfill. I could experience the state of my purpose directly, right now.

I later became a teacher at the school, teaching fourth-year students and continuing to deepen into this discovery.

Purpose gives direction to our participation. Intention reveals the state of that participation in the moment.

I may have a sincere purpose of connecting with someone. Yet as we speak, something unsettles me. I begin preparing my response, explaining myself inwardly, defending a position. I still want connection, but another purpose has entered: protecting myself.

My intention has become divided.

Learning to recognize this was profoundly freeing. I began to discern what I actually needed in order to serve my purpose and allow what wanted to be brought forth. There was a difference between receiving the support that allowed me to be fully present and reaching for something because I felt inadequate, threatened, or incomplete.

That difference was visceral.

When intention and purpose are fully aligned, you can feel the flow of heaven and earth running through effortlessly in the moment. There is groundedness, aliveness, and an unmistakable sense of presence.

It is the experience of I AM HERE.

Not the personality of the ego, but an “I am here” that carries the unique tone of one’s being, the particular through which something larger can enter the world.

Being Available to Purpose

There was something effortless about this alignment. I did not need to manufacture a stronger intention or push myself toward a future accomplishment. My being was available to the purpose I could feel, and action could arise from that availability.

I also began to recognize how quickly this could shift.

A memory would enter. An anticipated difficulty. A concern about how I would be received. My relationship with the present would begin to organize around something that had happened before or something I feared might happen next.

I came to recognize this subtle turning as a place where fear could take birth: the moment my purpose divided and protection began to direct my participation.

Remembering and planning have their place. But when the past and future begin to take over our relationship with the present, we can lose contact with the life that is actually here.

Purpose in Shared Unity

This exploration has continued to deepen through shared unity in the Evolutionary Collective.

We come together with a wholehearted intention to awaken, to discover, and to become available to something beyond what we already know. As that intention becomes shared, something begins to happen.

We are no longer each trying to create or sustain the experience through individual effort. Intention becomes less effortful. Alignment strengthens. We become increasingly available to the purposeful movement of the whole.

This has opened another dimension of purpose for me.

Purpose is not only something I have or something I am here to accomplish. Purpose can be experienced as a movement of life, consciousness, and evolution that we become available to and participate in.

Within shared unity, purpose becomes a generative mutual dance.

Our individual purpose does not disappear. Our particularity matters even more. Each of us brings capacities, sensitivities, and possibilities that belong to the whole. The individual supports the whole, the whole supports and calls forth the individual, and something neither could produce alone becomes possible.

Perhaps a fulfilled life becomes more available as we become increasingly undivided and available to what is moving through us. Purpose is no longer something we have to find. It is something we can become available to and live.