Is it important to know the purpose of your life?
Yes, without a doubt. The aim of work on self is to bring you to your purpose.
How do you know your purpose? How do you go about finding it?
Your purpose is the one thing that makes your life satisfying. What the Sufis call rida. It reveals to you who you are and removes an immense amount of anxiety and confusion.
Your purpose has been with you always—it is an inalienable part of you. It is not found, it is remembered. It is not a kind of work or role in the world, it is a way of being, a self-arising quality of existing just so. You cannot fake it or learn it. Rather, it is the gift you were given before time began.
If this is true, how do I proceed?
The khwajagan masters had a saying: “The undesirable must be relinquished before the desirable can be attained.” The false diversions and attractions that have overprinted your being have obscured your purpose. They must be seen and relinquished in the work of observing self. What remains is who you are and who you are is indistinguishable from your purpose.
