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Hi all,

This one unfolds over a few ideas, so take a few minutes with it. There’s something in here that might land in a useful way — I know it did for me.

I want to break something.

Not something physical 

But the kind of breaking that pulls something together after it falls apart.

I’m talking about purpose.

And I know this might sting a little for some people.

That’s okay.

Everything I share is just a path.

A way of seeing things that leads somewhere.

You know you don’t have to take it. You don’t have to agree with it.

You go your own way.

I’m just offering ‘a’ way to orient your life… 

To really get what I’m talking about, we need to understand how the human works a little.

By default, we let our emotions and thoughts guide us. 

And those emotions and thoughts often come from old patterning.

Have a think, what actually motivates your actions? 

Something does, right?

And honestly, a lot of what we do is simply to induce a state we prefer.

Eat something.
Call a friend.
Scroll.
Focus on a project that promises a better future.

One thing that affects us deeply is hope.

The hope that something good will happen.

It can feel almost as powerful as actually getting the thing we want. 

We call it excitement.  Nothing wrong with this.

But we need to be clear what it is.

It’s chemistry. A dopamine response. A wave that lifts us.

And this is where we need to be careful.

Because this is often what we turn “purpose” into.

Something we use to feel better about the future.

We even turn it into an identity. 

A badge we wear.

“My purpose is _____”  and we say it proudly.  Look at who I am. Look what I’m here to do.

You can see the dopaminergic effect clearly with New Year’s resolutions.

At the end of the year, we write the list.

Better body.
More money.
More freedom.
More time.
More life.

And that list… feels good.

It gives us hope.

It gives us energy.

It makes us feel like something is about to change.

But when we say we want to change our life, what we really mean is we want to change our default state.

We want to change how we feel.

And for a moment, it works.

But it doesn’t last.

Because eventually, the old pattern comes back. The pull of what’s familiar.

And because that was never addressed, it becomes the dominant force again.

So, listen to this,

Don’t ever feel bad about not achieving your goals, because, without seeing this clearly, real change is almost impossible.

So this is the point:

Be careful that “purpose” doesn’t become the same thing.

A future you’re leaning on to feel better now.

Because then purpose becomes hope. And hope becomes temporary.

You don’t want the goal. You want the feeling.

And the human system always balances itself.

If you push too far in one direction, it will counterbalance.

Overly happy, swings into the opposite.

Hope can turn into disappointment.

Attachment can turn into resentment.

So if your life is built on chasing a feeling… it won’t hold.

This is where we’ve confused something important.

We’ve turned purpose into a mission. A goal. A future to reach.

But purpose is not what you achieve.

It’s how you are while you’re living.

Yes, purpose can be a direction. A kind of north star.

But even that can quietly turn into pressure. The same way resolutions do.

I’m not saying goals or resolutions are bad.

Like anything, it depends how you’re using them.

And more importantly… What you’re using them for.

So often we think of purpose as an achievement.

My purpose is to save the children.

To plant a billion trees.
To build something.
To become something.

I’d like to suggest a different way.

A shift that might feel a little unfamiliar.

Instead of thinking of purpose as an achievement or a destination…

What if you thought of it as a state?

An atmosphere.

An atmosphere you live into.
An atmosphere you exude.

I think purpose is less about something you attain…And more about something you become.

You become an atmosphere in the way you move through life.

For example, you choose kindness. Or compassion. Or forgiveness. Or lovingness

And you live from that.

If you already have a purpose that’s directional… something you want to do…

Ask yourself: What would accomplishing that actually give to the people it affects?

Would it bring them ease?

Happiness?

Relief?

Connection?

Now imagine you being that…Directly.

Not through the outcome.

But in how you show up.

Take a second and imagine yourself moving through life as the atmosphere of ______.

Not something you reach.

Something you are.

For example, the atmosphere of kindness.

How would that change the way you move through your day?

Right now, think about this.

How would you speak to people?

How would you make decisions?

How would you respond to what’s in front of you?

Let’s take it a bit further.

This state you live “into” has to exist outside of your emotions, because your emotions are constantly moving, rising and falling.

Circulating through you in ways you can’t fully control. 

But this atmosphere…This is something steadier. 

Something you remain in, even as everything else contracts and shifts.

The beauty is you don’t have to remember a list of rules for how to live well. 

You simply return to the atmosphere you’ve chosen to live in.

You still feel the full range of emotions move through you, but you hold the atmosphere of say…kindness at the same time.

No matter what you feel emotionally, you are still being this.

So purpose becomes a way of being.

A state you live from, not something you achieve.

And if we follow this all the way through, purpose results in something else.

Fulfillment.

Because the real achievement in life is not what you build, or what you accomplish, but whether you are fulfilled.

Fulfillment comes from going beyond yourself.

When your attention is only on you, on what you need, how you feel, what you’re trying to get, life contracts around you. 

But when your attention moves beyond you, life opens.

This is why we experience fulfillment through giving, through presence, through contributing in some way.

Helping children might be part of that. 

But what fulfills you isn’t just the act, it’s the state you’re living from while doing it — and the act becomes an expression of that state.

If that state is kindness, then helping children is just one expression of it.

But you could also be kind in a conversation, in a decision, in the way you handle someone who frustrates you, in the way you move through an ordinary moment.

Now you have a way to live, not just something to accomplish.

You can ask yourself, in any moment, is this the kindest way I can respond?

And that begins to shape your life.

You can still build wealth. You can still create success. You still go to the rave.

You still do everything you do.

But how you do it matters, because that is what determines whether you feel fulfilled when you get there.

I know lots of people who have lots of things but those things don’t bring fulfillment 

But if you move through your life with awareness, with care, with integrity, then what you are building externally and how you are living internally are aligned.

And that is where fulfillment starts to stabilize.

Because you are no longer reinforcing the same ego construct, constantly organizing life around what you need to feel okay.

You are stepping beyond it.

When your attention moves beyond yourself, fulfillment naturally begins to deepen.

And when you look closely, this is where generosity begins to emerge.

Not just as something you do, but as a state you live from.

Generosity is not just giving things. It’s not just money, or time, or acts of service.

It’s your presence.

It’s the way you listen to someone without needing to fix them or change them.

It’s forgiveness.

It’s compassion.

It’s someone knowing they can be themselves around you without fear of being judged or abandoned because they don’t meet your expectations.

It’s your time, which is one of the most valuable things you can offer.

And it’s also more subtle than that.

Because a lot of what we do, even when it looks like giving, is still coming from a place of needing something back. 

Needing to feel better, needing to be seen a certain way, needing to maintain a certain identity.

That’s still the ego construct at work.

Or what I prefer to call… ego-constriction … because it reduces the fullness of who you are, into something smaller and safer.

Even pulling away, shutting down, trying not to need anything from anyone…Is still a form of pulling energy back toward yourself.

Generosity moves in the other direction.

It’s open.

It’s available.

It’s not organizing every moment around “what do I need right now?”

And sometimes, generosity looks like asking for help. 

Being honest about what you need instead of expecting others to figure it out.

It’s a way of being in relationship with life that isn’t centered around holding yourself together.

And when you begin to live like this, 

Even in small ways, 

You start to feel something different.

Not because you achieved something. But because of how you are living.

An atmosphere is not something you try to hold.

It’s something you return to. Gently. Over and over.

Because the moment you try to “be kind” all the time… it becomes performance. 

Suppression. Another identity to manage.

That’s not what we’re doing here.

Not: “I must be kind.”

But: “kindness is the direction I return to.”

Lightly.

Again and again.

People chase purpose because it gives them somewhere to go.

Something to move toward.

But what if the shift isn’t about where you’re going…It’s about the atmosphere you’re living in.

Not something you force.

Something you return to.

Until, over time, it becomes the ground you stand on.

And this is important: because as you begin to live this way, it will bring you into contact with what’s unresolved underneath it.

A relaxed nervous system can release frozen trauma

Your atmosphere doesn’t replace your wounds. It gives you a different place to stand…While they arise.

So we’ve identified something important.

There is the risk that purpose is often used as a ‘future-based’ escape from what we feel now.

A way of moving away from our default state, toward something that promises to feel better.

So be careful here.

Because this new idea can quietly become the same thing.

Another strategy.

Another escape.

Don’t let having a state or atmosphere to live into become another plan to get away from what you feel.

There has to be a gap between what you feel…And the atmosphere you are choosing to live in.

Feelings and atmosphere are different things

Then life is free to show up however it does, and the atmosphere remains. It’s not dependent on life being a certain way. Life can still touch your emotions… and you don’t need to shape it to protect them. 

The emotions move, but the atmosphere stays.

A fundamental part of this process is to reverse engineer what’s creating the desire for purpose in the first place.

And from within the steadiness of this atmosphere, you can begin to take it apart.

Because usually… there’s something underneath that you’re trying not to feel.

But…

If you begin to settle into the emotional state that you usually get stuck in, and allow yourself to feel it… things start to loosen.

That can’t happen by chasing something new. 

It happens by turning toward what’s already there.

Like the buffalo that turn toward the storm, knowing it’s the quickest way through.

You sit with the feelings you were never able to feel.

You allow them.

You welcome them.

And at some point, you begin to realize that you can feel all of it… and still be okay.

Here is a nuance most people miss. Even those that teach.

We are not trying to get away from what happened to us in our past. Because the original wound is not the circumstance itself. 

It’s…The feeling you had in that moment.

And I’m not dismissing what happened. It was real. It was painful.

But what stayed in the body…Was the feeling.

Stop for a second.

Take a moment with this.

The original wound is not being abandoned.

It’s being left in the ‘feeling’ of abandonment…alone

It was the feeling that was too much for you. That’s what we’re still trying to get away from now.

Not the event.

But how you felt during the event.

You were left in feelings…Without support, without resolution.

And that’s why nothing changes when we try to escape it.

Because the moment we’re trying to avoid now…Is the same one that never got completed then.

The original wound is not being left.

It’s being left alone in the feeling.

Without this step, the old pattern will always have force.

It will keep pulling you back.

So this is where it becomes important to understand something clearly.

Healing and… living — have to happen at the same time.

You have to complete what you are avoiding…While also staying with how you want to show up in this moment.

Because the place most people get stuck is right here.

They are wedged between what they feel and the desire to escape it.

And they lose contact with the moment.

So the work becomes learning to stay with your feelings, while staying present with what is actually happening in the moment, and at the same time holding the atmosphere you want to live from.

All at once.

This is what stops you from constantly creating plans to change how you feel.

Because you’re no longer trying to get somewhere.

You’re staying.

And over time, something begins to clear.

The emotional charge of the old patterns starts to loosen, and you begin to live more naturally into the new atmosphere.

But there is an important balance here.

You don’t go away to attain something.

You complete what is already here.

The first stage is being with what you are feeling…Especially the feelings that are driving your desires.

You sit with them until they move.

Until you fall through them.

But you don’t get lost in them.

This is where the atmosphere becomes essential.

Because without it, it’s very easy to get pulled back into the old pattern.

To fall into the same loop.

Think of it like this.

The old pattern is a weight pulling you back down

The atmosphere is the rope.

When the emotions rise, when the thoughts start to spiral, you hold onto that rope.

To that way of being.

That orientation.

So you don’t fall back into the same place.

Over time, that atmosphere becomes your stabilizer.

The thing you hold onto as everything else moves.

So you can feel fully…withthout getting lost.

You can relax, let the pull dissolve, and remain afloat.

And eventually, what once pulled you under…No longer has the same power.

Let me simplify this.

If you take everything we’ve just talked about, it comes down to this:

Three things happening at the same time.

You feel what you’re feeling.
You stay with what is actually happening around you right now, present.

And you hold the atmosphere you’ve chosen to live by.

That’s it.

That is the practice.

That is the formula.

Not something you achieve.

Something you return to.

Again and again.

And over time, this is what allows fulfillment.

Look, promise me something.

Let’s relieve a little pressure.

Don’t try to be consistent with this.

Don’t do that to yourself.

Just handle today.

Tomorrow…You don’t have to handle.

Because when it comes, it will be today.

Just remain right here. Still. Tomorrow comes to you.

Don’t say, “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.”

Don’t get lost in the “rest of your life”?

There’s only today.

Live this day fully.

Fortunately, days don’t come in bunches.

They come one at a time.

It’s not like ten balls are being thrown at you at once.

Just one.

Deal with one ball.

There’s one more distinction I want to make.

Because this isn’t the final step.

A lot of traditions point to something deeper — what they call presence

And it’s important not to confuse that with what we’ve been talking about.

Presence is not something you do.

It’s not something you try to hold.

It’s what all of this is happening in — the space the looping system appears in.

And this matters.

Because the moment you say, “I need to stay present so I don’t get pulled into the loop…” Presence becomes a strategy, another form of control, and you’re back inside the same pattern.

This is why the traditions are so precise.

Because if you try to fix the loop…
Stop the loop…
Outrun the loop…

You stay inside it.

But if you begin to rest as awareness itself…The loop loosens its authority.  It can still be there but you’re just no longer inside it.

And this is the distinction: The atmosphere of: kindness, openness or generosity —  is how you express yourself.

Presence…Is what you are before the expression.

Not something you achieve.

Not something you hold.

Something you begin to recognize.

And this is why the work we’ve been talking about matters, because you’re not using it to escape the pattern.

You’re learning to stand somewhere different while it appears.

So you’re not controlled by it.

Not suppressing it.

Not identified with it.

It can still arise…

But you’re no longer inside it.

There’s a saying in the yogic traditions: Exuberance of life comes from knowing we’re mortal.

Because you start to feel the value of each moment.

You stop telling yourself it’s okay to stay where you are because you can find peace later.

From that place…Your relationship to life changes.

Not because you force it.

But because you see more clearly.

And when you see clearly, you don’t want to waste your life lost in unnecessary suffering.

Not avoiding what you feel…

But not looping there either.

You feel it.

You move through it.

While living your life, 

It is just a part of living. 

Because time is moving.

And this moment is your life.

After all, isn’t life just a collection of moments like this one.

When you see clearly, you don’t want to waste any of the moments lost in unnecessary suffering.

Your life is a collection of these moments.

Your life is not somewhere ahead of you.

It’s not in the version of you you’re trying to become.

It’s here.

In how you speak.

In how you respond.

In how you move through what’s in front of you.

Moment by moment.

And if you really take that in…

Then the question is simple:

How do you want to live this moment?

Not your life.

This moment.

Because your life… is always just this moment.

—Paul

P.S. If this subject raised some questions, you can submit them here, and I will answer them for you.