By Tracey Soghrati  (All Rights Reserved)

February 20th, 2018

Four months ago, I started teaching a particular concept in almost all my yoga classes. The concept is this; the purpose is the process – the process is the purpose.

You see, I was noticing (anecdotally) that people get so caught up in monitoring the discrepancy between where they’re at versus where they want to be, then lost in ruminating about the reasons why, while simultaneously indulging in anxious fantasy about the future.  That. They. Are. Never. Here. Now.

I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, and by some of the greatest mindfulness scientists of our time (Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dr. Zindel Segal), I’m simply offering people the opportunity to change their lens of focus in a really practical way.

The problem with “Purpose”

To be honest, I don’t have a problem with the idea of having a purpose, or finding purpose in life.  However, if the “purpose” is some big event or nebulous thing out there, without which we are lost, then it just becomes a weight that drags us down.  It’s the difference between functioning in a goal-oriented way versus a process-oriented way.

What happens when we’re not process-oriented?

Having goals is really important, because having a goal facilitates your ability to be in the process of your own growth and development.  However, if you fixate on the goal as the marker of success or happiness, it can tend to polarize the mind into believing that we are not successful or happy (or worthy etc.) when we haven’t accomplished whatever we set out to do. In my experience, this often leads to people giving up prematurely, which means that we also fail to cultivate the discipline and perseverance we need in order to move through challenges.  It might also create the tendency to be so focused on achieving that we miss millions of miniscule moments of potential for growth, creativity and opportunity. We become so fixated on the goal that the pathway to the goal becomes invisible, and so we lose the chance to cultivate wisdom.

You set the goal in order to be in process, moment by moment, mindfully evolving your consciousness which is the purpose- to evolve.

The Starting Place is Both Completely Relevant & Totally Irrelevant  

This paradoxical point is key.  If we avoid challenging ourselves to grow because we’re waiting for a specific set of conditions to arrive, we don’t start.  We keep executing the same behaviour patterns because it’s our known way of being and we are lured into believing that this gives us more control. So the starting place is completely relevant in that it is always NOW.  And it is totally irrelevant because it is always NOW.  You might be in the midst of your worst day ever, or your best day ever, it doesn’t really matter. You begin where you’re at.

What is the Process?

The process is to come into the present moment every chance we can get.  Then become aware of the experience we’re having in the mind and body. This might include being curious, naming our emotions and noticing sensations, without creating a long complicated story about why the internal landscape looks the way it does (because that leads to rumination which is often both unhelpful and inaccurate). The next step is to consciously act in a way that is congruent with our goals, value system and real present moment circumstances. While also allowing ourselves to be open (yes vulnerable) to learning and expanding as human beings in the long term.  Recognizing that this sometimes means that we have to go through the discomfort of setting boundaries, while at other times we have to learn to repair our relationships and still other times reach out for connection.

Life offers us a richly textured cornucopia of experiences (raw, primal, light and dark) which are filled with infinite potential if we can be in the process of our own internal expansion.