Sometimes essential questions arise.

What is my purpose? What is life about?

These often arise in times of pain or crisis.

Life can keep us busy – jobs, family, obligations, groups, expectations, people to look after.
BUT, when one or some or all of these stop…..then……..stuff comes up. All the stuff from all of our life. Worries, blame, judgements, whys, and everything else that the mind can come up with.
And even when you know that you don’t actually know, the stories in the head keep going. We think we know and then we doubt and then we convince ourselves – round and round it goes.
Seems hard to get out of, especially when we actually kinda believe those negative things about ourselves.

But STOP. All that stuff is in the head. What about the body? Try listening to it. Tricky, eh! Back in the day – when you were little, when I was little – emotions were no go. No acknowledgment at all. We had to dumb them down in order to survive. Being connected and attached to key people who looked after us was necessary for survival, so that we were cared for, fed, kept safe. No matter how we felt, we had to survive – it’s an instinct.

And in this process, immature strategies for staying safe and alive were established, and emotions were ignored, and we denied our internal self. And so to the thinking mind as a way of living.

Try an experiment. When you “think” there is an emotion here, ask yourself where in the body is it? There will be a sensation somewhere in your body. Be present to this sensation, give it time, respect it, inquire into it (does it have a shape, does it move), get to know it as though it were a guest. You might be surprised by the relief and openness that you experience. It doesn’t have to be scary or painful.

By the way, personally, I went through a patch recently where I was asking myself about the purpose for me. A friend and I had a discussion about it one evening. Both of us had had changes in where we live and I no longer had a job that provided a routine to the week. There was plenty of thinking going on. And plenty of emotions to be respected.
The morning after the discussion, I woke up with clarity about my purpose. It was so clear and so right. Whew. Oh the relief and oh the peace.