Selfless vs. Greatness

If you’re reading this, chances are messages on peace of mind, meaning and pursuing your excellence in life deeply resonate with you. You are seeking a life that is full of joy and satisfaction. You want your days to pass by with health, happiness, love and wonder. You respect the fragility and finality of life.

So do I.

After studying ancient scriptures, pondering Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, speaking with Buddhist teachers and combing through speeches of those that shine bright in the history of our humanity – MLK Jr., Albert Einstein and the like - ?one idea has become increasingly obvious, and that is to live a life of meaning or purpose, you must find purpose. And that purpose must be something above, outside, and beyond yourself.

Purpose, or meaning, is a huge and often mismanaged topic. What is it, exactly, and how does one find it? The branch of philosophy that studies purpose is what we refer today as Teleology, originating in the West in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The subject is mismanaged because, frankly, people just don’t know where to start.

In last week’s newsletter, I started the groundwork for how to think about your purpose by embracing silence. This is because your individual purpose is just that, its individual to you. And in order for you to find it, you need to look inward for queues. The best way to do that, is silence. I recorded a video speaking about this which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb8aN87KQzQ&t=33s

After you have a comfortable understanding of the how and the why behind silence, the next step to finding your purpose, is through coming to the understanding that your individual purpose has nothing to do with you. I alluded to this last week but this week I will dig into it further.

For centuries, philosophers, poets, saints, sages, religions and spiritual traditions have agreed that the purpose of life is to serve others; to have compassion (which is different than empathy) for others.

We see this message not only in the Bible but it rings very clear in the most revered text of ancient India, the Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna tells his cousin Arjuna:

“The ignorant work for their own profit, Arjuna; the wise work for the welfare of the world, without thought for themselves.”

Bringing us back to modern times, Tony Robbins says it beautifully in this phrase:

“Labor is service and service is life. And when we serve something more than ourselves, we feel alive.”

Humanitarian Sri Sri Ravi Shanker uses these words:

When you make service your sole purpose, it eliminates fear, focuses your mind, and gives you meaning.

We feel alive when we serve people, when we free ourselves from the shackles of the “me, myself, and I” mentality. Finding a selfless purpose, in others words, is a blissful freedom.

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The hardest task for many of us who live in the Western word is to balance individual achievement with the serving of others. We’ve been both environmentally conditioned to crave success and recognition while being simultaneously hardwired to crave success and recognition.

The individualistic mindset in our culture blesses us and cajoles us to pursue the greatest of our human potential. Abraham Maslow in 1943 introduced his Hierarchy of Needs, pinning self-actualization at the very top, suggesting that achieving one’s full potential is the epitome of what we are motivated to do. In the 1960’s President John F. Kennedy spoke about the “energy and vigor” that makes Americans a special breed – we like to be the best, the brightest, the greatest of all time.

If some American values might make finding purpose difficult, the Buddha’s insights in the 5th century B.C. make it even harder. The Buddha, himself a student of the greatest rishis and sages of ancient India who passed down cultural traditions by word of mouth or example from one generation to another without written instruction, understood that the human mind was a craving machine, hardwired to desire and want, unless managed by the thinker herself. The Buddha’s insights on the monkey mind can be seen at play today, especially though the lenses of our most revered achievers and competitors: a college professor covets tenure while?a highly successful venture capitalist eyes the next multi-billion dollar deal that will catapult him into the Fortune magazine list he most covets.

So the greatest task for all of us becomes how to balance our natural selfish ambitions with the most noble of human acts and the foundational element of purpose: selflessly serving others?

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Can we in fact do both? Can we pursue our own ambitions while serving others? I believe the answer is yes, but there is a qualification. In order to do both, pursuing your own success has to be aligned with something that ultimately serves others. It may serve you in a derivative form on its way to serving others (via paychecks, salary, bonuses, stock options, board seats or awards), but your pursuit in whatever field you are in must be rooted in ultimately helping others in some way. Those others can be as close to home as your children or as far off as helping others you may never see suffer less.

When you’re able to create this balance, the egoic mind that the Buddha experimented with (he called it the monkey mind) can be more easily managed and with this type of purpose then, you find peace of mind. Its truly a beautiful thing.

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Ego dies when you find a purpose greater than yourself.

Furthermore, when you start to make your purpose more than just you, people, opinions and situations stop becoming obstacles and you and your work become unstoppable. By making your purpose in life one of service, you win. You become a ninja, a person that is simply at peace while performing at your best.

Albert Einstein understood the idea of selflessness well. Even after the accolades of the greatest magnitude imaginable, he realized that his peace of mind was not tied to his accomplishments but to his understanding that we are not on this planet as independent individuals filling up our own cups, we are here to fill the cups of others and acknowledge that we all come from a collective well of water.

In 1950, ?he wrote to Robert S. Marcus - then Political Director of the World Jewish Congress - who had recently lost a son to polio and said this:

Dear Mr. Marcus,

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.

With my best wishes, sincerely yours, Albert Einstein

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The next step to finding your purpose after silence and stillness, is accepting that your purpose must be about serving others.

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For more on meaning, peace of mind, excellence and craving more, follow this newsletter and my channels on social media and don't forget to share this article with someone you love.

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Episodes of the Calm & Free podcast can be accessed here: https://www.calmandfreepodcast.com/

References:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beyond-the-delusion-of-se_b_13219428

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/29/archives/the-einstein-papers-a-man-of-many-parts-the-einstein-papers-man-of.html