Finding your life purpose

Let go of your expectations

One thing I know to be true is that the more you follow an “idea” the more it will reveal itself to you. When someone says “I have a good idea” what they actually mean is “I have a form of an idea.” Even then, they might not fully know the “idea” (love, justice, beauty, duty, etc) behind the form. But the movement of the idea will push them closer to understanding.

I believe most ideas take a lifetime to play out. So our lives are aggregate expressions of one or more moving ideas. But in our society it’s common to have a five or ten year plan and never change course.

Sufi mystic Inayat Khan has a great story that represents the importance of following the “idea” without attachment to the form:

There was a young robber who used to attack travelers passing along the way where he lived and he robbed from them whatever he could. And one day before going to his work he came to a sage and greeted him and said, "Sage, I want your blessing, your help in my occupation." The sage asked what his occupation was. He said, "I am an unimportant robber." The sage said, "Yes, you have my blessing." The robber was very pleased, and went away and had greater success than before. Happy with his success he returned to the sage and greeted him by touching his feet and said, "What a wonderful blessing it is to be so successful." But the sage said, "I am not yet satisfied with your success, I want you to be more successful. Find three or four more robbers and join together and then go on with your work." He joined with four or five other robbers who went with him and again had great success. Once more he came to the sage and said, "I want your blessing." The sage said, "You have it. But still I am not satisfied. Four robbers are very few. You ought to form a gang of twenty." So he found twenty robbers. And eventually there were hundreds of them.

Then the sage said, "I am not satisfied with the little work you do. You are a small army of young men, you ought to do something great. Why not attack the Mogul strongholds and push them out, so that in this country we may reign ourselves?" And so he did, and a kingdom was established. The next move of the robber would have been to form an empire of the whole country. But he died. Had he lived Shivaji would have formed an empire. The sage could have said, "What a bad thing, what a wicked thing you are doing. Go in the factory and work!" But the sage saw what Shivaji was capable of. Robbery was his first lesson, his a b c. He had only a few steps to advance to be the defender of his country, and the sage realized that he was going to be a king, to release his people from the Moguls. The robbers did not see it, the young man did not think about it. He was pushed into it by the sage. The sage was not pushing him into robbery; he was preparing him for a great work.

You never know where following an “idea” can take you.