There was some discussion in my email this week about transcendent goals. If we need one, how do we decide on the one thing versus all the competing challenges facing us and the world today? Is there one for all of us? If I have one, how do I discover it? A transcendent goal seems much more elusive than deciding to lose twenty pounds or run a marathon.
By the end of this newsletter, you will have your transcendent purpose or the tools to decide on one, if you choose to do the work.
As a refresher for what transcendence means, Mind Valley reminds us that self-transcendence is not something we look for when we are struggling for food and security. It is not exclusive territory for the successful, but a feeling of life satisfaction is important before we can start looking outside ourselves.
How To Find Your Own Transcendent Experience For True Spiritual Growth
Brain Pickings helps us remember that being ourselves and choosing our path is not easy. Using e.e. cummings words, we learn that “it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” To start creating your transcendent goal, start feeling your way to yourself.
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
To inspire you to think about being the one person to change the world, Transcend Modern outlines several famous tales of transcendent individuals. People like Gandhi, Mandella and King feel like they were born for greatness. I wonder if Rosa Parks at any point thought that she would change the world. Perhaps your “Rosa Parks” moment is a moment away.
Transcendent Individuals: One Person Can Change The World
Interlude
Find Your Spark
The following exercise will put you in touch with your transcendent purpose. I want your discovery of your transcendent purpose to be a feeling of aesthetic arrest. You will stop and “you kind of feel detached from everything else at that moment. Everything else falls away. And, it actually releases chemicals in your brain that help you be happier.”1
In the book, The Spark, The Flame, And The Torch, Lance Secretan helps us develop our Destiny Statement which brings together two truths:
- Our passion is drawn to the things that excite us–positively and negatively; and
- At our core, we all yearn to serve and improve the world.2
To discover what excites us, developing a Destiny Statement is developed using a paradoxical process because the dark side of the world engages us as much as the light side.
What is wrong with the world? We need to answer that question for ourselves. Lance refers to these as Terrathreats which he defines as “issues that you consider to be so serious that unless they are resolved, they will be radically detrimental to the world and might even cause the demise of humanity and the Earth.”3
Meditate on the goings-on in the world, what pulls you down? Today, I am sad about Haiti with its earthquake and hurricane and political unrest. Do you feel pulled towards racial or gender inequality? Perhaps poverty or plastic pollution. When I think about Terrathreats, I think about the lack of respect people have for the world. I see graffiti (not the art kind), litter, and wars about a lack of respect for others, and where we live. My Terrathreat is a lack of respect.
In a sentence or two, write down one or two Terrathreats that really get you. Feel yourself get worked up as you write. Sit with that feeling. We are not trying to solve the threat (we can’t do that alone anyway). We want to bring it into sharp focus.
Now, distill that feeling and threat down to one or two words. Naming something brings understanding, and the opportunity to learn more. The word for me is disrespect. It calls to mind an apathy that comes from not thinking and seeing. What is your word?
Now write its opposite. “Not an interpretation or paraphrasing–but the exact opposite, an antonym. For example, the opposite of hatred would be love or poverty would be abundance, and so on. We call these ‘exact opposites’ Terrafixes.”4 My Terrafix is reverence–seeing the sacred in everything.
Now we want to feel into that and expand it into a statement that describes how you wish to dedicate your life.
Here is how it is done: Shirley Willihnganz….identified her Terrathreats as loneliness, alienation, and despair, and therefore her matching Terrafixes were joy, closeness, and hope. Elizabeth Gilbert said, “The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.” From these Terrathreats, Shirley fashioned a Destiny Statment: To create a more joyful world.
For Shirley, the word “joy” embraced all of her Terrafixes, and so she settled on just that one word because she felt it both captured her passion and was efficient.
The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch. Lance Secretan. pg 45
Some more examples:
To help create a sustainable and abundant world
To nurture a world that empowers others to make their contribution
To illuminate the beauty in every soul
To help create a more loving and serving planet
To make the world simpler
Mine, my Destiny Statement is To illuminate paragons and design an environment that inspires reverence and rest.
What is your Destiny Statement that will be your north star, guiding your decisions and leading you along your path?
In future editions, we will work on translating your Destiny Statement into how you live your life.