Heal the Split

Let’s explore the natures of mission and purpose. While these are not opposites, they are distinct and, while mission and purpose may seem similar on the surface, they are notably different. Being involved with men’s organizations for several years, I have heard about “mission.” This is a pervasive and core theme throughout these groups: “We empower men to missions of service.” And in recent times, I’ve seen and heard men using the “p-word” — purpose.

I prefer using the term “life purpose,” and I believe that doing so can help reduce confusion with mission.

Note: What I offer here on life purpose originates from three sources: (a) the teachings of the Pathways Institute Mystery School, and years of preparatory training that I received; (b) work developed by one of the original founders of the Tribe of Men in the SF Bay area; and (c) my distillations, clarifications, and organization that have made the material deeper and richer. I am profoundly grateful to these sources.

Origin and construction of missions

Over many years, in the ManKind Project (MKP), thousands of men have had hands-on connections with mission, so since we’re familiar with that, let’s look at it first.

In an article for the June 2005 MKP New Warrior Journal, I wrote:

“In many circles, men create a mission based on a vision of how they want the world to be. For many, this gives them a direction for their lives, an anchor for their actions.

“The work of developing a personal mission does often arise out of that vision of how men want the world to be. From there, their relationship to their actions is often, ‘If I act as if the world is the way I want it, then the world will become that.’ This form of acknowledgment is popular among self-actualization work that helps people get in touch with their goals and feel better about themselves. This emanates from the place of a young wounded child that imagines a healed or peaceful or all-loving world, a world that is consequently free of any childhood wounds, pain, unpleasant emotion, or conflict. This sort of mission often fails because those visions are out of relationship to the way the world and the universe actually are. The polarity of an all-healed, all-peaceful, all-joyous, all-loving perspective is one side of a polarity, is unstable, and cannot be maintained, since none of these can exist without their opposites.

“While there can be a connection between the magical child’s visions and a potentially better world, most of the visions are only opposite perspectives from that of the wounded child running from the wounds, or from holding the belief that the wounds (or the wounded parts of him) can go away, instead of seeing and embracing the wounding process as a necessary and natural part of growth. It’s one thing to create moments for that wounded child to experience glimpses of an idealized world, however, it’s quite another to use that to drive an entire life path or life’s work.”

The missions we construct, more often than not, arise directly out of our boyhood material and therefore our complex. We catch a glimpse of our shadow (and for some men, this glimpse feels earth-shaking), and from there, we develop our mission. Our mission statements generally take the form “I create a world…” that most often describes a world that is the opposite of our wounded experience, be it weak, restricted, or painful.

Much of the action that we take arises out of our discomfort (whether we’re conscious or unconscious of the discomfort)…and therefore, out of our reactions to that discomfort, and consequently, our unwillingness, to be with the way things are, just as they are. Since the missions we construct originate with our reactions, then identifying our mission as our life purpose gives us a motivation that’s primarily, well…reactive. Examples of reactive missions include creating worlds in which there is no suffering, or hunger, or violence…all of these are reactive. Essentially, such reactive motivation arise from young child parts whose perspective is “I don’t like this…make it go away”, parts that are unwilling, and perhaps unable, to have a relationship, connection, and acceptance of, as I said above, “the way the world and the universe actually are.”

Whether from conscious intention or disowned shadow material (or some combination), missions constructed in this way nonetheless emanate from our ego system. Our egos can convince us that our mission to create a world that is free from our childhood wounds is the same as a deeper calling. They can have us believe that freeing the world from those wounds is noble. And they may be noble, and sometimes they may be related to our calling. None of that is necessarily a problem.

But are our missions the same as our purpose? Just like with projection, we can’t tell, since our perspective is heavily filtered by our complex. Remember, any time we have an emotional charge to someone or something, we are in a projection. And the tricky part about projection is, just because we’re having a projection, doesn’t mean that what we’re projecting isn’t true…we are simply unable to tell. I consider this a pitfall of having a mission that is based on reaction.

Looking back on my own journey, I’ve realized that nearly all of my missions (regardless of whether I consciously constructed them or even knew I had a mission) are this way…reactive. In just about every case, I can clearly identify the discomfort that rose in me, and that the actions of my missions were clearly intended to alleviate that discomfort. Some of those missions served the world around me. Others were crusades primarily intended to eliminate my own discomfort, and did not serve something beyond my own desire for comfort. How can we tell the difference?

Mission review exercises

I invite you to take a few moments and consider several of your missions and, for each one, ask yourself these questions:

- What was my mission?

- What is the shadow material in me that this mission is founded on?

- What was/am I reacting uncomfortably to “out there” (in my family or my company or the world) just the way it was/is…and not willing to be with?

- What does this reaction have to do with my childhood? What in my childhood is connected to the reaction I have/had that fuels this mission?

Having missions based on reaction and endeavoring to alleviate our discomfort is not a problem in itself — as a matter of fact, this mechanism fueled me, making it possible for me to do amazing things that produced change or that no one else would do. But if our missions are based on reaction and alleviating our discomfort, then we are living our lives in service to our ego. And if missions aren’t constructed to layer on top of our life purpose, they may not necessarily even be aligned with it. How much more powerful it would be to take action in the world from a place other than from our childhood reactive material!

I now invite you to consider these questions:

- What if our wounds, our complex, and our ego, all exist to be in service to something besides alleviating our own discomfort?

- What if what we’re here to do isn’t a mission we construct, but rather something as yet unknown to us?

- Where would we find this “something” and how would we go about locating it?

What is a life purpose?

“I know because I must know, it is my purpose. It’s the reason I’m here.” - Keymaker in “The Matrix Reloaded”

A movie scene comes to mind in “The Matrix Reloaded”, when the Keymaker is shot, just after handing a key to Neo. When Neo and Trinity seem concerned about him, “What about you?” He says “It was meant to be.” In saying that, he indicates that this is his life purpose, the whole reason he existed was so that he would make a key and give it to Neo at that instant. In terms of his life’s purpose, everything else in his life before that was preparation and prologue (learning how to make keys, getting to be in the place where Neo would find him), leading up to that moment. Having completed his life’s purpose, with none of it remaining, he dies within seconds.

Our life purpose is why we’re here. And while nearly all of us have one purpose, a number of different missions and careers can be overlaid on our purpose.

Many life purposes can be seen as indirect, not generally visible or perceived. A man may exist to bring into the world and parent a child who then grows up to have a particular influence in the world. Conversely, a few purposes can have direct visible outcomes or perceivable changes. A man with such a purpose may be an instrument of massive global transformation bringing about a clear shift in consciousness. Some purposes have a potential for huge impact in our lifetime, and others are a piece of a longer chain of purposes that span generations.

Here’s something that you may find interesting, perhaps surprising: We don’t have to like what we’re here to do. Part of my own life purpose includes making conscious what’s not conscious. This may establish connection, unity, enthusiasm, and support. These are aspects of my life purpose that I am fond of. It may also bring about severity of harshness, conflict, alienation or isolation. So there are aspects that I am not fond of and can even bring me to emotional pain. Do I like it when that happens? Not particularly. But the suffering that I would experience if I were not (rather, when I’m not) in alignment with my purpose, is often far greater than the pain.

To those who seem called to discover their purpose, I often ask “Are you willing to accept that your purpose may be something that you may not particularly like?” Imagine if your reason for being here was to give birth to the next Hitler. In the great drama, the energy that moved through Hitler must express sooner or later, and someone has to give birth to its next vessel. Mayhaps the vessel will be in a being whose ego knows how to influence and direct that energy, in service to its purpose!

And here’s something else: We can choose not to take up our purpose. In order for us to consciously align with our purpose, our ego must, at least, be willing enough to live into it. And if not, we can say “thanks, but no.” What happens then, if we choose not to embrace it? For some people, the calling may come back, providing us with another opportunity to embrace it…or not. In many cases, someone else with the same purpose may take it up, and we’re not needed to do it. In others, it will manifest through us anyway, regardless of whether we embrace it. And in still others, the purpose will be unlived. Personally, I would prefer to have the ability to consciously and intentionally align to it.

Differentiating mission from purpose

In another article for the MKP Journal, I proposed a three-phase approach to men’s work: opening a possibility, initiation into manhood, and deepening the work. From the description of the deepening phase: “Having lived life as a truly initiated man moves him in a direction toward maturity. So this phase of work brings such a man more into a spiritual aspect, opening to a sense that something deeper governs his life, and shifts the focus from mission (which emanates from our boyhood material and our complexes) to purpose (which originates from outside ourselves).”

The point I want to make here is that we don’t actually determine our purpose ourselves. And unlike a mission, which we construct or determine from our childhood material, we discover our purpose. It existed before we came into this world, and our psyche — in service to, and alignment with, that purpose — chose the family we were born into, so that we could have our childhood experiences and receive our specific wounds, different from those of other people. All this occurred so that our ego, and the skills and training we received from life, would develop to realize the potential for our purpose, which is why we came into the world. Our purpose is inextricably tied to the particular energy that we carry. More on that later.

So our boyhood material and complex are in service to what we are here to do (and not the other way around). We are a vessel through which something larger — something outside of our own personal conjuring — flows, expresses, and manifests. These are certainly not new or unique ideas. Equipped with an aware and mature ego (presuming that we go through the considerable effort of building) and depending on our skill, our ego’s job, to the degree that we consciously can, is to influence and direct those energies and forces,. (I recommend reading the section “Three stages of development” in the aforementioned article.)

Like the Keymaker, life prepares each of us for living our life’s purpose: our jobs and career; our primary relationships; our kids; our triumphs and the calamities…even our pain. Once we discover our purpose, the mystery of what life had been preparing us for makes sense. And what may seem to be an inordinately privileged or disadvantaged life also begins to make sense.

Here are some other differences:

In mission statements, after we state what we intend (”I create a world…”), we then describe how we’re going to make our mission happen (”I create a world…by…”). In contrast to mission, note that how the purpose is enacted — including the methods and mechanisms — is not specified, and, in some cases, not even known. I find that living consciously with one’s purpose makes it easy to devise (or divine) visions, missions, and action plans. Living thusly, even if a mission arises out of a reaction and discomfort, it is overlaid onto the purpose and therefore aligned with the purpose. It may be easier to see why such missions might look similar on the surface, but can be in service to something quite different.

Also, many a mission arises out of aspirations may or may not be fully realized or completed. However, unless we are successful at walking away from our life purpose, a purpose is usually specifically lived into, whether we are conscious of it or not.

And, while the way we construct our mission creates a lot of individual “customized” missions, for the most part, there are who others have the same purpose as we. (This will come in handy for creating collective unity.)

Here’s a way you may be able to spot the difference: If a man’s vision for the world seems to be in reaction or opposition to his wounds or reflects what he’d like, then it’s a mission. If the vision reflects what he’s here for and what he’s in service to, it more likely his purpose.

Another way that may give a clue is that, if the man’s vision drives him compulsively, or if the vision is something that he feels that the world must embrace, then it’s a mission (and likely a crusade). If what is to be done is what’s needed and his mind doesn’t need to think about it or defend it or question it, chances are better that it may be a purpose.

The architecture of a psyche

To help understand how the life purpose comes about, let’s look at the notions of individual and collective psyche.

In the Voice Dialogue model, each of us consists of an assortment of sub-personalities, know as parts or selves. The parts we most live in are our primary selves (also known as our coping strategies or our operating ego) — various protectors, such as Controller, Pleaser, Judge, Critic, Perfectionist, Hider — that together comprise our ego. We also have secondary selves, some of which are disowned parts that live in our shadow, often the wounded vulnerable parts that our protectors are protecting or that are the opposites of our protectors. Among and beneath our disowned shadow material lie the tidal waves of our emotions, as well as energies which are larger than most of our personal energetic patterns, including the many archetypes arising from the collective unconscious, and the vaster natural forces (such as wind, sun, volcano, galaxies colliding).

So we have an ego (that has the possibility to be conscious), disowned shadow, emotions, archetypes, and forces. Everything past the emotional layers — i.e, archetypes and the vaster forces — is not personal to us but are expressions of the collective unconscious. I find it helpful to imagine a border where each individual unconscious shares a boundary with collective unconscious.

In every psyche, there is a mix of energies and forces. Everything in nature seeks balance, thus the energies and forces in a psyche are always being balanced to a certain set of proportions. Therefore, when we largely express a particular energy, the psyche always rebalances with opposite energies. For the most part, we’re not conscious — either that this rebalancing occurs or that there’s an opposite energy, since our ego filters our conscious experience to those energetic patterns that have to do with our childhood material and complex.

Collective consciousness

Understanding something about both individual and collective psyche is core to understanding the notion of purpose. Most personal development work focuses primarily on our individual growth: our childhood psychology, constructing of mission, individual accountability. Yet our purpose originates from a consciousness (more accurately, unconscious) that’s larger than that of our own individual psyche. And while many communities get involved in group service, we don’t do consciousness work at the collective level.

The idea of collective consciousness and the concept of doing collective work may be unfamiliar to some people and therefore may take a while to grasp, given that our focus is regularly and repeatedly brought to our individual work, process, and path. The concept of the collective unconscious is arguably Jung’s most significant contribution to the study and understanding of the psyche.

Each of us, as an individual psyche, has patterns and dynamics that were formed out of our childhood experiences, including our wounds. But when we look at a collective, it seems rather different…or is it? And what is a collective psyche, anyway?

Here’s one of the principles I describe in Energetic Principles, Shadow and Projection: “The energetic forces and patterns that exist in individual psyches are the same types of patterns that exist in a collective psyche. Just as each of us is made up of an array of parts, a collective is similarly made up of different people, each one primarily expressing a force and pattern within the collective psyche. And just as each of us is a psyche, a collective is likewise but a single psyche, whose parts are the psyches of the individuals that make up the collective. (And the world is a single psyche, whose parts are the national collectives, the ethnic collectives, and so on …all the way to the cosmic or universal psyche.)”

So a collective psyche has characteristics and behavior that are just like an individual psyche. And, just as with a single psyche, the energies in a collective psyche likewise become out of balance, and then rebalance to the particular set of proportions, same as it happens in an individual psyche. The reason why our purposes are different has to do with the particular energy that we carry, which is a product of the balancing of the energies in the collective psyche. You might think of a life purpose as an encoded energetic “imprint” on our psyche, residing below the layers of the ego and disowned shadow material. And discovering one’s life purpose involves learning what that encoding, and consequently, that imprint, are.

My intention here is to introduce the concepts. Methods and techniques have been developed for those seeking out the life purpose, and which I use in the life purpose work I offer.

(C) 2006-2007 Cal Simone
[First published in the MKP New Warrior Journal, January 2006.]
[Revised, August 2007.]