Four
Questions to Access Your Highest Passion!
By
Patrick Harbula
After the publishing of The Magic of the Soul, I
have done countless radio appearances, church lectures, workshops,
seminars and classes on the subject of the book. I started
out focusing on meditation training, emotional healing, and
one of the primary themes of the book—profound acceptance.
The last two years however, my focus has shifted almost primarily
to the topic contained within the last chapter of the book—Life
Purpose.
Through
experimentation and testing the market, I have found that
across the board people everywhere are interested in a deeper
sense of purpose, mission, and passion in their lives. The
exercises and theories I have developed along this subject
have captivated audiences of hundreds of thousands through
radio appearances and have intrigued individuals across all
psycho graphic categories including age, cultural background,
economic status, and spiritual persuasion or experience. I
have had people with no metaphysical experience and spiritual
teachers of several decades who all respond ecstatically with
the insights gained from the four simple questions this article
will elucidate.
I
developed this set questions to quickly help people define
their life purpose and to illustrate how using the definition
as a mantra or affirmation can dramatically increase the quality
of life for the individual and for those they influence in
their daily lives, as well as lead to the greatest success
imaginable in career or vocation. It has only been recently,
since beginning the pilot program for my Life Purpose Coaching
Certification Program, that I began teaching this system to
others with phenomenal results.
Whether
you are a minister, practitioner, counselor, coach, or supportive
friend, you can use these four questions to empower the people
you wish to influence. I use this process in coaching sessions,
at the beginning of church board retreats, and in corporate
consulting. The goal is to come up with the most succinct
(I recommend five or six words and no more than 12) and powerful
definition of life purpose.
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present this process
at a workshop at the UCRS Gathering in San Diego. I asked
the participants to work with a partner and ask the four questions.
The results were phenomenal. One minister said after the program
“As we were going through the process, I kept saying
to myself, it couldn’t be this simple, but it worked.
It completely clarified life purpose for myself and my partner.”
And it worked for all forty people in the room. I had a similar
experience in facilitating the same process at the joint practitioner’s
conference in Simi Valley a month ago. 140 practitioners and
ministers walked out of the building buzzing with the passion
of their life purpose. Here is how it works.
QUESTION ONE
What do you love to do that makes the world a better place,
or in some way contributes to the lives of others?
The point of this question is to determine a purpose that
is general enough that it can be applied through any career,
vocation, or service project. It can in fact be applied at
any moment in time. It is not an activity, but an intention
that is fulfilled through any possible activity. For example,
if someone is a writer, they can’t write all the time.
But they can fulfill their purpose, which could be to inspire,
or to move people, or to open hearts.
In
The Magic of the Soul, I write:
"If
your purpose is to teach love and your occupation is to make
bombs, it will be difficult to reconcile your purpose with
your career. Begin by teaching love in every way possible
while making bombs. Share love with the people with whom you
make bombs. Inspire a vision of a world where bombs are not
necessary. It is much more effective to fulfill your purpose
where you are rather than trying to get to a place in the
future where you can begin to fulfill your purpose. As you
teach love more effectively while making bombs, the path to
your ideal career will automatically become clearer. As you
become more proficient at fulfilling your purpose, doors open
magically, allowing you to increasingly fulfill it with greater
influence, results, and rewards.
How often have we thought that if I could just get another
job or if I only had enough money, then I could really fulfill
my purpose. But if we project into the future, we may never
realize it, because the future doesn’t really exist.
There is only the ever present now. So now is the only viable
place to start."
QUESTION 2
The
second question is really a follow-up question to the first.
Because many people will answer question one with an activity
or job.
What is the most profound experience you would like someone
to receive as a result of experiencing your service or through
any interaction with you?
If the answer to the first question is something like, “I
am an artist, I love to paint.”
Then
the second question can be, what is the most profound experience
you would like people to receive when they view your art?
Or, what is the most profound experience you want people to
receive from any interaction with you? This helps make it
more general and fit the criteria of what we love to do that
makes the world a better place and can be applied at any moment
in time. If you haven’t answered these two questions
for yourself. Stop here and take a moment to answer. . . .
Once life purpose is defined, we can use it as a mantra to
access our highest passion consistently in the moment. By
doing so, we access our soul power and become the best we
can be in that moment. Every one of us is already fulfilling
our life purpose whether or not we have defined it. It is
what we do naturally.
To
expand the influence of our purpose, however, look at the
areas in your life where you aren’t applying it. What
would happen if when you have a conflict with your spouse
or someone with whom you work, you were able to stop and ask
“How can I fulfill my life purpose in this moment for
myself and this individual.”
How would the quality of your life shift if you applied your
life purpose in the mundane moments, when you are board or
irritable? Imagine that you are standing in line at the supermarket
and there are nine people standing in front of you, and the
first person in line pulls out about 70 coupons—and
you are late for a meeting. Usually not the time you are most
likely going to think about fulfilling your purpose.
But
if you do, think about how the situation might shift. Imagine
that you notice the person in line next to you and start a
conversation with the intention of fulfilling your purpose
in that moment. Imagine that you touch that person’s
heart and empower their day and also receive the fulfillment
of their purpose. When we serve others with our best, we naturally
bring the best out of them.
Two important things happen when we fulfill our purpose in
the moment. 1) We connect with our passion and our soul power.
This is a spiritual practice of course, and I have discovered
that it is the most powerful spiritual practice we can apply.
Our purpose mantra is not an affirmation that we have pulled
out of the air, it is the most powerful statement about who
we are and why we are here. As I state in The Magic of
the Soul:
"When we embrace and empower our purpose through our
careers, through all of our activities in life, a wide channel
opens from the heart of the soul allowing its magic to flow
into our lives and all those we touch."
I would now add: When we are living our purpose, we are in
a state of grace. We move into the realm of the extraordinary
where synchronicity is the norm and miracles are commonplace.
When we are connected to our passion and purpose, we are emitting
the most powerful and positive magnetic field of energy of
which we are capable. There is also no greater force for clarifying
direction. This is why I start with defining purpose with
anyone I am coaching to reach a great dream. The more consistently
we apply our purpose in our lives, the more clear we become
about how to apply it in increasingly effective and successful
ways.
A woman who took my workshop, Life Your Passion: Life Purpose
in Career, later signed up for my Life Purpose Coaching Program.
At the first session of the coaching program she said, “I
have been applying my life purpose as I defined it in the
workshop to my job (she is a career guidance counselor for
under privileged children going into the workplace), which
is to connect people with their spirit. I found that I have
become so much better at my job, and I now feel that I have
no choice about moving forward and expanding my ability to
help people touch their spirit in more direct ways.”
2) When we are living the passion of our purpose, we create
opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise be there. You
never know who is going to be standing in line next to you
at the supermarket. There are countless times when I have
walked into a room and asked the question, “How can
I empower others in this moment?” and an opportunity
to serve in some meaningful way in the future presented itself,
sometimes very lucrative opportunities, that wouldn’t
have come up if I had not had that clear intention.
QUESTIONS
3 AND 4
These two questions can be asked one right after another.
Question four is a quick follow-up to question three.
What is the most important quality or guidance that you did
not receive enough of as a child?
How does it feel when you create or share that quality or
guidance with someone else?
About
a year ago I was presenting a one-hour lecture on Living Your
Passion at a small library in Tahoe, California. After doing
an exercise to clarify life purpose, a woman in the third
row raised her hand and said,
“I
don’t know what my purpose or my passion is. I’m
really confused.”
“What
do you love to do that makes the world a better place or contributes
to the lives of others?” I asked.
“I’m
not sure. Nothing has ever really worked out for me.”
“What did you not get enough of when you were a child?”
I asked.
“Safety from my brother’s abuse,” was her
immediate reply.
I paused as a deafening silence filled the room.
“How
do you feel when you create safety for others, when you inspire
or empower someone to feel safe and secure?”
Her
face lit up with a brilliant smile. “Yes. I love to
do that,” she said. But I have tried working for some
centers for women, and I don’t feel I have been successful
at empowering others to feel safe.”
I paused again and then asked (with some tears welling up
in my eyes),
“Are
you aware that you just created the safety for everyone in
this room to go deeper into their process by taking the risk
to share something so intimately personal?”
Everyone in the room nodded their agreement.
I
will never forget the courage of this woman and the effect
she had on the room. I have had the opportunity to witness
thousands of people light up when answering the question,
how do you feel when you create for someone else what you
didn’t get enough of as a child. It has become crystal
clear to me that there is a universal and intense connection
between the most important guidance or quality that we didn’t
receive enough of as a child and what drives our passion.
hat
we didn’t receive enough of is what we most want to
create in the world. It is what excites us beyond all else
in life when we demonstrate it in the world or facilitate
its realization in someone else. It is also what we most aspire
to heal within ourselves, what we struggle with, and in fact,
often what we think is holding us back from being the best
we can be, from accomplishing our highest vision for our life.
The
truly transformational gestalt of this realization is that
if the quality or guidance that we didn’t receive enough
of is what inspires us to create it in the world—to
fulfill our purpose—then it is not a liability. It is
our greatest asset. As Robert Bly, the great poet said “My
wound is my gift to the world.” This re-framing inspires
the deepest form of self-acceptance. If what I feel is my
greatest block is really my greatest strength, then nothing
can hold me back from realizing my full magnificence.
Ahead
is an example from my own experience regarding this dynamic.
When The Magic of the Soul was first published, I
began doing more personal appearances and media events (mostly
radio shows) than I had ever done before or ever expected
that I would. I approached these events with the intention
of presenting myself as “an authority” on the
subject of spiritual growth—after all, I had become
a published author and therefore was expected to be an expert.
There
is nothing wrong with presenting oneself as an authority,
unless it is to the exclusion of other aspects of self. After
a short while, I became depressed. I am not the type of person
to get depressed very often, so I decided to employ one of
the techniques I had learned and taught for years from spiritual
psychology. I did some voice dialogue with the depression.
I received an image of the repression. It was a sad child
that looked like me at about six years old.
“What is wrong Pat,” I asked.
“I am afraid that no one loves me, which makes me feel
unworthy.”
“Why do you think that know one loves you?”
“Because it seems like you don’t love me.”
“What makes you think I don’t love you? Don’t
I tell you I love you frequently enough?”
“Yes you tell me you love me. But then you hide me from
others, especially those who you think are important and who
you are trying to help.”
“I see. So when I hide you during radio shows or lectures
it makes you feel more unworthy, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” the little boy said while crying (which
was really me crying as I role-played as the little boy).
“I understand now,” I said filled with compassion
for this unhealed aspect of myself. I want you to know that
I love and value you and appreciate your sensitivity. In fact,
I realize that it is your sensitivity that helps me to help
others. I will commit to no longer hiding you. In fact, from
now on I am going to celebrate you. I will share you with
those who I am serving. How does that feel Pat?
“Yes, that is what I need, I feel honored now.”
I decided from that moment on that I would honor and celebrate
the sense of unworthiness within me. I know this may sound
a little radical, and in some ways flies in the face of new
thought principles. “Isn’t that giving more power
to something that is unreal?” some ask me.
In
my experience (which I know is the experience of many other
Science of Mind teachers), the wonderful principle taught
in Science of Mind and other new thought systems of affirming
and honoring our divinity is profoundly augmented when we
equally honor our humanity. While we are perfect, whole, and
complete, we are also imperfect humans unfolding the realization
of our perfection.
When
we honor our humanness, our imperfection, our weaknesses,
we can appreciate and realize the perfection within our imperfection.
When we do spiritual mind treatment beginning with the premise
that we are perfect just the way we are in all our imperfection—loving
and accepting ourselves with all of our appearing weaknesses—then
realizing our divine perfection becomes a much simpler and
more natural process. We are not treating to get or be more,
but to recognize a continuing deeper understanding of our
divine perfection.
The
responses from these four questions can be used to create
a succinct and powerful definition of individual purpose.
Once the definition is created, it can be used as a mantra
to access the full power of soul purpose in every moment.
It can also be directed toward a vision of the most direct,
powerful, and ecstatic expression of that purpose in the future—the
dream career, vocation, or service project. There are three
simple strategies that guarantee success at meaningful, successful
service:
1. Apply life purpose in the here and now.
2. Have a clear and complete vision of the dream (two, five,
or even 10 years down the line).
3. Have a practical plan for how to get there, and take the
practical steps. One need not know all the steps, exactly
how to realize complete success. As long as the first few
steps are outlined and taken, the rest will become clear along
the road to fulfilling one’s highest passion.
Live
your purpose in the now. Move toward your dream. And enjoy
the journey toward its realization.
To
use a tool that will guide you through the process of defining
your life purpose in about 10 minutes, click on this link
www.purpose_form.htm.
Toll
Free 866-204-2261
Living
Purpose Institute
2593
Young Avenue
Thousand
Oaks, CA 91360
patrick@magicofthesoul.com
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