Troubles and Purpose

Inner Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

Inner Work

For week of April 4, 2016

Troubles and Purpose

When faced with serious troubles, what do we do, how do we respond? The most natural response may be to withdraw into ourselves, to lick our wounds as it were. This may or may not be an effective coping mechanism. Perhaps we need to reach out to others, friends or professionals. Perhaps we need to take an active role in resolving or mitigating the troubles assailing us. But a great deal remains out of our control and despite our best efforts we may be left with pain or loss. Do we just give in, wallow in it, and perhaps descend into depression?

There is a big difference between giving in and accepting. In giving in, we passively lose ourselves to the troubles, falling underneath them. Acceptance, by contrast, has an affirmative aspect, where we acknowledge that this trouble is part of how our life is right now, but not the whole of it. If it is a serious trouble, it may seem to be all-encompassing. Still, one way to keep moving, alongside and despite the trouble, is to live with purpose.

One level of purpose is personal. It is right to seek a personally satisfying life, to do what we enjoy, to fulfill our dreams and develop our potentialities, to engage with friends, family, and colleagues, to take care of our body and satisfy it within the boundaries of non-harming, to work and produce to support ourselves. So in the face of troubles, we may be able to reach for solace in pursuing our personal purposes.

A second level of purpose is serving other people. Within the real limitations that might be thrust on us by our troubles, we can still embrace the purpose of serving and caring for others, even if only by a smile. We do what we can for our family, friends, and our society. This matters because it raises us out of the self-involvement that becomes particularly insistent in times of trouble. Service connects us more deeply with the world beyond our body, mind, and ego. Service makes us useful. In the same vein, we take care, to the extent we can, not to impose our own suffering on others, nor to infect them with it. However, when truly necessary, we gratefully allow others to serve us, providing them the opportunity to be of service.

A third level of purpose is serving the sacred. We do that by our inner work, be it of kindness, presence, prayer, or simply letting go of our suffering. All inner work serves the sacred by purifying will and transforming energies. The question for us is whether we allow our troubles to displace and block our inner work. Inner work in the face of trouble has even more value, because it requires greater motivation, greater intention.

Suffering is our normal reaction to pain. Though it does not diminish the pain, inner work requires us to sacrifice our suffering. If we dwell on our suffering and self-pity, we lose the little energy and will left to us by our troubles, and have nothing with which to be kind or present. Nevertheless, even with that nothing, we can still pray, if only to ask for help. This is the positive side of trouble, that it can purify us, stripping away the baggage of self-centeredness and egoism. Rising from the ashes with a cleansed heart, we approach the sacred through kindness, presence, and prayer.

When times of trouble come to you, as they to do to us all, please see if you can carry yourself through by engaging with purpose.