The Modern Myth of 'Finding Your Purpose'
One often made necessary because we have collectively lost touch with a culture of calling...
What To Do with Trash on a Spaceship?
Its interesting…the modern world is full of opportunities and challenges the majority of our hunter gather Ancestors could not have imagined. Perhaps the late night dreams of powerful shamans or the lucid trances of ancient visionaries may have given them a glimpse or a gestalt of what was to come.
The blaring bright lights of gargantuan cities where millions bustle, yet the people feel alone.
The ceaseless access to resources we have paired with ecological devastation and massive wealth gaps.
The internets elevation of each individuals unique voice that is often lost in the cacophony of noise.
The modern world is our world. We are a people of it and from it. Born into the 21st century to experience a pocket of what we lovingly call ‘advanced civilization’. Some might say advanced civilizations (like Atlantis) have existed before.
Fair enough.
Maybe.
Yet the ‘base rhythm’ of the human story is tribal.
There are tribes even today that have never been touched by the modernity. They see metal birds approach their land and chase them away. They dwell deep in the jungles where ‘civilized’ people dare not go. They live lives of ancient virtue.
In contrast to the wild roots we have in deep time, the sheer variety of possibilities we have access to this day is mind boggling.
It’s amazing. It’s wonderous. It’s overwhelming.
My god, it can be overwhelming. The context we are engaging with can change 5 times a minute, from an email, to a slew of differing perspectives on social media, to the demands of a partner who needs you be everything to them (what once was done by a tribe).
With modern submersible’s, we can sink to the bottom of the Ocean to lay our eyes upon creatures of the deep. Conversely, rocket ships can blast us off into space, where we can look ‘down’ at the Earth, seeing with a vantage point that is quite literally ‘celestial’.
If you wish, it might be possible for you to follow a ‘conventional’ path and become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. If conventional feels like medieval torture to you, the paths available to make your way in the world are endless.
Bobsledder. Professional model. Influencer. Mug seller. Porn star. Amazon affiliate. Artisanal beer brewer. Bread maker. Artist. A.I. Technician.
You name it, it’s out there.
While not ‘easy’ by any stretch of the imagination; the demands of a hunter gather way of life are more ‘straight forward’, where as those of modernity grow drastically in scope and complexity.
Today, we have entire industries that employ millions just to handle waste management…yet trash still spills over into landfills, oceans, and streets. This problem is magnified drastically on a spaceship: hatches that must interact with the vacuum of space, temperature reactors to burn up waste, and strict life or death protocols (to handle trash). In the past, we buried the little rubbish we did produce in the ground and moved on.
This small example representative of a core difference between the modern world, and the one our Ancestors evolved in.
The more we remove ourselves from the ‘simplicity of nature’, the more complex our problems become and the more convoluted the solution tends to be.
Yet…any of these paths could be a part your life’s work, because the modern world is our world.
Your Life’s Work: A Pro’s and Con’s List
We are each born with a seed of potential. It’s the kernel that has the capacity to grow into our ‘life’s work’. A life’s work can encompass everything from the spiritual development one undergoes, to the impact we make in our Ancestral line, to the legacy we leave behind with our gifts (and more). A part of what activates the seed is our ability to hear and heed the calls life sends us.
Each of us carries this seed within.
The things is not all seeds that go to ground are allowed to grow.
The environmental conditions matter greatly.
Thus…
The sheer complexity, variety and scope of our modern opportunities and challenges become abundantly clear in the seemingly enormous task of hearing our calling and then in response, doing our life’s work.
A ‘life’s work’ is the giving of our life force, much in the same way the wax and wick of a candle dissolve in order to give off light and heat.
So to reiterate…the opportunities many of us have been given are:
An enormous volume of potential paths we are allowed to pursue.
An ability to make a living doing them.
An enormous accessibility of open doorways.
Benefits and drawbacks tend to move together, and thus the challenges are all results of the same opportunities:
Finding what we are authentically called to do at a soul level in an ocean of possibility.
Finding a way to monetize it, while keeping it’s integrity intact, in the face many corrupted pathways
Finding the doorways that are coherent for you, and doing the inner work required to walk through them.
Finding Your Purpose Is a Modern Construct
The ‘meaning’ crisis is one that emerges from contemporary circumstances, much like a lion in a zoo, wondering why the fuck the world doesn’t make sense. Then pacing back and forth trying to regulate the inherent drives it feels, that are impelling them to do what they were born to.
We are like lions in the zoo, you and me.
Deep within we can all feel the seed potential of our life’s work.
But for many, the call has been drowned out by the noise of bustling cities. The vision of our hearts dream burned out by the blaring lights. The support of our tribes replaced by commercial demands.
Let’s keep it real:
When it comes to ‘hearing our calling and responding with our life’s work’, we must accept that there no actual infrastructure in place to aid us in doing this for ourselves. In tribal cultures, elders, doulas and shamans would be attentive to your innate gifts from birth (through both practical and magical means)…and your innate calling would be fostered for the benefit of you and the whole tribe. In this context, we are born into purpose and our life’s work is clear.
Today this aspect of our innate ways of life often requires the modern mythos of ‘finding your purpose’. For without it, we are lost adrift in ocean of nebulous relevancy. This is not to say, that some aspect of ‘finding’ was not part of ancient life, but today it is all many people have.
We require this mythological narrative today to replace the culture of calling that emerges out of the structure of tribal life.
At a deeper level beyond ‘finding purpose’…what is truly required is the ability to feel the seed within you, and hear the calling already being sent towards you. This is a mythos of destiny.
The Reverse Engineering of Social Tribal Context
The contemporary search for ‘meaning and purpose’ is a process of reverse engineering what a tribe would do for you by default. In tribal context, a way would be made for you. The straight forward demands of a hunter gather way of life also limited your options.
You were offered a way but you were also held accountable to those around you, to The Ancestors before you, and to the Gods around you.
Pro’s and con’s.
Yet, one thing was certain: an embodied clarity of purpose.
You were given a pathway forward that was in alignment with your innate gifts, those gifts were fostered, and you contributed to the whole.
Like a healthy cell inside a body.
You were not being bombarded with commercialized narratives meant to turn you into a battery for the machine. You were not deeply armored and numb to the seed within you. Your destiny, the infrastructure around you, and your innate way if life all cohered together. You knew that this is what you born to do, and in most cases, you simply did it.
What a novel concept…well, ancient actually.
My Own Challenges
I have not been immune to contemporary challenges by any means.
Far from it…I have whole heartedly danced with them intimately for years. They have felt like a treacherous lover enticing me with both seductive and repulsive impulses. Clear one moment, and then like a rogue wave, under water the next.
At times, I have wanted to quit doing this kind of work altogether. I have felt moments of despair, frustration, anguish, doubt, and fear along side bliss, elation, hope, clarity and certainty.
Finding my way through the maze of possibilities, while staying true to the work and trying to build an actual business that I want to shepard has been an alchemical process of the highest order. There is so much resistance for some of us.
We are asked to heal the wounds that prevent us from heeding the call.
We are asked to shed the identities tied up in serving at the altar of an exclusively commercial construct: you know…needing to make money to survive (that whole small thing we call capitalism).
We are asked to ignore the message that tells you ‘you can be anything’, so we can hear the song of what we actually are.
Like a triangulation process taken me through the endless sea of possibilities.
All the while the voices of influencers who sell business courses shout from the towers…telling us to become automatons who covertly manipulate others on demand. Nope.
All the while the voices of the Ancestors echo from the deep past…speaking of the purpose I was already born into, as my own inner voice thrums in my chest speaking of innate talents and gifts. Yup.
All the while, staying attuned to the needs of the people and principles I serve, so the work carries through to the intended audience. Critical.
It took years to learn that while external modern sources can be helpful guides, they never replace your own soul and the helping spirits you came here with. What I have been repeatedly asked to do by the spirits and my own soul is to trust in the principles I apprehend to be true about life itself.
Let go of the ego’s (or small self) claim on what it thinks ‘should happen’ and the timing it thinks it requires; listen to the deeper message from your soul that emerges through your heart as love, and innate capacity.
The details will work themselves out and the world soul will make a way for you. Trust.
And if not, well…I prefer to heed the call and fail to grow then never try at all.
We are born with a purpose of that I am certain.
It can be small, it can be large. It can be primarily worldly, or spiritual. It can be loud or quiet. One thing I have come to anchor into: I refuse to become something I am not to serve the modern game of profit taking at the expense of depth.
If you find yourself in a similar pair of shoes, I invite you to go barefoot like our ancient Ancestors, by trusting more deeply that you were born with a seed, and that the world soul is asking you to do something with it. You come from a lineage waiting to support you, the way our tribal mother and fathers have for eons. Listen to the rumble beneath your feet and follow them.
And In The Spirit of Following Calling…Some Shapeshifting and Branding Changes
A couple of months ago I went through the Shaped by Divination method in regards to the work I have been doing on Substack and my various channels. In fact, I have been steadily applying the method (in this regard) since then. Along with deep soul searching of course.
The answers from the spirits and my own soul have all revolved around a central theme:
Cohere everything together into a unified whole directed towards a central aim, and ‘focus’ by removing the excess.
Let me tell you something: my brain works like a multidimensional squirl.
Focus can be tough at times.
1. Dissolving The Breath of Time and Pulsing with The Seasons
I loved the ‘idea’ of doing this, and in practice it has only been getting in the way of what wants to come through. As soon as I place anything in too rigid of a container, I lose the pulse of it.
I stop receiving transmissions.
It feels forced.
This does not serve you or the work.
Not only this…
But they are distractions from the larger arc of the work which is decidedly moving towards fleshing out Primordial Shamanism and the cultural recontextualizing necessary to practice it, which will continue in the various mediums they already have, (I may still share divinations when they are in alignment with this aim and arise organically, but no longer on a preplanned schedule).
The Soul Forge and Source Well, will remain as a Yin and Yang of support and challenge in alignment with this central aim.
2. The Weaving Gold Podcast Will Become ‘The Living Ancestor Podcast’
Weaving Gold is body of wisdom which is a part of The Ancestral Now. It’s focuses on finding and living one’s destiny as an offering to the whole, in the context of modern times (kind of like what this article is about).
I have enjoyed creating this podcast, but it’s too disparate and fractured from the central aim of my work on it’s own. Becoming a ‘The Living Ancestor’ is one of core underlying purposes of Primordial Shamanism. Weaving Gold serves this purpose, not the other way around.
The Living Ancestor as a concept will be fleshed out soon.
