How to Find Your Purpose and Put Your Spark into Motion

Finding my purpose has been a lifelong quest. It’s played out as a sort of subconscious background-track to my life, and as I’ve gotten older the need to find my purpose has become a pressing issue that builds on itself with unhelpful pressure, bordering on panic. What is my purpose?! What am I here for?!

Creating The Spark Movement has been a meditation for me in unlearning myself and learning anew. As I consider how to help others – especially children – to find and retain their Spark I am connecting with my own inner world. It all starts with us, after all. As the Spark revealed itself to me more and more, I had a realisation: what if I’d been thinking about purpose all wrong – what if it’s not what I do, but who I am?

In the language of the Spark, your purpose is your Spark, and vice-versa. Connecting to the deeper part of us that’s found at the intersection of our human-selves and soul-selves means being in alignment with our true self – the person we came here to be. It’s the part of us that’s beyond our limiting beliefs, our fears and self-doubt, our conditioned mind and ego. So, when we connect to our Spark and live from this deeper perspective of inner alignment we are, effectively, living our purpose. There’s no greater mystery than that. When I am my true, authentic self I am naturally radiating my Spark, I am in a state of flow and receptivity with the greater intelligence of creation, and I am a cooperative component to allow that intelligence to express itself through me, with me, because of me. 

Human Beings vs Human Doings

Paradoxically, then, while our purpose is not what we do but who we are, it’s the expression of that Spark that is crucial. The human experience is not passive: we’re not here just to witness life but to create it. We are here to expand ourselves through the process of thinking, feeling and acting. Connecting with your Spark and feeling that upswell of excitement, passion and joy is a wonderful experience, but one that begs to be acted upon. So, while our traditional idea of ‘purpose’ equates to action, it’s actually something to be felt and experienced, and then acted upon.

When it boils down to it, taking action and ‘doing stuff’ is synonymous with being human. I am, therefore I do. It’s truly a gift to be able to have a thought and then act upon it as a creative experience.

But increasingly action (often without much thought) is becoming a human expectation. In our Western, capitalist societies we have become attuned to the idea of our worth being linked to our output, and the busier we are the more we’re rewarded by our out-of-whack systems. At work, burn out is almost synonymous with success, and even in our leisure time, the ‘fear of missing out’ drives us to an almost constant state of activity, and let’s not even get started on social media and its relentless draw on our mental energy. We’re taking more action than ever before, our lives a whirlwind of constancy, but is it helping us to be the purposeful, aligned humans we intended to be?

Taking Forced Action

So keen we are to prove our worth and stand up and be measured that many of us act first and think later (if at all), and rarely does our Spark enter the equation. This action is what could be described as ‘forced action’. It is driven by our ego which uses language such as “I must” or “I should” or “I have to.” There’s little space for inner-alignment and so our action is forced, pushed or cajoled into being. Often, when taking forced action we encounter resistance – the natural messenger of the broader creative intelligence that is sounding like an alarm bell, altering us to the fact that we’re forcing the natural order of things, and there is another way that feels like ease and flow, if only we pause and connect within.

On the other end of the scale, there’s inertia. This is the state of being that’s marked by paralysis and is underpinned by fear. We don’t know what to do next, neither are we actively connected to the deep wisdom and intuition that’s accessed via our Spark, and so we feel cut off and confused. There’s often a sense of frustration and self-doubt, yet also a knowing that we’re missing something we can’t quite put our finger upon. Inertia is the contrast to taking forced action which doesn’t leave much thinking or feeling space to realise we’re missing anything at all!

In the middle of the scale of action is inaction, and rather than being a negative response to life, inaction can be hugely powerful – the act of not acting contains within it a deep opportunity for learning and self-reflection, if we allow it.

Inaction can be categorised into two phases, the first being a state of waiting or gathering. In this phase we are preparing the way to act by first acting internally. We create space to go within, to connect to our Spark and truly listen to our heart’s impulses. We recognise our tendencies to act from ego, identifying the unhelpful beliefs that drive such action, and instead we hold back. We wait. We listen.

At the right time, in line with our Spark and the greater intelligence of all that is, we move into a state of poise: this is a phase of readiness to act, knowing that our soul or higher self will guide us to action at the right time, with the right people, in the right place. There is no forcing or pushing, just knowing and responding to our inner guidance, with patience and a ready eagerness. Being poised is in itself an act of great trust: we feel the urge to do and to prove ourselves, we let feelings of self-judgment arise and we let them fall. We trust that we will be guided by the voice of our Spark, at the right time, and until then we wait.  

Finally, we are ready to act, and we do so from our Spark, rather than our ego. Our actions take on a wholly different quality – when our action is inspired it is aligned with the creative intelligence of life and facilitated by the intelligence of our Spark. Inspired action feels like being in a state of flow and receptivity, responding to life rather than forcing life, and is a highly creative act. Our outputs are then naturally imbued with a different quality of energy, their frequency (and therefore their impact) far greater than our ego-led activities.

Taking ‘inspired action’ and feeling the difference

How do we know we’re taking inspired action? By the way it feels. Tuning in to the subtleties of our inner world has been all but drummed out of us by societies that want us to take our cues from those who hold the power. Nations of people who are self-led, self-guided and empowered are not easy to manipulate and control, after all.

By learning to go within and becoming attuned to how we feel, we build a feedback-loop with our Spark which speaks in physical sensations, emotions, intuition and insights. We learn to be discerning of our own behaviours, thoughts and feelings. “Is this coming from my Spark?” we ask ourselves, “Or am I acting from my ego?” Over time it becomes easier and easier to discern, until forcing action feels so unnatural that it seems unthinkable to even try.

Imagine if we taught a generation of children the difference between forced and inspired action, and gave them the tools to know the difference? A world where children grow up to be Spark-connected adults, led by a deeper source of wisdom, self-contained and self-knowing. Perhaps that’s my purpose, after all…