Purpose, Practice, Prayer
Purpose is much deeper than intention and goals, yet supports them. It is a topic dear to me as it inspired the center into being and fuels it every day.
Considering your purpose is profound and radical, and it can be simple. Caveat, it will ask you to be honest and vulnerable with yourself, and it is best to keep this private at first (if not always.)
Lets explore these questions:
What are you wanting, hoping, longing for? What does your heart desire?
What would truly bring you happiness, fulfillment, peace?
Why?
The why is often revealing and may require more and more excavation. In many spiritual traditions this is referred to as the purification of motivation. The purer the motive, the more potent the possibility. Purity aside…
Next explore:
Making a positive statement of purpose, it might start something like this: To be…To live…To fulfill…To trust…
Now, this is probably starting to reflect your values. It may be surprising, as It probably has little to do with anything outward, how you are seen or what you might achieve?
The yogic twist:
Explore phrasing it in the first-person, present, active- tense. It might start like this: I am…I l live…I trust…I have…
As a yoga tool this final statement is called your sankalpa. This is often translated as inner resolve, or solemn vow. While we may have something tangible we are longing to manifest- a new home, a healing, a relationship- a sankalpa evokes something even deeper. It’s a positive, active, statement that informs all of what you are doing, how you are relating, and inspires your fuller potentials.
Rather than the statement being aspirational (May I…) or futuristic (To be…), it is already here, already happening. Past, Present, and Future are suspended temporarily. We are touching the eternal now and feeling what it is like to have what we desire- not as something abstract, but as something real and embodied. It won’t last, but it does help.
Using the example of wanting something tangible- it can be there too. For example:
If you are struggling with chronic pain….
May I find help, relief, peace from this physical pain…might become;
I gracefully receive support for my healing
I care for my body and its need with diligence and courage
My body, mind, and heart are capable of working with all that arises….
Patience
One thing I like to note about the word sankalpa is another take on its meaning, one rarely mentioned. The idea of inner resolve, or solemn vow has always chafed me. It brings up the idea of willpower or abnegation (renouncing the world), which I have never been that attracted to as a spiritual orientation. The root san has to with connection and kalpa has to do with a long, long period of time. In this way the word implies it will take a long time. It will not be immediate. We can feel into it NOW. We can name it NOW. Yet, like many important learnings it will take time. It will be revealed over time. We will live into it. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advises a young poet in, Letter’s to a Young Poet:
Be patient to all that is unresolved in your heart…
Try to love the questions themselves
Like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be give you
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
Live along some distant day into the answer.
So, while your sankalpa is a present tense statement that you practice feeling, sensing, knowing right now, as you speak/think it. There is also the understanding that there is more to come, more to be revealed.
Practice
This brings us to the subject of practice. I have an affection for this word. It means we stay open to learning, that we stay sensitive to experience, that we enjoy the journey, that we are never totally there. Not in the sense that we are unsatisfied or driven, but that we continue to be curious and ready to be surprised.
A great example of someone both living and practicing into his purpose is Gil Hedley. He is a charismatic anatomist who studied theology and feel in love with human dissection. Many of us at the center attended a teaching he gave live in December. He had dissected the entire nervous system and was describing the process and learnings for us somanauts who appreciate his insights. Somanauts is a word he coined, a blend of the words soma/body and nauts/traveler. He describes his work as being dedicated to the exploration of inner space, and his purpose to encourage fellow somanauts to appreciate, explore, and embody the wonders of the human form. Talk about a person with a purpose! To quote a few Gilism’s on this subject of practice as learning:
“We learn to see what we see, and agree with what we see.” Meaning that it isn’t necessarily how it has to be seen….
“I dissect so I can feel the relationships…” Meaning it doesn’t necessarily match what is in the anatomy textbooks…
“That’s the fun of it, to have your knowledge turned upside down, again and again, by the truth of the human form…” Meaning he keeps discovering things he did not expect…
“Hold your good practices dearly, and the stories you tell about them lightly…” meaning how we go about something to help someone with the body may work consistently well, but it may not work the way you think it does…
“It is not airy fairy to ask your heart and gut how they/you feel, it is built into your body to register and know…” meaning the body knows the score.
What I marveled at most was not what I learned about the body, but what I witnessed from a person totally immersed in his purpose and practice. A strange one by all accounts, human dissection; yet made sacred and vivifying by his dedication and fellowship.
The topic of prayer is vast and deserves its own chapter. Suffice it to say for now, that your sankalpa, when you find it or simply explore it, is your heart’s prayer, and will help light the way.
Natasha Korshak is a long-time teacher and trainer of yoga, meditation, mindfulness and MBSR, and has been working in the field of integrative health and wellness her entire professional career. She is a graduate of the Interfaith Theological Seminary and an ordained Interfaith Minister specializing in contemplative practice, grief processing, and spiritual direction. Her study and training of mind/body/spirit methods is extensive and she has learned from many of the pioneers in their discipline. As the founder and director of the Sol Center she is well regarded for her depth, warmth, authenticity, and the smile in her voice.