Does life purpose have to solve a conscious problem?

[stephenkettley]

Is making art a good life purpose to follow? I am interested in potentially committing to trying to unlock deep creativity and learn to make music, but it doesn't feel like it solves a problem high enough on the Spiral. Is it still valid, or as one develops is it better to find a purpose that solves a deeper problem? Any advice. Could it still be as fulfilling or would it fall short?

[oOo]

Depends on the kind of music, art and whether it is true to you. 

We can only receive what's true relative to our receptivity to it.

This is no different to our calling. 

Our purpose is much less a doing, and more a question. 

The question however, is not "What is our purpose?"

It is, "Can I answer the calling when it arrives?"

Purpose is also not a single signature in the same way many centres of our nervous system need to be online to hear it.

If we are angry and ungrounded, we are blinded and distorted.

If we are depressed and ruminative, we are apathetic and pathetic.

That said, sometimes it is only when we are most unconscious and have completely and utterly given up, that the light of life will return to us for a moment, before that light fully fizzles out such as in a near death experience, or before that light is ready to be received again in a deeper state of meditation. 

This is true when we observe everything from over-stimulated to being over-stressed; activity without directionality is self-directed harm on anything resembling living with a sense of purpose. 

Often when kids are put in military school for example, even if they eventually enjoy it, in the beginning the military must give them constant tasks on a certain timetable to both distract them from the legitimacy (so the purpose) of a military school and align them with at least a sense of direction that is at least pointed somewhere. It is only when you are aimless, that you wonder about where you're firing the arrow, and whether you should fire the arrow at all. 20 year employment in the same company that only ever kept you interested because of the status climb only to find yourself fired after your first day of being the CEO following the completion of your 20 years rising through the ranks, or perhaps you barely made it to middle management, and stayed because you were told your retirement would be taken care of only to forget the fineprint in the contract that said if you were fired, you wouldn't be entitled to it. They wanted someone younger and faster, not someone eaten up and spat out of their own company system, so they fired you and every other employee that was too old.

Now you're directionless, now things are dangerous because prior, peoples sense of direction was handled in the same way military school provided them with a sense but not true essence of purpose to direct their lives. Many people have no idea what to do in these situations as they've spent most of their time just jumping from one predictable system that decided their purpose to the next, and now that AI is beginning to replace all those people to fill many of the outcomes of those systems, people are now forced to sit down, reduce their activity, and not press the release and eject button from life (suicide for many and suicide will go up following AI - so there's lots to empathise with here) and instead, take the time to sit down and contemplate, or perhaps start for example a project with fellow good people fired, or get back to more community based simple living. For some, now they'll have marriage and children, for others now they have more time for the family and children they already have. 

Purpose is not conscious, it is not even so much as a yearning, it is a calling, and you have to answer it if you want to live it, even when you're angry, depressed, ungrounded and ruminative after it has already illuminated itself to you. It doesn't have to be grand, ambitious, marvelous etc as its all advertised in traditional self-help, this is not for most people and when its marketed like this its setting people up for failure and at best all they get is a distorted perception of themselves, other people and the world around them. There is nothing wrong with living a simple life, community living, keeping yourself to farm life, or playing a violin alone for a few hours a day in a room while reminiscing on when say, someone's grandfather used to give them lessons. 

Purpose is simply about answering what's true, it isn't about what's consciously curated as much as it is what is already created within you to be receptive to in a state of balance, maturity and as much as possible, sense of peace and calm. Your calling may not always feel like fulfilment, it will often feel like struggle, but compared to the pursuit of anything else at the meaning level, where you most feel in balance, you will most likely feel like its the best thing you can do at the time, even if its just cleaning the dishes. We humans are not that special, nor that bad, and it is the balance in between that makes us more receptive to what calling, we need to answer. Listen to the calls, then consciously contemplate them very purposefully now that you're answering their probability, then decide on what you're going to pursue, and stay in the signal of that pursuit. If you hangup first, it'll listen, and it'll fade, and then without knowing it, blindsighted attention will leave you back where you started; so seize the moment. Act now, but without over-activity, instead under-activity, followed by discernment, then the answering, then the conscious curation, then the pursuit, and to have as enjoyable conversation as you can on the other end of the phone conversation. Its an intangible signal that all of us as sentient creatures tend to feel, even if that feeling lives behind the sense and or feeling of responsibility, love, deep thought, respect, dignity, pride, or even loyalty to a friend during a difficult life stage. People that make the right decisions when it comes to purpose, notice how they tend to make the right decisions in similar ways in other areas of their life; so when it comes to the biggest decisions of our lives, start with the smallest ones you can make and slowly graduate to bigger and bigger ones, then the largest ones will come with far greater ease and maturity.

Otherwise, Mozart created some pretty spiralling music. But you don't have to be Mozart, you can just be a bunker on a street. Examine your motivations, align with the signal that actually reveals the truth between the practical reality and the sense of alignment. 

Best wishes.