Unclear about Life Purpose

[luismatos]

Quick background of myself: Started following Actualized.org at 15/16, did the life purpose course and started meditating at 17. I'm now 19, taking Computer Science degree, trying to figure out this thing called life.

When I was 17, I took a long pause from the frenetic toxic kind of life and started fixing myself, meditating, exercising, eating healthier, journaling and all those things. One thing I battled with constantly was my life purpose. As I was discovering myself, many things did not make sense anymore and the whole trajectory of my life was a big question mark. The only thing I was sure I was committed to was meditation. My spiritual experience with 5-Meo-DMT and slow disidentification from the body-mind made me very serious about meditation and it's very present today in my life. One thing I'm 100% clear is: I will pursue Reality, no matter the cost.

After about 1.5 years of lots of reading, meditation, shamanic experiences and Mooji gatherings, I spontaneously stopped reading so much, talking so much, researching so much and mostly kept it to myself and did my meditation. Things are working nicely.

Now a huge interest arose in keeping focus on something and devoting myself to it. It just feels very important for me, right now, to give myself totally to 1 thing. The clock is ticking, life is passing away is what I'm feeling nowadays. I keep a daily reminder on my calendar that "You're going to die", "Your life is limited". It beeps at 11:00am and 6:00pm. It gives me great motivation to stop doing stupid things and focus on the important things.

But these daily reminders make me super conscious that I'm not focusing myself entirely on 1 thing. And that's what I want to do. Focus my energies on 1 thing. I don't know why, it just feels right.

Right now, I know that I love programming, building and designing software. I also know that I love meditation and there will inevitably be one day that I'll be focusing on it 100%.

The problem is my mind has hugeeeee resistance to starting and getting into projects. This resistance has been going on since I was 13 (started programming with 11). I remember that the issues I had when I was 13, 14 and 15 are the same issues I have today! Please help me, I'm sick of this.

Here is how the story usually plays:

1. OK, I want to program something, build something!
2. OK, this will do.
3. Oh but are you going to waste your time on this? But you know so little about this topic, you'll have to spend a whole 6 months to get really good at it.
4. Too much resistance felt, cravings for porn and distraction arise.

And another funny thing is, because my meditation has silenced my mind so much, whenever a thought appears, it's usually discarded and released. But I guess it's not silent enough to let the life purpose flow naturally.

Which brings me to another point. Part of me wants to meditate more and more so as not to battle with this resistance and free the emotional barriers behind it (these battles don't seem to go anywhere anyways).

I guess I'm very - or shall I say - my mind is very confused.

I have tried the just do it approach, but at some point there's so many excuses and resistances, the motivation flows in the opposite direction. The thing, these excuses and resistances feel soooo valid and true. As a result, I can't seem to figure out a thing to focus myself on.

To recap:

Focused on meditation. Want life purpose to focus on too.

Too much resistance to focus on one thing only. Fall back to meditation or distraction.

 

Does anyone have any advice? Thank you.

[Cocolove]

Why not go 100% on meditation/enlightenment right now, if you know you will at some point?

[luismatos]

2 hours ago, Cocolove said:

Why not go 100% on meditation/enlightenment right now, if you know you will at some point?

I think I'm not fit yet, either emotionally or physically. And now, since I'm studying anyways, I might as well focus on the area of study.

[Arthur]

19 hours ago, luismatos said:

Too much resistance to focus on one thing only. Fall back to meditation or distraction.

Does anyone have any advice? Thank you.

 

I think you're using meditation as a distraction from starting your software projects. Meditation / spiritual work is its own thing. Mastering a subject and building life purpose is another. 

Everybody experience serious resistance in face of a large undertaking. Half of the willpower goest just to get something started. I notice this a lot in myself. Because I'm usually good at envisioning and planning a project, I get miserable before the rubber meets the road. I guess there is really no way around it. We need to have a vision and take baby steps.

Unfortunately, no amount of theoretical knowledge will give you the skills needed to provide value. If you really want to be a good programmer, you need to go beyond your school curriculum and build your own projects. That means you need to work twice as much as typical CS student. On the bright side, once you have mastered this skill, you can apply it anywhere. The nice thing about programming is that it is generic enough that you can apply it in almost area. You can be the person building the infrastructure for the next Actualized.org and changing countless people's lives!

I'd recommend cutting out distractions (if you haven't already) like TV, video games etc.
Doing meditation for 30-60 minutes daily, no need for other fancy techniques and teachings.
Committing at least one hour a day to build projects, or acquiring the skill necessary to start a project.

[Himanshu]

Paralysis by Analysis. Been there. 

I recommend taking action. Setting up a schedule doing something ANYTHING and sticking to it for a week and see how that goes. Set up ANY difficult(resistance-inducing/ whatever you DON'T like to do) habit and do it daily, however small it is. Break the resistance. Feel through it. 

Also, thanks for the reminder idea. I've set up similar daily reminders. Hits like a rock. 

[Jedd]

@luismatos Get clear on your values from the life purpose course and use those as a compass to guide you. They will also help you to prioritise where you place your energy and bust any limiting beliefs that are holding you back with programming.