Existential Pain and Soul-Purpose — 04/17/2021

This has not been a good week for me. I do feel I have accomplished something by acquiring a job above the pay that I would have otherwise been stuck with without my digital marketing training. There are major props in that and cause for celebration. However, I am still living at home with a stress-inducing family, feeling quite alone in my experience. My new manager can be quite difficult as well, making it hard for me to feel celebratory.

Upon reflection of this, what comes to mind is the idea of a thin margin of balance between resistance and flow, which is necessary to maintain forward motion. Appropriately served, the right amount of tension can be exactly what is required for stretching human potential. This should not be forgotten as one undergoes the necessary experiences we all might have to go through in order to manifest intentions. Of course, the key phrase is balance. This means, of course, discernment between two extremes; too much comfort can lean on complacency, while too much stress may lead to breakdown. Also, one may lead to an unbalanced desire for the other.

In light of this, I feel I have been leaning too much into stress without the necessary structures to keep me from breaking point. I recognize a big part of this is certain needs being unmet. However, the bigger picture reveals that what I’m ultimately aiming for is the acquisition or reclamation of the givens of human flourishing and that I have sacrificed certain immediate comforts for the sake of better future gains. What counts then is the right kind of relationship to unmet needs, such as human contact and control over my surrounding.

When considering the right relationship to emotional and existential pain in this context, I really don’t have a perfect idea of what expressions this might take. It would necessarily be a different expression for each person for obvious reasons. But I am striving to understand what form is appropriate to me for dealing with it in real-time. I have considered various strategies for coming to terms with existential pain, such as religious conversion, hedonism, dialogos, and various other psycho-somatic modalities, in order to release old wounds. Each has its own attraction (and repulsion), its own wisdom (and misapplication). Perhaps all these strategies and more can be used intentionally depending on the trigger for their appropriate utilization. What I think any useful modality shares at its core is responsibility — to be response-ful towards what happens outside your control — to integrate one’s own inner locus of control with the encompassing circumstances without, which we have no control over.

Intention-forming can be very useful for dealing with moderate emotional pain and fugue states. I’m sure it’s also helpful for managing existential pain, offering resolve where it is needed, or even a buffer at times for re-orienting how one responds to one’s pain path. I’m sure this is crucial.

What are my existential intentions? What is the best way to form the most appropriate intentions? These are big questions for me, and I want to be careful in considering them.

For me, an important consideration when forming intentions is to be able to take guidance from that “still small voice within”. The greek concept of the Daemon aligns well with this. I think broadly, it’s an intuition that emerges from the unconscious as a compass pointed towards one’s soul purpose.

In light of this, perhaps it’s not necessary to “know” one’s own soul purpose is — the “telos” or trajectory of one’s destiny, in terms of what can be uttered in language. What matters then is how one listens and acts in alignment with their purpose — live it in a way without contrivance or interference from propositional ways of knowing. To me, this involves getting intimate with oneself in a way that underbellies the rational mind.

How does one arrive at this?

It’s useful to consider the Daemon, or “true-intention-forming generator”, as an essence that is always in-tact, but which is rendered inaccessible by either of two extremes or by basic conditioning. This must be understood first of all.

There is a middle path between these two extremes worth considering. On the one, there is full-on identification with tribal allegiances. On the other is the unbalanced atomization of the self, which can encrust into narcissism. (I would add that this construction isn’t necessarily a reflection of reality, but a model that is potentially useful regarding the question. For example, the two extremes are not mutually exclusive, as both can co-exist together and overlap).

Either of these is as one lives out their lives as others, for example, who form tribal and continental identities which are allowed unchecked by the self-authoring mind. Identification with a social group is indeed a human given, and we all have this necessarily. But it must be put into balance, just as extreme individualism can lead to an unbalanced person. This makes me think that the individual cannot live without the “we”, as the collective cannot live without the “I”.

Existential pain, as I am calling it, is allowed to set in when one lives out of balance to arrive at soul purpose, another word I am using.

Existential pain alerts us to the necessity to consciously gather ourselves back into the matrix of soul where we can act once more as sovereigns of our existence. It’s not the answers that will lead us back home but asking the right questions. My own karmic debt releases me to consider what I’m not in right response to. Towards this end, perhaps the pain is purposeful after all.