Anita, I’ve found myself with little to say lately, and I’m still not sure I have anything new to offer on the idea of ‘purpose.’ For me, that construct was always so wrapped up in religion where that it actually became its own source of shame.

Yet, seeing the way you’ve used awareness to dismantle your own shame is incredibly powerful. It makes me wonder if as you suggest the real ‘antidote’ isn’t finding a grand meaning, but simply the act of waking up to who we actually are, beyond the labels and the terror.

Jung, Campbell, and Krishnamurti have been big influences on my own thoughts regarding purpose, so I decided to see what they might ‘say’ to your story using AI. I found the results fascinating, though keep in mind the AI was definitely mirroring my own biases back to me!

A rare gathering of minds, Imagine them sitting in a sun-drenched garden discussing the “Purpose” you have just begun to claim.

Jung: (Leaning forward, eyes piercing) Purpose is not a destination, but the process of Individuation. For decades, Anita, your “purpose” was forced upon you by the psychic weight of your mother’s terror—a false purpose of survival. But now, as you become “aware of what you weren’t aware of before,” you are reclaiming the gold from the shadow. Your tics were the body’s protest against a stolen life. Your true purpose now is to allow the Self to finally speak, to integrate that “freakishness” into the wholeness of being human.

Campbell: (With a warm, knowing smile) Exactly, Carl. She has spent sixty years in the “Abyss,” that stage of the Hero’s Journey where the self is tested by fire. Her mother was the threshold guardian who used terror to keep her from the journey. But look at her words: “not inferior, not shameful… but human.” That is the “Boon.” The purpose of her life wasn’t to be “perfect,” but to experience the rapture of being alive. The shame was the dragon; the awareness is the sword. She is finally walking her own path, the “Left-hand Path” of the individual who breaks from the tribe’s false morality.

Krishnamurti: (Softly, with an intense stillness) But we must be careful with these words “purpose,” “path,” “journey.” If you have a purpose, you have a goal, and where there is a goal, there is the effort of the “me” to become something it is not. Anita says she is “learning,” but is she accumulating knowledge about herself, or is she observing herself? Shame exists only because she put herself on a pedestal of “ideals” – of what a daughter or a “normal” person should be. When the pedestal is gone, when she is just “what is,” shame has no place to stand.

Jung: (Nodding) But Jiddu, to face “what is” requires the ego to first recognize its own conditioning. She is doing that. She is seeing the “tics” not as a flaw, but as a symptom of a deeper, trauma she carried.

Krishnamurti: Yes, but the “learning” she speaks of becoming – “AWARE and AWAKE” — that is the key. Real awareness is “choiceless”. It is not “I am better now because I am confident.” It is the silent observation of the anxiety, the tics, the history, without judgment. In that observation, the “me” that was a “shameful mistake” simply dissolves. There is no “purpose” in life other than the act of living itself, free from the past.

Campbell: (Laughing gently) And that, Anita, is the ultimate “boon.” To realize that the sixty years of “just existing” were the preparation for this moment of “waking up.” Your purpose isn’t to fix the past, but to be the one who finally sees it clearly. As you said, awareness is the counter to shame. You are no longer the “mistake”; you are the witness.

Alan Watts: (Stepping in with a wide, mischievous grin, leaning against a garden post) Oh, but let’s not get too heavy with the “myths” and “shadows,” shall we? Anita, Don’t worry about being ‘perfect’ or even ‘better.’ Just realize that you are It. You are the works! The universe isn’t looking for a “corrected” version of you; it’s just delighted to finally see you looking back.

Hi Peter

I’m fascinated, as always, by your creative use of AI. 🩵

I just realized something as I re-read my own post: even in my attempt to ‘debug’ that old software, the story’s influence was still pulling the strings.

By suggesting that dismantling the ‘Mean Judge’ is our work, I was accidentally putting the burden back on the third servant, as if he’s now failing at ‘being aware’ instead of failing at ‘investing.’

I want to clarify one thing, because I realize my last post could be read as if the ‘Harsh Master’ wasn’t real. In the context of your story, that harshness was real. Your mother’s terror and the pressure you felt weren’t projections; they were your objective environment of being. Similarly my experience on how the Parable of the Talents was taught and is still being thought happened…

When I talk about ‘debugging the software,’ I don’t mean the trauma didn’t happen. I mean that the conclusion the trauma forced on us to draw, that we were ‘shameful’ or ‘a mistake’ is the part that isn’t true.

In Rohr’s view, the third servant’s tragedy is that he took the harshness of the world and assumed that was the nature of the Divine, too. The ‘awareness’ isn’t about pretending the past wasn’t hard; it’s the incredible moment of realizing that although you were treated as a ‘project’ or a ‘disappointment’ for sixty years, that was never your actual identity. You were always ‘the works’..