What purpose Creates for you:

 

1. A Sense of Belonging

Knowing your purpose brings a sense of intimacy with life. Knowing your purpose means finding your unique place within the meshwork of life. Only when we recognize who we are at a soul level, can we truly inhabit our place, our niche, and our deepest calling. Ex: the artisan who feels his workshop is his sacred chamber, or the teacher who feels the classroom to be her natural habitat.


2.  A Shape to Your Life

Purpose is like a container that you pour your life into. Pour a cake mix into a Bundt pan, and you'll get a Bundt-shaped cake. Pour your life into your purpose, and you get a purpose-shaped life.  Pour a cake mix into a pan with no depth, and you get a formless mess. Pour your life into no particular thing, and you get an underdeveloped life. Purpose brings definition, depth, structure, shape, form, and a blueprint to your existence.


3.  Becoming a Force of Nature

The playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy in life...being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances."  It's not just the shape of a life that is beneficial, it's also the dimensions of our life. Size matters when it comes to service!  Make a Bundt cake for 1, and you'll enjoy your dessert. Make it for 8 people, and you've got a party.  Make it for 500 people, and you've got a purpose to serve others.

What purpose does for the world:

 

1. High-Impact Service

You want to be of service to the world. With so many causes, how do you choose? Knowing your purpose brings clarity to what your task is in this lifetime. Knowing your purpose brings lucidity to your gift and offering in the world. Imagine what the world would have been deprived of had Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa switched jobs? Life is not served when you take up a vocation that is not yours!


2. Learning to choose purpose

Humans have invented wondrous things: the symphony, flying machines, the declaration of independence, and the heart transplant. We've also created mass extinction, pollution, pervasive social injustice, and the atom bomb. Clearly, some of us are working towards birthing more goodness, truth, and beauty, while others are struggling to find their true calling... We can (and must) learn to move away from our excessive attention to our default purposes (of safety, security, and consumerism) and towards our true life-purpose.


3. Evolving the species

Right now is an "evolve or perish" moment on the planet. If human beings survive all of the upcoming social and ecological disasters, it will be because we evolved as a species. Our great-grandchildren will have become "post-human" relative to the impulses now holding sway over humanity.  While the humans of the 2100's might be genetically identical to us, they will also be quite different. Imagine 7.3 billion people becoming homo evolution ("evolving man").

What scientific studies show about having purpose:

 

1.  A vigorous, healthy and long life.

 

2.  A strong mind.

 

3.  A healthy heart.

 

4.  More profitable and rewarding careers.

  • Quadruples the likelihood of being engaged at work (Gallup/Healthways, 2013)
  • Linked (91%) with a strong corporate purpose with profitability (Deloitte, 2013)
  • Cited by global CEOs as one of the top 3 things (along with ethics and values) to focus on (IBM, 2012)
  • Yields a 47% increase in the experience of abundance (Leider/Metlife, 2009)

 

5.  More fulfilling relationships.

 

6.  A more kind, tolerant and educated society.

 

7.  A more sustainable economy.

  • 92% of customers will choose a product that has a higher purpose when price and quality are equal (Nielsen, 2014
  • 55% of customers will pay more for a product that has a higher purpose, an increase of 10% since 2011 (Nielsen, 2014)
  • Driving corporate strategy: In 2014, "purpose", "mission" and "change the world" were mentioned 3,243 times on earnings calls, investor meetings and industry conferences, a 40% increase over 2009 (Factiva, 2015)
  • Driving consumer behavior: 16% of US adults and ~50% of EU adults make purchases with purpose (LOHAS, 2015)
  • Driving business in the US: Social enterprise employs 10 million people, with revenues of $500 billion; about 3.5 percent of total US GDP (Impact Investor, 2012)
  • Driving hiring: 70% of Millenials want purpose at work (Harvard Business Review, 2014)
  • Driving conscious capitalism: 350+ professors in social entrepreneurship from 35+ countries, with 30+ national and international competitions, 800 different articles and 200 cases used in social entrepreneurship courses (Wingate University, 2008)
  • Driving media: 800% more news articles about social enterprises between 2001 and 2011 (Nexis, 2012)

Purpose guiding is for you if...

 

  • You want a job path that is rewarding, spiritually fulfilling, and evolutionarily significant.

  • You want to make a difference instead of just getting by, to live from passion instead of just paying the bills.

  • You see that humanity is pushing life on earth to the edge of the cliff, and you feel called to do something about it.

  • You want to guide humanity to replace its default purposes with true purpose.

What job meets all four of these criteria?  Purpose Guiding™ does.

Maybe your career is humming along, while in the pit of your stomach lays a secret knot where dread prevails: "Is this as good it gets in terms of serving my community, leaving a mark, evolving society and leaving a viable planet for future generations?"

You don't want to work 40+ years and not experience the satisfaction of pouring yourself into a career that can dramatically change lives and evolve society forward. You desire a career path that is rewarding, spiritually fulfilling, and evolutionarily significant.

You want to honor your desire to serve life.  You long to heed the voice within that encourages you to take up work of vital importance. You want to pay tribute to grand plans, living from passion and making a real difference, instead of settling for safety, security and just paying the bills.  

Imagine a life where you are sharing your greatest gifts, creating a generation of purpose-driven change agents, artists and leaders, and meaningfully moving humanity forward.  

 

Imagine living your purpose every day and being richly rewarded for the privilege.

Imagine being part of a world-wide peer group, working together to create a more purposeful, just, sustainable, and peaceful human presence on earth.

This is what a Purpose Guide does.

  • We have spent the last three decades in intensive study exploring how to effectively midwife human potential.  

  • Our lead teacher, Jonathan, has spent the last two decades practicing as a Purpose Guide, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, activist and integral mentor.

  • Jonathan has experienced first hand what is essential to mastering the Purpose Guide craft by working for twenty-four years guiding clients in private practice, including the 13 years working at the Integral Awakening Center with world-renowned purpose guides and spiritual teachers, like Adyashanti, Bill Plotkin, Joanna Macy, Tim Kelley, Sherri Mitchell, George Leonard, Orland Bishop, Joseph Goldstein, Bayo Akomolafe, Cheri Huber, Lama Surya Das, Don Beck and Andrew Harvey.

From these powerful experiences and teachings, we created a path to becoming a Master Purpose Guide. The Purpose Guide Institute empowers Purpose Guides to create careers of purpose, abundance and impact. We will distill in 1-2 years what we learned in 30.

 

The Case for Master Purpose Guides:  

 

We are a part of a remarkable planet.  The earth is the only place (that we know about) where the first Big Bang (nothing gives rise to matter) led to the second Big Bang (matter gives rise to life) and from there to the third Big Bang (the rise of self-reflective consciousness.)

It’s an extraordinary world, but we’re on a downward spiral.  We’re losing thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of species every year.  Unlike the mass extinction events of history, our species appears to be almost wholly responsible for species loss today.  The list of environmental, social justice and economic challenges is wide and deep.  With so much potential for goodness, truth and beauty, how did we become responsible for so much wreckage?

One answer is that lacking true purpose, humans find default purposes.  Even though we’re the product of 13.7 billion years of evolution, here is what we devote our time and attention to: “Be successful, attractive and well-liked for your whole life; work compulsively to impress others and buy all the nice, shiny things, until you finally comfortably retire and feel like you’ve ‘made it.’” 

This isn’t going to turn out well for us or the millions of species we share our lives with.  This default purpose is taking us to the very edge of the cliff. But there is a solution...

 

You can help guide humanity to replace its default purpose with true purpose.
How? By becoming a purpose guide!