Purpose Lab Resources

I love to dance. That is probably my favorite thing to do. It is my favorite way of anchoring me into the moment, kind of like a moving meditation. Sometimes I use my breath as an anchor even when I am dancing, but I mostly use the sounds, the beat, and the physical sensations. I love when there is a really powerful speaker and I can feel the bass, and I am like, okay. One thing that pops into mind that I enjoy daydreaming about is a beautiful time I had at a club in Berlin. It was maybe the best day of my life. I felt so in flow, and I met someone that I felt probably more connected to than I ever have with anyone else before. Usually when I go dancing, I would say not the majority of the time, but my eyes are often closed. I am in my own world. I am not really interacting with anyone that much.

Maybe it started even back when I was first having these existential questions of why I feel like there is something missing or flat and empty about my life, even though I have everything. The way humans evolved was in a totally different environment. So it makes total sense to me that we are having so many of these quote unquote issues, like depression, anxiety, and health things that they call modern diseases. I have been thinking about that for a while, through the lens of feeling a bit repulsed by the modern way of life and doing things because of these elements, but also feeling this attraction to living more like an early human, which feels like it would be more natural. I flew out because you told me about a friend of yours who is building an off grid community a couple hours away. It is something that I have been curious about and feeling drawn to for a while, exploring more primal ways of living. I am just recently feeling ready to actually try it. I spent a little over a weekend there, helping out mainly with the cooking for the crew that is building these beautiful domes and arches in this desert landscape full of juniper trees and beautiful hills. While I am weeding, my mind is wandering. I love thinking and being in a very heady, abstract world, but for me it feels best to have that balanced out by earthiness.

I love to dance. That is probably my favorite thing to do. It is my favorite way of anchoring me into the moment, kind of like a moving meditation. Sometimes I use my breath as an anchor even when I am dancing, but I mostly use the sounds, the beat, and the physical sensations. When I notice myself not feeling those things as much, or getting caught in a thought process, I return to the physical. I love when there is a really powerful speaker and I can feel the bass, and I am like, okay. Even if I am meditating, whether sitting or dancing or whatever, sometimes I am putting more effort and energy into bringing focus and awareness, like the typical idea of meditation. But I am often not really forcing it. I am fairly okay with the mind wandering, with noticing what is happening in my head when I am dancing.

Discover how darkness retreats promote self-discovery and emotional clarity through sensory deprivation and inner exploration.

I did my own little darkness retreat in my room, where I completely blacked out everything. It was pitch black, and I stayed in there for three days and reflected on the chaotic evil summer that I had. During some of my most depressed, gray years, when I had a brief stint in college, which was also during COVID, I decided to take the second semester of the year off rather than go online. People were talking about woofing, which stands for worldwide opportunities on organic farms. You can volunteer almost anywhere in the world, and have free food and lodging, and help people, usually on farms. While I was woofing, I really enjoyed it. I do think it mitigated a lot of the depressive symptoms because I was in this routine. You wake up, the farmer is like, okay, here is the plan. A lot of it is just weeding. I realized that I like menial labor.

I did my own little darkness retreat in my room, where I completely blacked out everything. It was pitch black, and I stayed in there for three days and reflected on the chaotic evil summer that I had. I sensed that I needed to forgive myself on a deep level, forgive my inner child, in order to feel like I could move on and apologize. I am so grateful to be feeling like I am on the path to doing things that feel like purpose. The scariest feeling for me is that I have been so blessed in life. It has not felt like I have had a lot of pain and struggle put upon me. I have been given so many gifts. In a way, there has been a feeling of guilt, like what am I doing with these gifts, especially when I am in a low energy period.

It often takes me a while to fall asleep, maybe an hour, two hours, even three hours is not unusual. So I am in this almost dreamlike, day into night dreaming state for that chunk of my day. Although it can be annoying at times when I am really tired and just want to sleep, it is also one of my favorite states to be in. I love daydreaming and letting my mind wander. Even if I am meditating, whether sitting or dancing or whatever, sometimes I am putting more effort and energy into bringing focus and awareness, like the typical idea of meditation. But I am often not really forcing it. I am fairly okay with the mind wandering, with noticing what is happening in my head when I am dancing. I really appreciate that state a lot, both the mind wandering and the feeling of really noticing what I am thinking and what I am feeling.

For me, I like to tune into whatever is. That includes noticing what it feels like to feel out of flow, what it feels like to feel like I am trying to be someone I do not actually feel like. I am curious about that experience. This is in the vein of meditation, noticing with neutral curiosity or a sense of non judgment whatever it is that I am experiencing. Funnily enough, when you tune into and allow yourself to feel and notice when you are not feeling like you are living your purpose, and just feel what that feels like as neutral sensations, you can even think of thoughts as sensations, audio sensations, visual sensations. You can think of it however you want. When you tune into whatever is there, in my experience it tends to lead into a feeling of beingness. I love to dance. That is probably my favorite thing to do. It is my favorite way of anchoring me into the moment, kind of like a moving meditation. Sometimes I use my breath as an anchor even when I am dancing, but I mostly use the sounds, the beat, and the physical sensations. When I notice myself not feeling those things as much, or getting caught in a thought process, I return to the physical.

I did not really come to a solid answer. It kind of felt like I fell through a black hole, in a way of both nothingness and everythingness at the same time. And I guess that is how I came to just, well, I do not know anything except that everything just is, and whatever I am, just am. And so, yeah, I am just. I am here to be. I do not think it is necessarily my purpose to enjoy being, but I do enjoy when I am in the kind of energy state where I am just enjoying being. It is beautiful. It can be ugly. It can be pleasurable and painful. It all just is. You can manifest anything you want. On a logical, philosophical level, I knew that was possible, because everything and anything is possible at the same time. But on an emotional level, it had not resonated with me until recently. It is an exciting place to be.

A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO, but his tragic past may doom the project and his team to disaster.

I went through about a five year winter soon after my very existential period when I was about 15. It was weird because while I was having all these realizations, there was actually a moment of ego death, of feeling like the world dropped beneath me. I remember sitting on the hill behind my house, and I had just watched Inception. There is a quote about how an idea can take root in your mind. The idea in the movie of what if you are dreaming and then you wake up to a more real reality, and how you never really know. I was sitting there looking at my hometown of DC, and it was almost like the meaning was drained out of everything. I felt gross and scared about everything, like what if nothing means everything and nothing means anything, and I do not know what anything is. But then it led to rebirth, and I started literally doing whatever I felt like doing. I felt like I was seeing the world through new eyes. If I do not know anything, then all there is is this. And that is beautiful. All there is is this moment.

It feels like it started around when I was 14, so eighth grade. I began to feel like there was something missing in my life. I seemingly had everything, a loving family, great health, and I just happened to have the constitution to do well in school. But my life kind of felt a bit flat, and I began to wonder if I had ever known true happiness, if I loved myself, if I knew myself. Thus began a period of a lot of questions and reflecting, both internally and externally. I was also asking what makes a person a good person or a bad person, and where these ideas of good and evil come from. What is this all like, what is reality, what is real, what is not. It kind of made me realize that maybe there is no difference, maybe it is all just however you perceive it. For me, I like to tune into whatever is. That includes noticing what it feels like to feel out of flow, what it feels like to feel like I am trying to be someone I do not actually feel like. I am curious about that experience. This is in the vein of meditation, noticing with neutral curiosity or a sense of non judgment whatever it is that I am experiencing.

For me, I guess the biggest struggle has been depression. I like to use seasonal terms for my different energy states. I went through about a five year winter soon after my very existential period when I was about 15. I think part of the reason the five year winter dragged on so long was that for most of it, I did not want to let myself sink too deep into depression because I was afraid of never coming out of it. When I finally did, I had the privilege of being able to quit my serving job and basically do nothing in my grandpa's apartment in Milan, other than be in my room, scrolling and crying all day. I had this sense that I needed to let myself go all the way in, really feel the depression, in order to let the cycle finish and be ready to feel something different. I did that this time as well. I did my own little darkness retreat in my room, where I completely blacked out everything. It was pitch black, and I stayed in there for three days and reflected on the chaotic evil summer that I had. I sensed that I needed to forgive myself on a deep level, forgive my inner child, in order to feel like I could move on and apologize. I am so grateful to be feeling like I am on the path to doing things that feel like purpose.

What advice do I have for people who have not found their purpose? First of all, for me, you already are living your purpose. You exist, and that is beautiful. It does not need to be anything more than that. I am so happy that you exist. I think a majority of people that exist are existing. And for me, they are already living their purpose. Yeah, I think there can be a sense of, if I am not totally in flow or not feeling like I am living my purpose, then I need to find it, or I need to be doing something else, or I need to get out of my thinking head and just be. I think everyone's purpose is just to be doing exactly what they are doing, what they are being. Most people, like me, I used to think, are very goal oriented and thing oriented, sort of oriented on the outside world and on that reality. Do I really want to go to an Ivy League school? Is that going to make me happy, or is it just the idea of it and what society wants of me? So I think having peace with yourself helps you judge your life more clearly and evaluate your motives and your path better.