The insight that led to my life purpose

What I'm about to describe is perhaps the single most transformational insight of my life, as of this writing. But before I talk about that insight and what my life purpose became after I had that insight, this needs a bit of a backstory.

I first witnessed it when I was 24 and had just discovered meditation. Meditation showed me how to study my mind in high resolution. One of the core reasons for me to study Neuroscience was to understand the nature of my own mind. And it wasn't until I discovered meditation that I realized that you can never use the mind to study itself. It's neither a straightforward observation nor an easy conclusion to accept. Shutting down the senses to devote all attentional focus on the internal mental activity is not easy. At first it felt helpless to be there. It felt like I was an infant who just exited the womb to enter a strange world. As an infant entering a strange world you have no choice, so you cry. But as an adult with agency entering a strange place that feels uncomfortable is more challenging because it's just so easy to quit.

The first time I sat down to meditate, I couldn't last more than 30 seconds. But I persisted and kept going deeper into that unknown territory over weeks. As weeks turned to months and then to years, I could spend enough time to study my mind with extended focus. And I began to clearly see the lifecycle of a thought - the process by which sensory perceptions turn into what we call a thought. A thought is just a multitude of sophisticated network responses within the existing networks of pieces of information that our minds are composed of. The very existing networks of pieces of information are products of such processing of past sensory information, solidified into persistence over repeated reinforcement of those patterns. I began to see how our mind is just a product of accumulated thoughts and what it grows into depends on what it is made of. The thoughts our mind is composed of are the thoughts we have identified with since birth. And if you observe the activity of your mind dispassionately, without being carried away by it or identifying with it, you can begin to see the patterns. It takes your stillness to witness how everything else moves in relation to you.

The mind has its very abstract patterns that govern how it processes even novel information. And once I got to know the patterns of my mind intimately, even more abstract patterns emerged out of the study of those patterns. Soon I could begin to understand why my mind had become what it has, because I could remember the sensory experiences that led to the early formations of thoughts that acted as the foundation for what my mind is now. Not all of this is new information. We all recognize this being the nature of our minds rather loosely. But what meditation gave me was the ability to fluently traverse the mind as I gained these insights. This ability to traverse your mind fluently is important to then work on your ability to modify the structure of your mind. I could easily become a different person. If you know how to navigate your mind as well as you navigate external physical spaces through the aid of your senses, then you can do just as much within your mind as you can in the real world. Just as a talented gymnast, through training, can do feats that seem near impossible to others, you can train yourself to do things with your mind that seem near impossible to others.

One of the most remarkable capabilities that you gain from having intimate knowledge of how to navigate your mind is the ability to consciously discard vast portions of your mind to reconstruct them consciously again. This is not something you read about and get good at. It's like learning to walk. You just start doing it and once you do enough of it, you start to become graceful at it. And it's quite the journey, from being a helpless infant lost in this world of the inner realm to be able to gracefully navigate the landscape of the mind. At first you start by navigating the mind just like how a monkey traverses the canopy of the jungle by swinging through the branches that are the thoughts. Once you do that enough, you begin to evolve into somewhat of an eagle, that is capable of observing even large swathes of the thoughtscape at once, because you've just seen that much of your mind while you've spent time swinging through the thoughts. And soon you'll be able to change into a monkey or an eagle at will. It is this ability to be fluent in your mental manipulations that is instrumental to strengthening your grip over the feminine aspect of who you are.

One of the sacrifices you'll have to make to get to this level of mastery of the inner realm is to not have dependencies in the external realm. Anything that can tether you firmly to the external realm will hold you back from delving deeper into the inner realm, which will inevitably affect your journey to mastering it. Dependencies in external realm can either prevent you from progressing or significantly prolong your journey.

In this regard, I have a lot to be grateful for

• The fact that I got to these realizations by the age of 25, right after I graduated college, when I didn't have any pre-existing obligations that would have tied me to a debt of engagement in the external realm.
• The fact that I had the tolerance and support of my parents who also happened to be meditators. They created the environment I needed to pursue this journey of mastery of the inner realm.
• The fact that I did not have a family of my own or any dependents as such
• The fact that I was born in India. Until that moment I had cursed the fact that I was born in this place, but for the first time in my life I felt the motherly grace of this land. Once you start to witness the inner realm, you can see the evidence of a great number of beings having touched this land. Being able to witness that makes you forgive all the flaws that cover the surface of this land.

The last point is important because India has vast infrastructure dedicated for human beings to master their inner realm. This had a direct impact on the course of my life.

So, now getting to the topic of this post - the key insight that led to me eventually discovering my life purpose was that the inner realm is endless, just as endless as the external realm. And mastery of either is not the goal. It is not what you can do, but knowing what to do that matters more than anything. I realized the value of wisdom over knowledge, wealth or power. It is the ultimate superpower a human being can have. And it would take me several years after this to eventually arrive at what I could consider a sufficiently satisfactory understanding of my life purpose. The few years I spent seeking my life purpose after this realization were some of the most painful, because until then the thirst for knowledge and truth was the objective of my life. I used that as the north star to guide all my decisions. Knowing why I did anything was the thread to the truth that kept me safe even in the unknown. But that was severed when I realized how open ended life can be. Knowing that you can transform your mind into anything begs the question of what is it that is worth devoting the rest of my life into. I spent several years systematically approaching a reasonable answer to this question - "On what basis should I choose what to want?"

As to what my life purpose became as a consequence of these realizations, simply by studying the lifecycle of a thought, and by studying my individual mind, there is a lot that I could understand about our history as a species. And I couldn't help but think about all the possibilities that are opening up for us as a species because of the times we live in. On the one hand I see technological progress with great optimism. And we are in possibly the most interesting time of our species - the world is in relative stability and we are all united as a species through networks of communication that connects us all and we live fairly comfortable lives. And this is only going to get better as we progress in this direction. On the other hand we have so many people who do not have a fulfilling experience of life to see our future with great optimism. Specific to our time is the issue of so many people who live comfortable lives on the outside but do not have equivalent comfort in the inner realm. All these technologies enhance the external realm, but without equivalent progress in the evolution of their inner realm, this asymmetrical growth can only lead to a life in disease, as is evident from what we see in the world today. The lack of the infrastructure needed for people to develop their mastery of the inner realm is cause for concern. These very people can become a burden on our potential as a species to thrive and expand. As to how progress of our species can be measured, it is through measure of number of us who have the freedom and safe environments to realize the fullest potential of being human and to live a fulfilling life. If we can ensure that our species multiples and expands into the universe while ensuring that we do so in peace and joy, then that is the ideal. We will not need lessons on benevolence if we live in joy. Our natural inclination as human beings is to spread that which is in abundance in us. If hate is what we brew inside of us, then that is what we will share with others. If joy is what brews in us, then that is what we will spread.

Simply put, I see my life purpose as defined by the necessity of contributing what I can do to help us as a species achieve that ideal. And I can easily see myself enjoying my life as I pursue this vision of doing whatever I can to enable this vision for our species. I want to do this as a tribute to all those who came before me, whose actions led to me experiencing life in a beautiful and fulfilling way.