Toolkit
Deeper Purpose
Entelechy
What
Entelechy refers to the fully actualized version of yourself. This exercise allows you to talk to this fully actualized self. You’ll ask your Entelechy about the 8 facets of your purpose (ref. Jonathan Gustin’s Purpose Octagon):
- What is your vision? The deepest aspiration for an evolved world.
- Values? The essential ideals for which you want your life to stand for.
- Core powers? The natural soul level abilities that you were born with.
- Essence? The core of who you are without trying, without doing anything.
- Give-away? What you actually do to people to transform them. Your gift, offering, contribution or blessing.
- Task? A mission, calling or assignment that you undertake to support your vision.
- Message? A single fundamental truth, you are designed to propagate.
- Delivery system? The outward system (job, career) through which you offer your gifts to the world.
Why
Imagine if you had worked on yourself for 1,000 years, 10 lifetimes, and could ask that version of yourself questions. All the accumulated wisdom would be available to you. I ask that you suspend disbelief and enter into an imaginal realm where this would be possible. Back-casting from your imagined, fully-actualized version of yourself is a way to make conscious contact with your deepest soul-level source of wisdom and help you define and embody a purposeful life today.
How
Close your eyes . Feel the chair beneath your sit bones, the floor beneath your feet. Take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. Breathe in through the nose and hold it for 2 seconds at the apex and exhale through the mouth with the sound of “ah”. Again. In through the nose, hold, and out through the mouth. One last time. Allow any tension to melt away from your body.
The power of this process depends on the power of imagination. Your ability to see and feel in the mind’s eye will determine how effective the process will be for you. Let’s set the intention to allow your mind-body to become a field of radical acceptance, offering no resistance to life. Just be with your direct experience of yourself in this moment and allow yourself to settle.
I am going to ask you to enter into a very dimly lit room. In this room sits two simple chairs and that’s it. You sit in one chair and face the other chair. Through your clear intention, and heartfelt prayer, you ask entelechy to join you. Imagine the energy, the perfume, the fragrance of your future self. As you pour yourself into this visualization, you see Entelechy begin to materialize in the chair opposite you. The vision you see is a vision of yourself, appearing only slightly older but infinitely wiser…the vision and version of yourself that understands you even better than you know yourself. His or her eyes are kind, knowing and accepting. When you are ready ask Entelechy:
ASKING QUESTIONS AND WAITING:
- With the tongue of the heart, ask questions related to the 8 facets of your purpose listed above.
- Pour yourself into the question.
- Feel the question as a deep yearning.
- Now release the question.
- Let whatever appears on the screen of awareness to come, without editing.
- The key disposition is a “waiting-less waiting…” A kind of waiting with no expectation of receiving anything.
- Listening with the ear of the heart, stay open to whatever comes.
- Infinite patience often yields immediate results.
- Whatever comes—sounds, colors, images, poetry, sensations, hunches…just make note of it, without editing. Your analytical powers are still available, but leave them aside for now.
- If nothing comes, it’s not a problem. It’s a blessing to just be able to sit with the intelligence and wisdom of your more evolved self. The answers may come later.
- Stay in an attitude of gratitude for this tremendous opportunity to connect with entelechy.
- Smile with your face, your hands, your belly, your feet…smile with your whole being.
DISSOLVING AND MANIFESTING:
Take a last minute to come to completion with Entelechy. Make a little gesture, a bow, or a hug, or just a knowing look of thanks and gratitude. Allow the Entelechy to begin to dissolve slowly. Gently bring yourself back to this room. And open your eyes.
by Montaia