Primary and Secondary Purpose
Happy new year to you! For today’s post, I thought I’d share a question and answer from one of my courses on Insight Timer. Within the audio courses on the app, there’s a comments section where participants can ask questions for me to respond to, and the one below felt broadly applicable and maybe especially applicable to planning for the year ahead:
QUESTION:
”How do I make intentional plans for the future while being fully in the moment?”
MY ANSWER:
What a great question. I think this is just a balance we all need to find, a balance between “being” and “doing,” between living fully in This moment and planning for living in the future. I believe we can still be present while planning for the future, and then attempt to enact that plan, moment by moment, while simultaneously letting go of attachment to the plan working out exactly as we intended (which is ultimately out of our control). This represents a main principle from the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita: to act skillfully without attachment to the fruits of action.
I'm reminded of a concept I stumbled upon in an Eckhart Tolle book. The concept described the notion of there being a primary purpose and a secondary purpose to everything we do. The secondary purpose is the future-oriented goal in mind (e.g., I'm thirsty, I'll go get a drink from the fridge) and the primary purpose is the action that you are only doing and can only do right now (e.g., standing up from my seat… walking... opening the fridge door... looking inside). You can do each of these primary purpose actions with full presence while still being guided by the secondary purpose of getting a drink from the fridge, and then be totally okay with the plan not working as expected (e.g., you find no drink once you get there). If there is no appealing drink in the fridge, you can then reassess, in that moment, what new secondary purpose might guide your actions (e.g., I'll get a glass of water, I'm not that thirsty, I'll go to the grocery store today). Once you’ve decided on a new secondary purpose, then you can fully engage in each primary purpose micro-action along the way.
The secondary purpose, until it is Here, only exists in the mind, while you are always fully living in the primary, Now.
