Purpose guiding

The Purpose Guiding process follows a comprehensive framework created by the Purpose Guides Institute to help individuals discover their unique soul-level purpose.

The approach integrates personalised guidance with practices like imaginal work, nature-based exploration, and reflective journaling. The practices draw on insights from several traditions that have explored human purpose and meaning, such as depth psychology and indigenous wisdom.

These streams have been carefully woven together through the Purpose Guides Institute to create a comprehensive approach that remains accessible to people of any background while honouring the depth of these traditions.

Here’s what to expect at different stages of this work.

During our six months working together, you're likely to gain more clarity about one or multiple dimensions of your life purpose. You'll develop practices for deeper exploration and learn tools for navigating challenges. Many people find that this time marks the beginning of a profound transformation, as initial insights grow and deepen with practice.

I encourage dedicating a full year to purpose exploration, continuing the practices and integration after our formal work together ends. This extended timeframe allows deeper patterns to emerge and initial insights to mature. New aspects of your purpose often reveal themselves during this period as you practice implementing what you've learned and integrate the tools and practices into daily life.

Complete clarity about all aspects of your purpose often emerges over time—sometimes years. This is natural and reflects the layered nature of purpose, which reveals itself gradually as you live in alignment with your authentic self. Think of purpose as a close friendship; the relationship deepens with time, unveiling new facets with each chapter of life.

Purpose Guiding is ideal for those who feel called to explore life's deeper questions about meaning and contribution.

This work might be a good fit if you:

• Feel drawn to explore life's deeper dimensions, not just its surface markers of success

• Sense you have distinctive gifts to offer but haven't found the right context for expressing them

• Are willing to engage with practices that cultivate deeper awareness and understanding

• Want to contribute meaningfully to the world but seek clarity about your unique way of doing so

• Feel ready to question subconscious beliefs about purpose and success

• Are open to nature-based practices and spending time in the wild

• Can create space in your life for regular reflection and practice

You'll get the most from this work if you have:

• Basic stability in your life circumstances

• Capacity for self-reflection

• Openness to working with imagination and metaphor

• Willingness to engage with uncertainty and mystery

• Some experience with inner work or personal development

This work may not be right for you if:

• You're seeking quick answers or guaranteed outcomes

• You're primarily looking for career coaching or job placement

• You're currently managing acute trauma or mental health challenges that need primary attention

• You're not able to dedicate time to practices between sessions

• You're looking for someone to tell you your purpose rather than guide you in discovering it.

The best way to determine if Purpose Guiding is a fit is through a consultation where we can explore your readiness and goals together.

Purpose Guiding, vocational guidance, and career couselling serve different functions in your life journey.

Vocational guidance focuses on:

• Finding meaningful work that aligns with your values and talents

• Identifying and developing professional skills and competencies

• Understanding different career paths and requirements

• Making practical decisions about education and training

• Finding work that provides both meaning and livelihood

Career counselling focuses on:

• Matching your skills and interests to existing jobs

• Analysing market demands and opportunities

• Building professional competencies

• Creating strategies for career advancement

• Developing practical job search skills

Purpose Guiding, by contrast, helps you:

• Discover your true purpose, which may or may not align with traditional career paths

• Access deeper wisdom through soulfulness and nature connection

• Identify your distinctive way of serving life, beyond conventional job roles

• Understand how your purpose can express itself through multiple channels, not just career

• Connect with your mythopoetic identity - the deeper story of who you are

• Explore your role in humanity’s development and your unique way of bringing more truth, beauty and goodness into the world

Think of it this way: vocational guidance helps you find meaningful work aligned with your talents, interests, and values. Career counselling helps you find your place in the existing job market. Purpose Guiding helps you discover your authentic place in the ecology of life itself. While career and vocation may be important ways to express your purpose, your deepest calling often transcends traditional categories, manifesting through multiple channels including career, service, relationships, lifestyle, creative expression, and ways of being in the world.

Purpose Guiding is a transformative journey that can significantly shift how you see yourself, your relationships, and your place in the world. While this work can be deeply fulfilling, it may also:

• Challenge long-held beliefs and assumptions about yourself and life

• Bring up trauma or unexpected emotions and memories

• Create temporary periods of uncertainty as old patterns dissolve

• Surface tensions between emerging insights and existing life commitments

• Lead to significant life changes as you align with your deeper purpose

This process requires emotional maturity and stability. While disruption is a natural part of transformation, we'll work at a pace that feels manageable for you, with plenty of support for integration.

Before beginning, we'll discuss these aspects in detail during our consultation. You'll have the opportunity to ask questions and carefully consider if this work feels right for you at this time. If we proceed, we'll establish clear agreements about the scope and nature of our work together.

If at any point you need additional support, I can refer you to complementary resources and practitioners

Soul-level purpose refers to the unique, deeply authentic calling that arises from the essence of who you are. It’s not something created or imposed by societal expectations or personal ambitions—it’s something revealed through connection with your deeper self, often described as the "Soul" or mythopoetic identity.

Unlike a purpose driven by conditioned beliefs or reactive patterns (default purpose), or one consciously designed to align with personal goals and values (created purpose), soul-level purpose emerges from a transpersonal depth. It connects you to a sense of belonging within the larger ecology of life and expresses itself as your unique way of contributing to truth, beauty, and goodness in the world.

Soul-level purpose is not about achieving a fixed outcome but about living in alignment with the story that wants to unfold through you, offering your gifts in service to life. This purpose evolves as you engage with it, bringing increasing clarity, meaning, and fulfillment over time.

This perspective invites a shift from pursuing external markers of success to embracing an authentic and emergent way of being that resonates with the deeper currents of life.

Soul-level purpose isn't a thing to be found, a concept to believe in, or another mental construct to hold onto. Just as love isn't a "thing" but rather a way of being and relating, purpose isn't an object to discover but a dimension of human experience to explore and embody.

When we talk about "true purpose," we're not suggesting there's a predetermined role or fixed destiny waiting to be uncovered. Rather, we're pointing to:

• A way of being authentically yourself when you're not caught in habitual patterns or social conditioning

• How you naturally contribute when you're most deeply aligned with yourself

• The unique way you can bring more truth, beauty, and goodness into the world

• Your way of belonging to the larger ecology of life

• Your role in humanity’s development and leaving a thriving planet for future generations

This work isn't about adding another belief system or identity to your collection. In fact, it often involves seeing through fixed concepts and rigid identities to discover something more fluid and alive. Purpose can't be captured and contained in concepts – it can only be experienced.

Many clients find that purpose work actually frees them from the need to believe in anything particular. Instead, they discover a more dynamic and authentic way of being themselves in service to life. The goal isn't to arrive at a final answer but to engage in an ongoing exploration of how you can most authentically contribute to the world.

This perspective requires a certain maturity – an ability to hold purpose as neither totally relative nor absolutely fixed, but as something that emerges through your authentic engagement with life. It's an invitation to move beyond both naive certainty and cynical dismissal into a more nuanced understanding of how meaning and service manifest through each unique human life.

This is a valid concern that many bring to this work. The hesitation often comes from:

• Past experiences with religious or spiritual institutions

• Previous exposure to superficial or manipulative uses of spiritual concepts

• A strong commitment to rational, evidence-based thinking

• A desire for practical, tangible results

This work is equally welcoming to secular, rational, scientific and spiritually-informed perspectives. You won't be asked to adopt any particular beliefs or suspend your critical thinking. The approach is grounded in experiential methods.

What I consider 'spiritual' practice is about developing the capacity to experience reality more directly, with fewer conceptual filters. This approach is compatible with—and often enriched by—a rational, scientific worldview. Rather than adding new beliefs, the aim is to loosen the grip of concepts, assumptions, and unconscious beliefs—whether rational or spiritual—so that you can engage with life with more presence and nuance.

Words like "Soul" are not fixed truths but tools—lenses that help us access different dimensions of experience. If these terms don't resonate, we can find other language to describe the same underlying reality. What matters is the direct experience we're exploring, not the words we use to point to it.

These explorations engage faculties that our modern culture often overlooks: imagination, metaphor, symbolic understanding, and direct knowing. These aren't flights of fancy but sophisticated tools for accessing dimensions of meaning that thinking about purpose alone cannot reach. Just as poetry can express truths that prose cannot capture, these approaches work alongside analytical thinking to access different dimensions of understanding. Many people find that working with these ways of knowing leads to more complete and satisfying insights about their purpose.

Your discernment and critical thinking are valuable assets in this work—they help ensure that what you discover is authentic and grounded in direct experience rather than merely wishful thinking or adopted beliefs.

In purpose work, Soul points to your unique essence beyond your personality. It’s the part of you that whispers your true name—the unique story, purpose, and meaning woven into your life. Think of it as your most authentic self, the creative intelligence of life expressing itself uniquely through you. Far from being abstract or mystical, Soul is a practical source of insight, operating through imagination, stories, and symbols. It helps you sense your place in the larger ecosystem of life, guiding you toward the gifts you are here to offer.

When we speak of "Soul," we’re pointing to a dimension of human experience that complements the rational mind. It's a way of perceiving and understanding your purpose that integrates intellect, emotions, and an innate sense of belonging. In this view Soul isn't separate from your everyday self; rather, it's the most deeply rooted and meaningful aspect of your identity, helping you navigate life with clarity and alignment.

In guiding you to uncover your purpose, I aim to connect you to this inner source of wisdom—not as a belief system, but as a natural process of discovering what makes your life truly meaningful.

Soulfulness is the capacity to perceive and express in ways that bring more beauty, richness, and meaningfulness. It is an intimate way of resonating with the world, of relating to moments, people, and experiences from the depths of your being. Soulfulness transcends intellectual understanding or utility, touching something profoundly personal yet universally shared. It offers a sense of sacredness and aliveness that deeply nourishes our being.

Soulfulness can be seen in the way a musician pours their heart into their playing, a poet captures a fleeting feeling, or a gardener tends to their plants with loving care. It emerges in the quiet awe of a sunset, the shared laughter that lights up a moment, or the stillness of a walk in nature that reconnects us to something larger than ourselves. These moments don’t just happen—they resonate with our soul and remind us of life’s inherent magic.

For those who feel drawn to this way of being, soulfulness restores a sense of the sacred. It offers a counterbalance to the disconnection and speed of modern life, inviting us to slow down, notice, and engage with what feels deeply alive.

From a rational perspective, soulfulness is an enriched mode of perception—one that integrates imagination, intuition, and emotion alongside the analytical mind. It weaves diverse threads of experience into a meaningful tapestry, inviting curiosity, creativity, and profound interconnection.

Ultimately, soulfulness is an invitation to live deeply and wholeheartedly. It allows the richness of life to flow through you and into the world. It’s about connecting with the essence of what makes us human—and living in a way that feels profoundly alive, meaningful, and true.

We use the word “Soul” because it captures something about the depth and richness of human experience—our capacity for imagination, meaning, creativity, and connection to something greater than ourselves.

However, the term itself isn’t what matters. What’s important is exploring how you uniquely belong to the world and contribute to its unfolding story.

If “Soul” feels unhelpful or uncomfortable, we can frame the work in ways that feel more accessible. The heart of this journey is about uncovering your authentic way of being and contributing—not adhering to a specific term or concept.

It's important to address this insighful concern thoughtfully. Purpose Guiding does not suggest that your life's meaning, wholeness, or happiness hinges on finding or fulfilling a specific purpose. Life is inherently valuable and meaningful, whether or not you engage in the work of discovering purpose.

Purpose is not a fixed destination, a mission to accomplish, or a standard by which your life is judged. Rather, it is a dynamic, evolving relationship with your life—a way of listening deeply to the currents of meaning and contribution that are present in each moment.

Purpose discovery is simply one possible journey that can be taken, not an obligation or a requirement for living a full life. It's an invitation for those who feel drawn to explore it, a way to engage with your life more creatively and authentically.

Far from creating pressure or anxiety, this work encourages compassion and curiosity. It’s not about prescribing a single "soul purpose" or imposing a rigid framework for success. Instead, it supports you in releasing societal expectations and exploring what feels deeply true to you. There is no failure in this process, because it’s not outcome-driven. Whether you engage in purpose discovery or not, you are inherently whole and complete.

Ultimately, Purpose Guiding invites you to embrace your life as a creative and unfolding story. The goal is not to “accomplish” anything but to live in a way that feels richly alive and connected—both to yourself and the world around you.