This inquiry unfolds in two parts.
The first is an undoing.
Some time ago, after a life-disrupting interruption that dismantled much of the structure I had been living within, a question surfaced with unusual force: What is my purpose now?
In pursuing that question, I encountered a sprawling modern industry offering to help people “discover” their purpose, often framed as a fixed, preordained "soul purpose". The offerings ranged widely, from promises of “fearless living” to claims of accessing the Akashic records, a supposed cosmic, metaphysical archive in which one’s life purpose is said to be recorded. All of this at non-trivial financial cost.
Part I examines this idea of “soul purpose” critically. It looks at the cultural narratives, commercial incentives, and philosophical assumptions behind the modern concept, and why, under even modest scrutiny, the framework collapses.
This is not a dismissal of the human longing for meaning, but a challenge to the ways that longing is often spiritualized, monetized, and stripped of agency.
The second part is a rebuilding.
Part II turns to a different question: If purpose is not discovered, how might one arrive at purpose at all?
Drawing on both ancient traditions and modern developmental models, the inquiry moves from critique toward construction, exploring how purpose can take shape without being outsourced to revelation or authority.
Together, these two parts trace a movement away from seeking toward responsibility, and from inherited meaning toward meaning consciously formed.
The clean slate
Life, as it sometimes does, handed me a large-magnitude change. A health incident abruptly disrupted the world I had been living in.
The aftermath brought the loss of income, the unraveling of a long-held professional identity, and a level of disruption that registered high on my personal Richter scale. The chalkboard of my life was wiped clean.
As is often the case with such events, I passed through a dark night of the soul. Over time, however, I came to see this clearing, the erasure of familiar structure and identity, as a rare opportunity: a chance to repopulate my life’s board with intention, rather than giving in to despair, drifting into depression, or defaulting to momentum and habit.
That recognition did not bring answers so much as it raised questions, chief among them what it might mean to live with purpose once familiar structures fall away.
If not given, how is such a purpose to be found?
Where this essay is headed
This essay is part memoir and part investigation.
It follows a line of inquiry: What does it mean to have a purpose?
Is there such a thing as a soul purpose, just waiting to be discovered?
If so, how does one reliably and incontrovertibly discover it?
Or is this simply the modern, spiritualized version of a midlife panic?
To explore these questions, the inquiry ranges across cultural narratives and developmental models, from spoon-bending mystics to Erikson’s stages of psychosocial growth and ideas drawn from Indian philosophic traditions, including the āśrama framework.
Whether you're navigating change, or simply pausing to recalibrate, I hope this inquiry proves useful.
The search for purpose
I have noticed that at times like this, the Universe seems to have a habit of presenting options. Sure enough, an email landed in my inbox inviting me to join something called the “Purpose Lab.” (Either the Universe was being remarkably helpful, or I am a textbook case of confirmation bias.)
For $500, I could join a multi-week experience with a small group of fellow seekers, guided by a “Team Lead” and a certified “Expert.” These Experts were described as “consciousness pioneers” who help individuals discover their “soul purpose.”
Curious, I booked an introductory call.
At the appointed hour, a very earnest and engaging young man greeted me on Zoom and began explaining their “research” and “proven frameworks.” I mentioned that some of the language in the email had struck me as a little woo-woo. He smiled and assured me that one of their Team Leads had a more grounded style and might be a good fit. I asked a few more questions, which he promised to get back to me on, and the call ended.
I was struck by how sincere he seemed. He genuinely wanted to help people. That much, I believed.
Out of curiosity, I visited their website.
That was when I discovered their spoon-bending workshop.
Yes. A real workshop, where participants can “learn to bend spoons with the power of their mind.”
Visitors are invited to consider the question: If you can bend a spoon with your mind, what else is possible?
It is a neat Jedi mind trick that allows one to glide past the more inconvenient question of whether one can, in fact, bend spoons with the mind at all.
Accept the premise, and suddenly anything feels possible.
Cue the dopamine. Or norepinephrine. Or ideally both.
The site offers reverent nods to Uri Geller and to some aeronautical engineer who claims to have taught thousands to do the same. Naturally, there are tasteful allusions to The Matrix. After all, this is about reshaping reality.
Now, it is entirely possible that these individuals have learned to bend gravitons to their will, manipulate the Higgs boson, or generate localized space-time anomalies that cause cutlery to yield to thought. After all, in the New Age universe, everything is quantum something or other.
But as an engineer, I tend to deal in the probable, not merely the possible. After all, many things are technically possible. The probability of this particular possibility, however, seems roughly equivalent to my odds of winning the next Mega Powerball given that I do not buy lottery tickets.
For good measure, they also offer a subscription service. For $144 a year, one can join their community of “consciousness pioneers” and learn to cultivate these, and presumably other, paranormal abilities. Naturally, 144 is described as an “angel number.” Whatever that means.
This is the point at which personal development merges with parapsychology, and the terrain becomes delicate. After all, we are assured by contemporary New Age prophets that we are living in the Age of Aquarius, a time supposedly marked by collective awakening, expanded consciousness, and the promise that old constraints no longer apply. (Owing to the precessional wobble of the Earth’s axis, even that reckoning varies by roughly plus or minus two thousand years, a generous tolerance.)
Welcome to WaaS: Woo-Woo as a Service.
For a modest monthly fee, subscribers receive a steady stream of truths they did not previously know existed, but are assured they urgently need.
Unleash the power.
After all, we can all be Neo.
Presumably, Carrie-Anne Moss awaits further down the path, covered in next month’s insight.
You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. (Accompanied by Felder and Walsh’s immortal guitar solo.)
There's much more to unpack about the WaaS phenomenon as my brief research brought up some frankly surreal and seemingly predatory offerings, but that's perhaps for another essay. For now, let's return to the question that started this journey: purpose.
Examining the idea of soul purpose
A quick web search reveals a surprisingly large number of coaches, “spiritual mentors,” and self-styled counselors offering to help seekers “discover their purpose.” Again and again, one encounters a popular idea in the modern spiritual and personal growth worlds: the notion of soul purpose, the belief that each of us is born with a specific, preordained reason for being. A kind of cosmic mission statement, metaphysically coded into our essence. Our soul.
It is an idea with undeniable appeal.
It offers meaning, structure, and a sense of cosmic significance, the intoxicating promise of latent greatness waiting to be uncovered.
It suggests that life is not random, that one is meant for something far greater than one’s current circumstances.
That the universe has a plan for each of us.
That we have an important role to play in a cosmic saga.
It amounts to a kind of secular predestination, often couched in language that evokes nobility, romance, and destiny.
Such narratives almost always assign significance generously, casting the self in roles of meaning and importance.
But the longer I pondered the idea, the more troubling, and frankly perplexing, questions it raised. Under even modest scrutiny, the entire concept begins to unravel.
Let us start with epistemology, the question of how we reliably know anything. If each of us truly has a preordained purpose, how exactly are we supposed to know it?
Through meditation? Dreams?
An ayahuasca journey in the Andes?
A five-hundred-dollar coaching workshop with a “certified Expert”?
Who validated any of these methods? Where is the peer review? The quality control? The epistemic rigor?
What happens when these approaches yield different answers, or no answer at all? Is the seeker simply not trying hard enough? Not spiritually evolved enough? Not meditating with sufficient sincerity?
And what happens when two seekers arrive at contradictory purposes? When one person’s “soul purpose” requires the success of something another person’s “soul purpose” requires stopping, whose revelation is authoritative?
By what standard are such conflicts resolved? Do we rank authenticity by the intensity of feeling involved? By who paid more for coaching? By whose meditation practice is longer or more austere?
Even if one manages to get past these hurdles, the problem of free will quickly emerges.
If I am born with a fixed purpose, then one of two things must be true:
1. I have no choice but to fulfill it, in which case I am merely a puppet of destiny.
2. I can choose something else, in which case it is not really my purpose at all, is it?
And if the first is true, a further question immediately follows. What happens if I fail to follow it? A life of quiet disappointment? A karmic penalty? A cosmic “better luck next incarnation”?
All of these possibilities feel less like purpose and more like spiritual coercion.
Then there is the matter of circumstance. Such frameworks quietly assume that we all have the time, resources, and stability required to pursue some grand calling. But what about the single mother working three jobs? The refugee fleeing war? The undernourished child born into generational poverty?
Are we really going to suggest that they are failing to live their “soul purpose”? Or worse, that their soul purpose is to suffer?
That line of reasoning borders on cruelty. It reflects a privileged, Western-centric worldview dressed up as spiritual insight.
Finally, there is a practical absurdity at the heart of the entire idea.
If one’s soul purpose is truly essential to who one is, an immutable part of metaphysical DNA, why would it not be self-evident?
Why would anyone need to pay hundreds, or thousands, of dollars to “discover” something that is supposedly fundamental to their very being?
Taken together, these contradictions point to a deeper and more troubling question: by what reliable means could any such purpose be known in the first place?
The truth is that the entire framework rests on deterministic assumptions that quietly strip purpose of what makes it meaningful in the first place: agency.
The freedom to choose.
The dignity of authorship.
The ability to wrest meaning from the raw materials of one’s life, not because the universe assigned it, but because one took responsibility for shaping it.
I understand the appeal of these frameworks. I have been in those dark places myself, and I still slip in and out of them. At various points in our lives, many of us are overwhelmed by loss, transition, and disillusionment. We grow weary of traditional religion, skeptical of reductive rationalism, and starved for mystery, beauty, and transcendence. We long for clarity, identity, belonging, and meaning.
It is precisely at such moments that we are most vulnerable to the pied piper’s song: the emotionally tuned marketing pitch designed to tug at that longing and loosen our purse strings. A song that promises answers and transformation, but often delivers little more than spiritual-sounding language and a recurring subscription fee.
At this point, the idea of “soul purpose” collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
What remains is not clarity, but responsibility. Part II, coming soon, begins there.
With quiet thanks to Austin Chan on Unsplash for the image.
