Instagram story viewer> @purposeandpoetrypractice> Posts

Purpose & Poetry

@purposeandpoetrypractice

300

followers

273

following

for the Sacred. for seekers. for sensemakers.

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Intentions are seeds. They create portals for our attention, and they are as mysterious as prayers.

Like prayers, intentions are a way we communicate directly with the Divine. They create potentialities that can be actualized when we act on them.

Living without intention is letting oneself be captured by the currents of other people’s intentions. More than just a loss of agency, it’s also a loss of an opportunity to communicate with the Divine.

Setting intentions doesn’t require clarity on methods, plans, or outcomes. It doesn’t even require confidence or commitment to a particular path. The strongest intentions are the most sincere ones, accompanied by faith that the path will become clear.

May the seeds of intentions you plant today with pure intentions one day grow into sheltering, fruitful trees. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

5

0

2 days ago

Change is the signature of life. Every living being changes in response to its environment, and its survival depends on this responsiveness.

When we are younger, it’s natural for a lot of us to pay attention, learn new things, and adapt accordingly.

Then, we get too comfortable.

We think we’ve figured it out (it was working for a while) and that we can navigate our lives adequately.

This may be true for some time, but life usually demands more learning of us. When things turn out differently than we expected, when we feel so disappointed, confused, or exhausted, it’s usually a sign that we need to update our understanding of how the world works.

This moment becomes an invitation to listen more, be more humble about what we might have been wrong about, and try something new.

As you watch the leaves change color this autumn and eventually fall off their branches, may you remember nature’s wisdom in letting things go so they can come back better. May you find clarity on what in your life needs to be let go of, where you need more space for something new to come in, and how to trust the cycle of change. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

4

0

3 days ago

Species survive through adaptation. For humans, the key to adaptation may be rooted in the virtue of humility.

In the virtue literature, humility is considered a master virtue because it promotes other virtues. Without humility, it can be difficult to see our mistakes, limitations, or shortcomings. It can be difficult to ask for help.

Being humble allows us to access more of our compassion, patience, gratitude, generosity, etc.

We can think of adaptation as a form of humility because it requires an openness to the way things are, allowing us to orient ourselves differently rather than demanding that the world shuffle itself to align with what we think is best. It’s the stance that allows us to realize we may be wrong, missing some crucial information, or not approaching something in the best way.

Humility, like many virtues, is good for us spiritually, emotionally, and even materially. It reminds us of our place in the universe. It connects us to other people and allows us to see them with more fullness. It saves us time, energy, and resources in the long run.

When we shrink our egos a bit, we expand our visibility of the world. So much more becomes possible.

Humility isn’t about thinking poorly of yourself or putting yourself down. It’s not about criticizing yourself or feeling like something is wrong with you. To the contrary, it’s about not needing to be special to feel good. Not needing to be uniquely flawed or suffering to be allowed to be imperfect. It’s about being okay being just as human as everyone else.

Ultimately, humility is about being rooted in truth. It’s about welcoming the truth without distorting it to soothe our egos.

There’s beauty in Truth. And what a wonderful thing that virtues are both purposeful and poetic.

Putting this into practice:
Journal on the following questions.

✴ What is your relationship to humility?

✴ What’s an area of your life that would benefit from more humility or a deeper understanding of humility?

✴ Is there an area you feel stuck in that you could look at through the lens of humility?

✴ How can humility become a source of truth, beauty, and integrity for you? by @purposeandpoetrypractice

6

1

4 days ago

In a world drowning in an abundance of information, more knowledge is rarely what we need to start a new habit, project, goal, or transition in our lives.

But fear and perfectionism love to hide behind the excuse of not knowing enough, not being ready.

If you look at the items you most avoid on your to-do list, you will likely realize that you do know how to do them, but you’re avoiding them because there’s an element of discomfort or stuckness you feel.

There are many ways to work through that stuckness or discomfort, and “inner work” is often about familiarizing yourself with the landscape of your psyche so you can navigate your mental terrain more effectively.

That being said, one of the easiest ways to work through that stuckness is to find the smallest possible action you can take to break the inertia and build momentum and confidence. For example, if you’ve been overwhelmed at the thought of going to the gym and lifting weights, you can take a 5-minute walk today. If you have a pile of laundry to sort, you can just do a few items every time you walk past it. You can figure out what you want to say to the person you’ve been avoiding or the decision you've been putting off by starting with what feels clear so far.

You can apply this technique from the smallest to the most complex issues you’re facing in your life.

If you wait for the perfect moment to start, you may never start.

If you wait to feel ready, you will always find something new to worry about and fewer reasons to feel ready.

The remedy to overthinking and perfectionism is imperfect action.

The thing you’ve been waiting to do: get started on it today. Do it scared. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

10

0

5 days ago

There’s something you want. Maybe it’s to change something about the way you are, what you do, how you express yourself, or how you relate to people. The change can feel like the answer or the thing that will finally make everything click.

And yet, somehow, every time you take a step forward, you end up taking another step or two back.

That’s usually the moment people start calling it self-sabotage. They try to push harder, create pressure, force a breakthrough. But the body has its own logic. Insomnia. Anxiety. Stress-eating. Smoking. Doomscrolling. Online shopping. Anything that takes the edge off that unbearable, in-between feeling of wanting something and not being able to move toward it cleanly.

It helps to take ambivalence seriously.

The thing about change is that it isn’t just about want something. It about letting go of something, too. An identity. A coping strategy. A familiar relationship dynamic. A sense of control. Even a version of safety. And when those losses are real, some part of you is going to resist. The resistance can look messy, irrational, and frustrating from the outside, but there’s a reason it’s there.

In a universe of deep meaning and coherence, there’s purpose and poetry to this: your ambivalence is doing exactly what it’s designed to do. It’s trying to hold competing needs at the same time (e.g. growth and stability, freedom and safety, desire and fear) without letting you lose what matters to you in the process.

This is part of why coaching can be so powerful.

A good coach’s job is not to offer a quick fix, but to give you a place to slow the whole process down and actually see it: what you want, what you’re afraid will happen if you get it, what you’re protecting, what you’re grieving, and what kind of support would make change feel possible without violence toward yourself.

A good coach isn’t there to drag you into action. That would ultimately teach out to distrust yourself and rely on coercive techniques for progress. The coach’s job is to help you build a relationship with the parts of you that stall, spiral, and shut down, so you can move forward with more honesty, more steadiness, and a lot less shame. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

3

0

3 months ago

The moment is ripe for movement and momentum.

Join us for a free workshop on finding your role in the change ecosystem through a perspective rooted in the wisdom of nature, the power of diversity, and the gifts of collaboration.

In collaboration with @Night.School.ATX and hosted at @onceovercoffee, we hope to see you on Tuesday, February 17th from 6:30-9PM for an interactive workshop to:

¶ Explore how natural systems teach us to collaborate more effectively

¶ Map your role based on natural strengths

¶ Learn about opportunities to support change in Austin

¶ Meet and collaborate with others in your community

Spread the word to friends and folks who are feeling called to action during these dark and disturbing times.

Image description: Roots and Reach workshop flyer. A group gathered under streetlights, holding protest signs that read (1) “It is not enough to be not racist, you must actively be anti-racist”; (2) “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” — James Baldwin. A fig tree. taken in Austin, Texas by @purposeandpoetrypractice

48

1

8 months ago

In 2020, I entered the chrysalis. The vision of the world as I knew it began to disintegrate. The world hasn’t been the same since the pandemic, and I haven’t been the same since the quarantine.

In 2020, the narrative of the world as I knew it collapsed. I grew more aware of the ways human civilization had already been approaching collapse in multiple domains, something captured by the term “polycrisis.” I understood firsthand what it means to live in a post-truth world with exponential increases in complexity every day.

As I dug for the roots of these modern and postmodern crises, which included a list of complex problems climate change, fascism, mental health epidemics, and technological distruptions, I learned there was a name for this common root to these issues: “the metacrisis.”

“The metacrisis is the historically specific threat to truth, beauty, and goodness caused by our persistent misunderstanding, misvaluing, and misappropriating of reality. The metacrisis is the crisis within and between all the world’s major crises, a root cause that is at once singular and plural, a multi-faceted delusion arising from the spiritual and material exhaustion of modernity that permeates the world’s interrelated challenges and manifests institutionally and culturally to the detriment of life on earth.”— Jonathan Rowson

We have gone astray. At the level of our most fundamental paradigms of reality. The soil of modernity has become toxic to everything that grows in it, and we’re sick.

Since 2020, I have been on a journey of seeking and sensemaking. I’ve been searching for the purpose and poetry of everything, for meaning and beauty in a world that seems to reveal darkness and cruelty every day. I’ve been asking myself how did we ever let things get so bad? And, more importantly, how can we truly see and align with reality as it is and address the root of our problems?

¶

While the crysalis was cozy and comfortable, the time has come for each one of us to do our part. My prayer is that the Purpose and Poetry Collective becomes a place for seekers and sensemakers to root themselves in what is sacred and and reach for wholeness, healing, and a more beautiful world. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

10

1

8 months ago

Our name has changed, but the pilcrow remains.

More than just our name, so much has changed. Purpose Producers was launched in 2018 to support people who want to live with purpose. It was an effort to make personal development and the insights of modern psychology more accessible. We (meaning, me, Aaliah) coached, hosted workshops, collaborated on courses and retreats, and attempted to keep up with a regular posting schedule because that’s what all the “business experts” were recommending. Somewhere between trying to grow and follow the advice of “experts,” I lost connection with why I pursued this work in the first place.

¶

Before there were paragraphs, there was only a mark in a continuous stream of text.

Medieval scribes used to draw a C for capitulum, Latin for "little head," in the margins of manuscripts to signal a new chapter or section was beginning. Over centuries, through the hands of thousands of writers, that C was embellished, filled, and reshaped until it became something else entirely: ¶, the pilcrow.

Even the word "pilcrow" is a transformation. It comes from paragraphos, Greek for a mark beside the text, but the word was passed through many languages and many mouths that it became unrecognizable from its origin. Paragraphe became pelagraphe became pylcrafte became pilcrow. A word so changed by time that you can barely find the seed of paragraph still living inside it.

And yet, both the symbol and the word still carry their original essence: a mark for a new beginning.

¶

Things become new without losing where they came from. Roots always matter. They point us to the identity of things.

Today, the pilcrow is considered what typographers call a meta-symbol: no longer part of the text, but communicating about a text's invisible architecture. It’s now hidden by default in word processors, only visible when you seek it.

¶

Our name has changed, but the pilcrow remains as a symbol of roots and renewal. The mirrored pilcrow has a purpose (as a P) and a poetry (a symbol of new beginning).

Purpose & Poetry Collective is about finding the truths that exist in roots.

Perhaps that's what transformation is.

Welcome back. by @purposeandpoetrypractice

3

2

8 months ago