III: 41

Chapter 3, Verse 41

"Therefore set your senses
In harmony, Arjuna.
Then the delusion
That prevents you
From knowing the truth
Will be destroyed."

Question: "We must have purpose on our life's journey. Otherwise, we will just drift. Purpose means future, does it not? How to reconcile this with living in the present moment...with setting our senses in harmony?

Eckhart Tolle:

"When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don't forget: the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is.

Your life's journey has an outer and an inner purpose. The outer purpose has to do with arriving at a destination, accomplishing what you have set out to do, achieving this or that, all of which of course implying future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future to get there, take up so much of your attention that they become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you will miss out on your journey's inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how you do what you do. It has nothing to do with the future and everything to do with the quality of your consciousness in this moment.

Your outer journey may contain a million footsteps. Your inner journey has only one: the step you are taking right now. As you tune in more deeply to this one step, the understanding dawns that it already contains within itself all of the other steps as well as the destination. With this understanding, this one step becomes transformed into an expression of great beauty, for it has taken you into Being, along with the experience of Being's primordial power flowing through it. This awareness is both the purpose and the fulfillment of your inner journey, the journey into yourself."

[We've all had glimpses of this flow. Let us resolve to make it steady so as to become a way of life.]