Noble Purpose
A noble purpose emerges from your deepest being as a person, as a collective or as an organization, and from the ‘divine’ meaning that you wish to give to the existence of yourself, your collective, or your organization. The word noble means possessing outstanding or admirable qualities that we put at service. You could say nobility of spirit. It refers to the greatness of the reason why an individual, a collective or an organization exist, which implies that it is to the benefit of others, society, and Humankind.
This can cover an enormous range of possibilities. The focus of noble purpose in question might be small and local but can also be huge and global.
We see a fundamental distinction between a ‘material objective’ and a ‘noble purpose’. Both are necessary, but their meaning is very different. The impact of a noble purpose is of a totally different order, compared to what can be achieved by reaching a ‘material objective’. The picture makes the differences totally clear.
A noble purpose places itself exclusively at the service of others. It therefore goes beyond or is outside our own person. This is also true of our intrinsic motivation to have and achieve a noble purpose. We do not do it for ourselves. We are simply the transmitter of a higher idea or ideal.
A material objective is not intrinsically noble. It is rooted in something that we want to achieve for our own purposes. Objectives are fundamentally inward-looking, focused on us and not on the wider world outside.
A noble purpose is in some way eternal, in the sense that it is not limited in time and doesn’t have to be achieved by a certain date. A noble purpose emerges from your deepest being as a person, as a collective or as an organization, and from the ‘divine’ meaning that you wish to give to the existence of yourself, your collective or your organization. It is this that makes a noble purpose something beyond time, something eternal. Once we have identified and defined a noble purpose, we can no longer live or act without it. We become our noble purpose. We achieve our own full realization through the realization of that noble purpose.