Invasive Weeds of Default Purpose

On a recent walk in the desert area close to my neighborhood here in Arizona, I was lamenting the presence of a highly invasive weed called “stinknet.” This one is native to South Africa, but is quickly taking root across the desert southwest. Like the name implies, it definitely has an odor along with the audacity to wreak havoc on your allergies. The problem isn’t so much the smell, but the competition for scarce resources needed by the native desert plants. It also poses a wildfire risk in the way that it takes over large areas, eventually drying out and burning so easily.

I’d walked past this growing horde of invaders before, but this time I saw an image, like a daydream, of me being down on my hands and knees pulling out these weeds. Having cultivated an intuitive relationship with my inner wisdom, I wanted to honor the image by responding through my actions. You see, Soul speaks in images, dreams, intuitions, felt-senses, gut feelings, and sometimes fully formed ideas out of nowhere. It’s our ethical duty as stewards of Purpose to listen, to interpret these messages with our heart-centered thinking, and respond in some way in the material world to the invitation. So, on this day I fell to my hands and knees, sang a simple song of healing, and picked some weeds for 5 minutes.

To say this was a fool's errand would be an understatement. It would take 100 people 100 hours to clear this area of the desert from this sweeping incursion of stinknet. And yet, it is the fool who has the far-fetched vision for a different future, and who has the conviction to step off into the unknown and set out in that direction. I went home that day with tiny prickly hairs in my hands, itchy eyes, and a runny nose.

I brought gloves the next day and cleared another 5 foot area, now making piles of the pulled weeds. When I ask these plants if I can remove them, I think they say something like “yes, we have a great many of us in other places where we are from!” And so I stack them in piles, and move on in my day. I don’t exactly know why I’m doing it, but if I’m called to on any given day I stop and tend to a small swath of weeds.

On one occasion I thought to myself “as above, so below, as within, so without.” The alchemists had it right. The behavior and outward expression of humans reflect the inner states of our psyches more than we would like to admit. What we do outside ourselves is a reflection of what is going on inside. And here I am pulling weeds, and singing songs. The work of the alchemists was doing literal chemistry experiments, eventually realizing that transforming matter in the material world was transforming themselves on the personal, psycho-spiritual level simultaneously.

Much of the task of Purpose work is becoming aware of what is ours and what is not indigenous to our psyche. If we are to make any sense of our Soul-level Purpose we have to get really good at discerning what is truly part of us vs. what is given to us, forced on us, or burdened onto us from family of origin, schooling, ancestry, legacy, culture, patriarchy, society, and Trauma as a “default purpose.” Purpose work is a practice of cultivating what aspects of our psyche are innate, and pruning, tearing out, or working with these default purposes that are not ours.

It’s not any fault of the weeds themselves that they grow here. They are just filling a niche in a way they know how to do. It just turns out it’s not their original or true niche, and that they are taking up a niche that’s not theirs to fill. Like these plants to the Arizona desert, our default purpose doesn’t belong to our deepest Self.

When we start to work with default purpose, we begin to realize how much of our psychological landscape has been overtaken by invasive narratives. At the same time, we can begin to peel back the layers to find our most authentic expression of Self, our Soul, our truest Purpose. We have to make space for this Purpose to take root. To plant ourselves in the healed and reclaimed soil of our most authentic becoming.

This small act of defiance, will only lessen the impact of these invaders by the smallest fraction. But it will make a difference. And as I do this work, it’s replaying the internal psychological reorganization that’s taken place over the last 10 years of my life. Mirroring the separating out of what is native to my Self, and what is not mine. To uncover and live what is most true to us is a never-ending act of the deepest authenticity and love for the world.

Brittle Bush Seeds

It was springtime when I returned from a vision fast 3 years ago. All the flowers, cactus, and trees were in bloom and fruiting. I had a strong sense that I should collect native seeds, and so I started one day while on a wander in the desert. I didn’t know why, but palo verde, brittle bush, desert marigold, saguaro, and others shared their seeds with me. Over the years, I have spread a great many seeds across the deserts and used them in ceremony and as gifts.

And so it goes that synchronicity and happenstance are a big part of interacting with the unseen world of Purpose. We look back on our lives and start to see how seemingly random events thread themselves together to weave a greater story. And so this spring my task will involve planting and scattering native seeds that I collected in the areas where I removed the stinknet. Having carried its seeds for a while now, the humble brittle bush has taught me that it will thrive in this area.

When will I stop? When am I done? Why do I keep going? I can honestly say I don’t know. For now, I’m here, with some old  gloves and songs to sing following a fleeting image because it feels right. Much of Purpose work invites us into the “not knowing” space, getting comfortable in uncertainty. Does that sound terrifying? Default purpose tells us that we must know to be safe, that we must plan everything to avoid pain, that we must be certain to belong. At the same time Soul tells us that we will find gold in the mud, find meaning in paradox, and find treasure in uncertainty. “Not knowing is most intimate.”

So I ask you: What are the aspects of your own default purpose? What from your upbringing, or society has taken over your inner landscape? What has taken root in your psyche that isn’t native to your true Purpose?

And then one day as if it were written by myth, I noticed that the area was accumulating weed piles not pulled by me. I like to imagine some other traveler alchemizing their own default purpose process out on this beautiful land.