SIMPLICITY AND PURPOSE

SIMPLICITY AND PURPOSE
I was cleaning out a bookshelf last week and found a photocopied article from a book titled Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism (Hill and Badiner, 2002). The article is by Duane Elgin and called Voluntary Simplicity. As I read the article, which I hadn’t looked at for probably a decade, I was struck by how it articulated many of the understandings I have been coming to in this past year. As we begin our association with the Red Maple Mindful Living Centre partners, It seemed a good place to set off from.

Elgin writes:
At the heart of the simple life is an emphasis on harmonious and purposeful living ... (which ) ... integrates both inner and outer aspects of life into an organic and purposeful whole

For Elgin, simplicity is not voluntary poverty. He is not suggesting we all become monks or nuns. Poverty, he distinguishes from simplicity as involuntary, and a condition which robs us of both material security but also psychological or emotional stability. Current research tells us that people who live in persistent poverty experience a sub-standard physical and emotional health as well as a stunted intellectual development. Simplicity, in contrast is a choice we make to organize our lives around other priorities than material acquisition, fame, social influence or other external standards. When we live simply, we establish a place of balance between our inner and outer lives, where purpose is similarly grounded in emotional, social and spiritual awareness.
                           

Yours, on purpose,                           
Ray                               
The purpose of life is a life of purpose
Robert Byrne