Goals

If you have a particular goal, a particular orientation toward what you want to happen, then you’re inquiry is not open ended and most likely you’ll miss the thread. This means that for your inquiry to be open ended – in order for you to find your own thread and follow it – you need to proceed without any particular goal, without any end-stage in mind. You must proceed without believing that any particular state of being or realization or enlightenment should happen. You cannot do inquiry and have the attitude, “I am going to inquire in order to accomplish this state,” even if it happens to be what actually arises when you inquire. The more you inquire from the perspective of a particular end state, the more you make the inquiry into a mental process instead of a real, living one. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 181)

So know we have the understanding that taking any condition or any state of realization as an aim can adversely affect our process; the aim can destroy and might actually block it. As long as we have this attitude of trying to influence our experience toward a particular direction – whatever that direction is, and whether it has its source in our childhood, our adult life, our spiritual experience, or a spiritual teaching – we’re going to have difficulty with the dimension of the Point Diamond, because this dimension means hanging loose, simply being without a position. (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg 195)

Life and goals

From this perspective, life can be lived as an overflowing, as a spontaneous movement from the now, in which the goal is not something to arrive at. The goal is accomplished without effort; it's a natural flow. Because there is a fullness, the goal manifests as a spontaneous and natural movement from that fullness. Things just seem to flow in a certain direction. The person who isn't living according to goals doesn't need to organize himself rigidly and be strict about how this or that will happen. He doesn't really have to plan much. What happens is a product of his natural process, not a planned activity. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 51)

We see that ultimately the true life is an aimless life; aimless not in a sense that it's just drifting along with no significance, but that it is rooted in reality. It is so rooted in reality that it doesn't need an aim. It has already attained the aim of all aims. This perspective can help you to see that you need to question your goals and what you want from them. Are you wasting your life trying to achieve a goal that is a compensation for a deficiency you feel? Or is your goal an expression of who you are? (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 51)