your attachment to Purpose is killing you

On learning to decenter Purpose and recenter Life. For anyone who's ever confused their calling with their worth.

Jul 18, 2026

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On the Full Moon in Capricorn, two weeks ago, I had a reading with a spiritual mentor. Amidst shamanic drums and suggestions of ritual, she left me with one key piece of wisdom.

“This is a season of de-manifestation for you,” she said. “The aura around you is pregnant, humming. The gifts want to come through. But you need to clear out the right spaces for it first.”

It was the first time I’d heard that word: de-manifestation.

My mind didn’t understand it, but my soul did.

Since then, I’ve been receiving signs, messages, random nudges for purging. I let go of a volunteering role that was taking up a lot of my time. I surrendered a life insurance policy that was draining my finances.

Today, the day Barbault’s basket1 is exact, the final piece of the puzzle dropped.

In the video, my friend Tahiti speaks about “decentering our Purpose as a measure of our worth”. Instantly, my whole life clicked into place.

From a very young age, I knew I was on Earth for a reason.

I didn’t know what. But I had a Purpose™️.

And that Purpose kept me going, through leadership programs and startup hustles and ten years of self-employment. I never slowed down.

Any break, any lapse in my slow march forward, felt like a detour. Like I was skipping school. It came with deep guilt and an abiding sense of shame.

When I unofficially took a break from service work last November, it was the first time in 10 years that I wasn’t actively in service of my Purpose.

I felt… honestly, great. Free. Nourished.

But I could never let go of that sense of Guilt in the back of my mind.

In manifestation circles, we talk about non-attachment with our desires. So it goes to show, when we show up for our lives in full attachment to “fulfilling our Purpose”, we are not giving the Universe the room it needs to actually work its magic. We complain that it’s so hard for us to get there, when in reality we are clinging on so tight - out of grief, out of shame - that there is no room for magical intervention.

I think that, is what my mentor meant by de-manifestation.

I needed to let go of the lifelong belief that my Worth = my Purpose.

And if I, a purpose-driven being, no longer has that… what do I have left?

I refractured my foot for the second time a couple weeks ago. I feel that is part of this Lesson.

Not for the first time, the Universe has emptied my schedule again.

But this time, I was angry.

The first time it happened, I needed a break. This time, it felt like ten steps back. I thought I was Ready. I’d been in the chrysalis these past few months, figuring out my new brand, my new … there you have it … Purpose.

But try as I may, I couldn’t launch it. And I think this is why.

I thought I needed to let go of The Asian Astrologer because I was putting myself into a box again. And yes, to some extent, that’s true. But I think the deeper reason I was hesitant to get back into service work…

… is because the new Purpose would become my everything again.

And that is the cycle I needed to break.

So, what does it mean to decenter Purpose?

My first thought is that it feels irresponsible. It’s like I was given a mandate to come here to Earth, and it feels like I am squandering my gifts. I want so desperately to be the fullest version of me, the woman who is expressing herself freely, simply existing as a channel for the Highest Truth.

Perhaps it is not to let go of it entirely, but to not make it the center of my Life.

Because I already know what the center of my Life is, built through the past four months of healing my fractured foot:

My life. My actual life.

The food I cook. The altar I tend. The routines I keep. The journals I write. The small, simple, boring, seemingly unrelated drudgery of everyday life. It is not separate from my Purpose. It is my purpose. Because it is my life.

For the longest time, I saw these things as secondary or even discardable. The only measure of success I had was the output I created or the impact I left on others. If I wasn’t externalizing my Purpose, what was the point?

I know now how closely this is tied to my long-held beliefs of unworthiness. I didn’t cook for myself or show up on time or take care of my physical vessel because I always thought it secondary to the legacy I was creating in the world. Yes, on paper, I was doing great. Staying up till 2am to write blogs or juggle two jobs or build a business. It felt great being so needed. But I was neglecting the one person I was directly responsible for.

When I fractured my foot for the second time, I was desperate to search for an answer. A higher purpose, a deeper Meaning of why this would happen again.

I got so caught up in my unexpressed grief that all my routines fell to the wayside. I didn’t cook. Didn’t clean. Sat cooped up in my apartment all day, binging Friends.

Last night, I puked until 3am from delivery food gone bad. I burst the vessels in my face. I got a stye in my left eye.

I felt totally, fully unworthy of showing up. Of being a steward of this body.

Perhaps this is the Universe’s way of saying, it doesn’t need to be so hard anymore.

A Purpose is a calling driven by Love.

Love is easeful. Simple. Pure energy. It flows where it is directed.

When I push, when I strive, when I make it bigger than it needs to be… the energy disperses. And I need to spend even more energy trying to hold it.

What if I allowed myself to be a vessel? Clear, simple, contained?

What if I simply allowed it to move through me instead?

That would necessitate a level of surrender, a level of Trust, that my Ego has not fully wrapped its head around. But all the teachers and mentors I look up to most have this one quality.

They are All Powerful because they know they are not alone.

To decenter my individual Purpose is to know that I am not alone.

I don’t have to fulfill this Mission alone. I don’t have to build this thing alone.

I have gifts, guides, energetic beings beyond all comprehension in my corner.

I can tend to my life and open my heart, and let that be enough.

I can trust that the right People and Insights will come through at the right time. Because that’s what happens when you let go… you create space for the right things to come through.

Finally, my spiritual mentor’s message makes sense.

De-manifestation is not a mental job. It’s a surrender job.

It’s trusting each day, against all logic, that as long as I take care of myself, my life and my light, I am already fulfilling my Purpose on this Earth.

Everything else I create, every other life I touch, is a bonus.

As long as I exist, I am on purpose.

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