great question who! I thought I was the only one who started such meaning of life threads as these. 🙂
And I don’t think these questions are meant to be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”.
OK here goes. I’ll give it a shot.
The greater our self-awareness, the more likely we are to know what our inner purpose is. Eckhart Tolle talks about an exterior purpose and an interior purpose. The exterior purpose is like, what job should I do. who should I marry? The interior purpose is our spiritual path. Are we ethical, honest, authentic in our life? Are we remaining true to ourselves, despite unpopularity? Do we have lust and greed under some control? Similar to Buddhist and Christian values.
I think I’ve spent too much time focussed on my exterior purpose rather than my interior purpose. I’ve been obsessed “if I just found the right career, my niche”, when in reality no 1 career alone suits me. If I just focussed on being a better, more ethical person with more self-discipline and self-respect, I think the outer purpose would fall into place. Tolle says this is what happens anyway. I think he’s right. I believe so anyway.

Are we like (Yen and Yang) meaning the inner self is Good and the outer self is Bad?

No. The outer self is our superficial self, success and failure, achievement and lack of achievement.
I think the inner self is more important.

Dear who:

Correction: I say our purpose is to live, not to die. To live until we die because to die we must. It is the way of nature. And nothing can change that. It is reality and reality doesn’t compromise with itself, makes no room for exceptions on this one.

But the purpose is to live. Since you brought back the POEM, I can extend my answer: for a HUMAN (with our more elaborate brain) our purpose is to SEE more and more of WHAT IS, to remove delusions, false beliefs and see the bare minimum of what is in front of us, literally and figuratively. Just the Truth, Mam, or Sir!

anita

Dear who:

My answers: Yes, life is a constant motion, atoms move, even in a rock, only slowly. Emotions are energy in motion. If motion was to just stop then life would not exist, correct, says I. (This is simple physics) Which makes me think, you, who, you too need to be in constant motion, not meaning you should not rest, definitely rest, but well, think about it… later on that.

A new pattern, like what? Changes? Sometimes we need to adapt to changes, sometimes we need to un-adapt, to unlearn changes we have made. For example, you were born innocent and into the truth, naturally. Then you adapted to life by lying- need to undo that adaptation where lying hurts YOU.

Living forever is just an illusion. I mean, part of me, some energy form may go on, probably will because nothing appears or disappears, scientifically. But my thoughts, my memory, my traits, my likes, dislikes, anything I learned, all these disappear, only my basic energy goes on, I suppose and every molecule of my body, every atom keeps going as part of something else.

Why do we try so hard to fight against what is so natural? Because we are the ONLY animals who KNOW that we will die. We are the only animals that have the concept of future. If dogs or cows or frogs also knew they were going to die and they had the concept of future, that is they would know that they will die in the future, they wouldn’t like it either. Dogs wouldn’t be wagging their tails as often.

A soul- some kind of energy, not yet discovered by science- may be a soul but it is what I was born with, nothing that carries my thoughts, my ideas, who I am now… only what I was born with, a type of energy. No ghosts.

Our body is a shell in the sense that we will die, decompose or have ourselves cremated (I choose the latter). Our brain, our connections, understandings, feelings, all these will be no more. We do die. Some sort of energy keeps going but I wouldn’t make too much of that. That form of energy is not me with a halo around my head. It is something that wouldn’t make good movies, no halos.

Again, what was before I was born is the same as what will be after I die. Life. Strictly nature, death is business as usual.

anita

I don’t have a porpoise but I have a pet dog.

Hello Who,
Lots of great discussion in here, so I don’t want to derail the conversation, but I just wanted to address your first question: “Are we born with a purpose in life, or do we create our own as we live life?”

I like what you said: “If we are born with a purpose, does that mean… it’s already chosen for us? Or do we live our lives and create a purpose for ourselves to have meaning?”

I don’t know either, but this is how I like to look at it – we are born with a purpose, an overarching life purpose – or the inner life purpose as Jack mentioned, that’s the same for everyone, whatever different paths they take on the journey. The different paths we take is where we create the purpose for ourselves to have meaning, to create a vehicle for that journey.