The One Thing: What Are You Actually Here For?

Scrolls, Side Quests, and Sacred Distractions in the Age of Everything-But-God

We’ve been taught to chase purpose like a moving target—define your goals, brand your gifts, manifest your calling. But what if the real question isn’t what you’re here to do, but who you’re here to be? What if the deepest meaning of your life isn’t found in your achievements or ideals, but in a single, burning thread that runs through everything?

Drawing from the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault and the wisdom lineage she channels, this article turns the spotlight on the ancient challenge: You came here for one thing—do you know what it is? Far from moral performance or spiritual multitasking, this is about recovering Presence. Not a buzzword, but the living edge where ego drops and the divine shows up. It’s not self-help. It’s soul retrieval. And it might just ask everything of you.

The Parable That Won’t Let You Off the Hook

Somewhere between Sunday sermons and spiritual TED Talks, we lost the heat. Enter the Sufi parable that Cynthia drops like a sacred ambush:

“If you find the one thing you came here for, you will have done well—even if everything else falls apart. But if you succeed at ten thousand things and miss that one, your life will have been wasted.”

It sounds poetic until it starts stalking you. Until you realize she’s not talking about being “on mission” or finally aligning your career with your values. She’s pointing to Presence—that fierce, quiet center where the false self dissolves, and the real you finally stops performing.

The “One Thing” isn’t another task.
It’s the ground of being beneath all tasks.
It doesn’t care about your productivity apps.
It wants you naked—of ego, of defense, of distraction.

Side Quests: When Hustle Becomes Holy

We’ve gamified our lives into spiritual side quests. We build followings, rack up affirmations, and collect teachings like talismans—while secretly staying allergic to surrender.

We optimize everything except our capacity to stop, open, and be.

Cynthia and Helminski both press on the same bruise: most of us are leaking. Scattering our energy through overidentification with thought, emotion, and habit. The tragedy isn’t just that we’re exhausted. It’s that we mistake our exhaustion for meaning.

“Observe yourself in the midst of daily life,” Helminski writes.
“Do you embody and direct your energy—or leak and scatter it?”

Presence begins the moment we notice the leaking. Not when we’ve fixed it. Not when we’ve transcended it. But when we witness it without flinching.

That noticing is sacred. It reorients the compass.
You’re no longer just reacting—you’re remembering.

The Scroll That Isn't the Story

Scripture has become scrolls—texts to decode, debate, or defend. But Jesus didn’t arrive to be footnoted. He arrived to be felt. Cynthia points us back to this: the original Jesus event was an ignition, not a doctrine. A shockwave, not a system.

“Come and see,” Jesus says—and the act of seeing rewires reality.

This is the same flame that burned through Rumi when he met Shams. It wasn’t information that transformed him. It was recognition. Something eternal stared back through the eyes of the beloved and said: Wake up. You are this.

Both Jesus and the mystics he rhymes with were not launching belief systems. They were initiating people into a direct knowing of God as their own being.

Presence isn’t a concept to grasp. It’s a portal.
And you only find it by falling through.

You Came for This.

Don’t Settle for the Side Show.

So what is the One Thing?

It’s not your career.
It’s not your impact.
It’s not even your spiritual accomplishments.

It’s the core encounter.
The meeting between your small self and the Presence that never left.
That moment where you stop narrating your life and start inhabiting it.

It’s what Mary Magdalene experienced in the garden when she cried “Rabboni.”
What the disciples felt on the road to Emmaus when their hearts burned.
What Rumi knew when Shams’ gaze obliterated every layer of his persona.

The One Thing is a collapse and a resurrection.
It burns you down to your real name.

So… What Now?

If you're expecting a to-do list, you're still missing the point.

But maybe this:
Pause.
Feel your breath.
Catch yourself mid-scroll.
Ask: Am I here?
Ask again: What am I really here for?

Let the question haunt you.
Let it become a daily ember—small, glowing, not easily extinguished.

Because you did come here for one thing.
And it’s not on your résumé.
It’s waiting quietly beneath every breath,
beneath every breakdown,
beneath every story you’ve ever told yourself about success or failure.

Presence isn’t something you get.
It’s what’s left when you stop chasing everything else.

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If this stirred your soul, unplugged your autopilot, or whispered “You came for more than this” into your scroll-weary heart—share it with your fellow seekers, tip your mystical barista, or subscribe for more fire-lit dispatches from the edge of becoming.

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