I've got two stories to tell that on the surface seem very different, but once you dig deeper they are the same story told at different scales. This story is about listening to the universe and finding out what your purpose in life is.
No matter what worldview you have, there is a strong feeling that we are on this planet to learn something, and there is more than meets the eye. Christianity tells us we need to be more like Jesus and learn his lessons to be better people, Hinduism talks about dharma and learning lessons to be a better person, Scientology speaks about awakening the soul and moving towards a higher power. New age mysticism speaks about listening and embracing your true self or listening to beings of higher vibrational energy. Even in science, without all this "woo-woo", there is a steady resting state of any system, and fighting that resting state is a futile endeavor. All of these systems imply that as humans we have a certain amount of "internal" knowledge and a certain amount of "external" knowledge that we must learn from. The external knowledge is a huge mess because on the first level we must differentiate between what is true and what is false, and then we must differentiate between what is true for everyone and what is true for ourselves.
Science is good at the "true for everyone" level because it teaches us how the universe works and why things are the way they are. However, it falls apart when you try to bring science down to a personal level. If something is true objectively, that doesn't mean that it's true for you. How can you use science to answer a question like "What should I do with my life?". If you're trying to decide between being an engineer and a doctor, science can't help you. The closest it can get to helping if you break the decision down in an intellectual way, by making a pros and cons list, seeing which job pays better, or seeing which schooling you're better suited for. But on a more human level, which job will fulfill you more? Which one is your purpose?
Trying to find your purpose is the search for what is true to yourself. It's a mix of what you're best at, what the world needs, and what you enjoy doing. Religions and spirituality approach this from a more emotional perspective instead of an intellectual perspective. The thing I don't like about the emotional perspective is that it puts too much power in someone (or something) else's hands. Whether its commandments from a God, or a reincarnation cycle, or the flow of the universe, listening to your gut and going with the flow can be a hard pill to swallow at times. Not only for a "simple" question like "What should my job be?", but for moral and ethical questions we face daily. Why do we do the things we do? Why are we nice to others? Should we pursue pleasure and avoid pain at all costs? Do we make sacrifices now to reap better rewards later? What sacrifices are too much? There are innumerable difficult questions that we face in life, and it's hard to know where to turn to find the answers. Trying to be too intellectual about finding answers doesn't work, because we don't have all the information. We're fallible humans, there's no way we can have all the information required to make a truly informed decision. At the same time, a purely "go with the flow" response seems to be skirting responsibility. Even though we have limited information, we have to make a decision, and whatever "feels right" in the moment isn't necessarily what is right.
The best analogy I see for this is a child growing up with a parent. The parent can be a personification of whatever you want, either a God giving commandments, a karmic cycle looking to balance the scales, a higher dimensional being trying to embody the best life, or even a cold uncaring universe trying to balance states of energy and matter. There is some force external to us that we are trying to learn from, how do we learn from it?
The first stage is being a child and surrendering control to your parents. Your parents generally know what's best and try to guide you to a good life. Even though they will make you do things that you don't like, such as going to bed early, eating your vegetables, or not playing with dangerous objects, the general idea is that your life will turn out OK if you listen to your parents. This is the level of "going with the flow", or trusting in a higher power. "God has a plan", "everything happens for a reason", there are lots of stories people tell themselves when things don't happen the way they want. When life is good, its great, but when life is bad, it's hard to accept things that don't go your way or cause meaningless pain.
The second level would be like a teenager. You start to rebel against what your parents say, and start to think that you know better. Lots of mistakes happen here, and hopefully you survive all of them without too brutal of scars. Regular teenagers are here, but I've seen plenty of adults stuck in this stage as well. They're contradictory not because they believe in something different, they just say "Oh you want me to do it that way? I'm going to do it different". Maybe as an individual you do know better, but you can't disregard "the way things are" without considering why they are that way in the first place. Even though we have knowledge of our own, the knowledge outside of us is far greater, and we need to accept it.
The third level is what I believe we should strive for, equality with the external forces. This is when you grow up and become an adult. You start to look around the world and see "Hey, all these other people are just like me, we're all doing the best we can". You learn and understand things about the world, see the good, the bad, and the ugly. By taking the different pieces of knowledge, you can make informed choices instead of taking someone else's word for it. But at the same time, you know how to learn from others when taking someone else's word is the right thing to do.
Expanding this back out, I think bowing down to the universe is the wrong idea, as is constant rebellion against the universe. There's a middle ground where you can learn and understand the lessons that are being shown. Where you don't take things at face value and strive to understand WHY things are the way they are. Sometimes "the way things are" is bad and needs changing, so pushing back and rebelling to make things better is the right thing to do. But, things "are the way they are" because they're usually pretty good, so it's better to go with the flow and enjoy. There's no blanket answer, and that's the goal. Stop looking for a blanket answer, and instead look for understanding of what makes things the way they are.
The goal of all this is the search for truth. You can split it into "What's good and bad" or "What's right and what's wrong?", but it all comes down to the only question that matters. "What do I do?"
There is knowledge inside of you that tells you what to do, and knowledge outside of you that tells you what to do. Focusing on the inside makes you miss out on learning, and focusing on the outside makes you miss out on authenticity. You need both to find the true (or at least the closest we can get to true) answer.