What is the Universe doing? It's doing you! PURPOSE is a hell of a concept to get your head around.

Purpose is a concept. All concepts originate in thought. Thoughts are created by the mind, which is in the head.

In New Thought or more New Agey beliefs, the explanation is that you are living in your lower self most of the time.

Actually new age borrows heavily from old age, from the likes of Buddhism, Zen, Tao and Advaita Vedanta, to name a few.

The lower self is the mind, the thinking mind.

There really lacks a word for "Mind" but it is a connection with all of the life force, the God nature within.

No, there are a few words for that. Consciousness, awareness, presence, stillness, emptiness, etc.

Unfortunately, it is considered that we are so stuck in this illusion that we don't realize this higher potential of Consciousness. The world we see is essential "the wool we have pulled over our eyes." We know that this state exists because from time to time we have had a glimpse of this higher state. Many master teachers before us Christ, Buddha, Krishna, etc. have all reached this higher state, this potential that is also with in us.

There is no illusion, so to speak, there is only perspective. When consciousness is focused entirely on the thinking mind, then consciousness is entirely focused on thoughts. Thoughts are concepts of things, memories and models of things. This focus on thoughts can fill ones consciousness so entirely that the real world, which is not thoughts, not concepts or models, but actual things, like for example, planets and stars and donuts, and not things, like for example, empty space.

There is no "higher state" so to speak, there is only the unintentional obsessive compulsive thinking which clouds the consciousness and clouds the experience. There is nothing wrong with thinking and nothing at all wrong with thoughts, it's just that obsessive thinking and obsessive thoughts leave no room for emptiness, which contributes as much as 99% of the universe.

Being in alignment with the universe then, or at one with all that is, we ought then be at least 1% thought and 99% silent.