One of the ways in which Mr. Allen talks about this sort of thing is his analogy to being in an airplane: sitting on the runway (next actions), 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet, etc., and how the world looks different at these various altitudes. It corresponds to what mcogilvie mentioned above.
What you're describing sounds like a higher-level "altitude":
40,000 feet - long-term vision (such as the consciousness shift)
50,000 feet - life purposes and core values
As Gardener wrote, how this works out in practice is that your higher-level vision and purposes inform your lower-level work, all the way down to Next Actions. It reminds you to always be looking for ways to nudge the world in the direction it should go. As Allen says somewhere, we must ask the question "Is it actionable?" A vision does little good unless there are "lower level" things like projects and actions that are part of fulfilling the vision.
I think he suggests writing such visions/purposes down, perhaps in a checklist that you look at from time to time - I have a text file, with a TBD reminder to prompt me to look at it every quarter. Or you could put some of it on your wall; I have some of that in my office, as well, reminding me of why I am here.
I like Allen's discussion of the "levels" in his other book, "Making it all work," where he goes a bit more into this than he does in "Getting Things Done."
[Edited 4/28/17 to add: The connection between vision/purpose and the day-to-day work of next actions and projects is the weekly review. As part of the review, we should spend some time considering how/whether our work of the past week is in accord with our higher-level purposes, making adjustments accordingly.]
