Purpose. It’s such an interesting concept – and one that the New Age has turned into a questing, why am I here inquiry within many folks who have rejected religious dogma and embraced spirituality.
There are even spiritual advisers out there who will tell people what their purpose is, why they incarnated at this time. Personally, I’m much more inclined to look within myself for my purpose than to pay someone to look deep into my internal crystal ball to conjure my reason for being! Each to his own, of course.
Metaphysically, there’s a very simple purpose that all of us share. A raison d’etre that may or may not be glamorous, include fortune or fame.
We’re all here to have experiences. Consider the possibility that this is the reason we’re here. It may not envelop you with sizzly, sparkly excitement, or make you feel unique or special. Yet it’s the one thing that happens to us every waking moment of our day. We have experiences.
Twenty three years ago when I first stepped on to my authentic path (the one I’m still walking today), one of the earliest teachings I had related to this topic: experiences as purpose.
Here’s what I learned:
- Every moment of life is an experience. You can throw a lot of weight at one experience and invest deeply in another experience. Other experiences you might write off as inconsequential or meaningless.
- Yet they’re all purposeful. They lead you to yourself. And they lead you (eventually) to an understanding that each experience is nothing more than that, an experience at a moment in time.
- Over time, you create and evolve your belief systems through your experiences, grouping them together around themes or patterns that anchor your beliefs in place (for now).
- But at the end of the path that you walk, all of these experiences that you generated, participated in, invested or divested in are nothing more than moments of time.
- No one experience is actually more important than another in the grand scheme of things, although some may create a greater emotional resonance than others.
So what does this mean for purpose – for being here to DO something, create a legacy, change the world, or your small part of the world?
It may mean that we’re not all going to be rich, famous, do something that makes us well-known, well-loved by millions. It may mean that the over-arching themes we wind up exploring in our lives – those we chose as part of our process of incarnating into this body, this life and this period of time – are the work of our lives and the grist for our experiences.
From the time I was born to this morning as I write this post at my desk, spirituality and consciousness have been a fixture in my life. My early years were spent feeling disenfranchised from the religious background in which I was raised. I can remember very clearly feeling a presence of ‘God’ when I played outside, climbed trees, sledded down a hill. In Sunday School – not so much. I felt managed, boxed in, indoctrinated. I couldn’t have explained the feeling at the time, but I knew it to the bottom of my feet. ‘God’ was out there in nature, not in the dogma of my family’s religious choice.
I don’t know that I believe that my purpose for being here is to run an energy healing school called Energy Healing Institute. I do believe that it is where my life has evolved as a result of millions of experiences exploring the theme of spirituality and consciousness. I feel purposeful in the work, I feel aligned and integrated with who I am and what I believe. I generate experiences that collaborate with my intent, energy and interest. And thus, the work and I thrive.
I also don’t know how big or successful or well-known Energy Healing Institute will become. I don’t believe I’m fulfilling a destiny or a grand plan. Being totally real and honest, there are other energy healing schools out there. Mine is not necessarily needed for energy healing to be offered in service to humanity. However, it’s there because the school matches my interests and abilities, has a set of ideas and practices that are teachable and transferable. It’s work that I feel called and inspired to do. Is it my purpose? Sure. In that it’s what I’m doing.
Was it predefined that this would be where I’d land in my late 40’s for the balance of my working life? I don’t believe so. It’s where my set of experiences led me. One day and experience at a time.
Rather than looking for the grand vision, the unifying reason for being, the defining moment that will shift the trajectory of life to the grand and glorious, perhaps it would be simpler, more fulfilling, authentic and viable to simply know that our purpose for being here is to create, experience and grok our lives so that our individual and collective consciousness evolves.
We’d love to keep this conversation going. What are your thoughts on purpose? What have you learned about purpose that you can share with us and our readers?
