Do We Have a Divine Purpose?
Are You Searching?
Have you ever searched deep inside to discover if you have a purpose to your life? If you’ve come here to earth to do something special, or to be someone extraordinary? Is there more to life than going to work, eating, sleeping and looking forward to the weekends? Maybe you feel there is a reason for your Being, but haven’t tapped into it yet. In other words have you ever thought: ‘What the heck am I here to do?’
I have
I know I’ve often wondered. What is my passion? How can I make a difference in the world?
Maybe like me, you’ve done a lot more than just wonder, spending loads of time and money exploring the possibilities. Do you remember all the workshops born from EST? Were you also taking self-improvement seminars back in the 80’s, then several more every year in the 90’s, always looking for direction, focus, striving to become a better you?
For years I’ve had an exploration of creativity and artistic expression, including workshops on expanding my soul, and a weekend sitting in silence. Friends and I fasted for a month then asked a therapist and spiritual adviser,
“What are we suppose to do with our lives?”
I’ve made the rounds. Have you?
We try to find answers in books, blogs, and self-improvement newsletters. My sister religiously gives me O magazine every year for Christmas. I’m not sure if all this helps me feel more connected to a purpose. I’m still searching, but getting closer. Closer to what may be the real question. Where am I going?
Do we get clues?
Last year my car broke down on the highway. When one’s car breaks down, is the Universe trying to tell you something? Slow down, speed up, or take a different road? Perhaps the car is a metaphor for our physical body and that is what’s breaking down. Is there a profound meaning in everything designed to lead us to our correct path? Over the years dissected my daily mundane, but now I wonder, is this useful? Metaphysicians might say so, but I’ve backed off that thinking.
As I write this, I’m ill. Here I am, a speaker, teacher, and facilitator and I’ve got laryngitis. I wrote to my friend Corinne Edwards, “What does it mean when I’m a speaker and can’t speak? Is it my inner child trying to break free? Should I be doing Reiki on myself clearing my communication channel? Maybe I should ask my guides. Or is it that I’m speaking on the wrong subjects. Is my fear getting in the way? Have I gotten sick because I’m scared of success? Perhaps I must speak louder, take a stronger position. Tell me, Corinne, Why can’t I speak? Am I sabotaging my dreams?”
My down-to-earth yet spiritual friend answered: “You’re sick because you are human”
Huh. Human. No big message, no buried meanings. Easy. I’m sick, I’m human, move on. I like that response. Could that be the essence of finding our Divine Purpose? That being Human is enough?
Forget Trying to Figure it Out!
Sometimes in the searching, in the figuring it all out, we forget that living is a moment-by-moment process. Being ill may have lots of deeper meanings, but I’m still sick. My next step, right now, is to go to bed for a couple of days and take care of me. Maybe I’ll get the lessons around my flu…or maybe not. Meanwhile I can honor my humanness participating in life - even when I don’t feel up to it.
Do Others Think Your Life Is Perfect?
I used to own a business in the holistic health industry. Stories would fill my inbox from practitioners about patients with life-threatening illnesses whom they had cured because of our cutting-edge health medicine. We’d talk at length about the lessons our illness brings us, often with great insight and benefit. But what if the discussion only brings confusion instead of peace? Should we still ask the questions? Sure, but lightly, being gentle. If no answer comes, let us continue to be with what is, not what could be, or should be.
During those years I loved my work and was excited about it. My job had everything: Helping people, serving the community, learning extraordinary things, and connecting with others around the world. I should have felt connected, like I was living my path, filled with a unique Divine Purpose chosen for me.
Shouldn’t I Be Happy?
Yet I didn’t. Why wasn’t I happy? Surely I should be happy.
The money was great. The job was fantastic. Nevertheless, it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t reconcile the present reality, with where I wanted to be. Inside myself was always a yearning, a longing to be ‘doing’ something else.
An inner restlessness nudged me to leave my job though I’d started the company and was the President. I knew that way down inside myself I really wanted to change direction. My heart was telling me this and it was getting stronger each day. ‘This isn’t your path; this is another’s path.’
Still, I didn’t leave right away. I hung on, - and on, for about another year, all the while shouting to the sky. ‘Tell me’, I’d scream at the Heavens. ‘What am I here for?’ What am I supposed to be doing? How did I get so off-course?
We Are Always in The Perfect Place
Yet here’s the thing. I wasn’t really ever off my course. I’ve been on my path my whole life, living the experience, being Human. The discontent came from searching outside me, looking for the doing instead of the being.
Being Human.
You’ve heard this before. I’ve heard it before.
“It isn’t the destination that’s important, it is the journey” - “Follow your heart, and the money will follow.”
So how can we follow our hearts when we aren’t happy in our job? How can we pay our bills and live with Spirit? Must I give up my profession and live in poverty in order to discover meaning and purpose? Nah. I don’t believe it. Purpose comes from being, and less to do with doing. However, there are activities that make our heart sing. These are the doings that makes us more fully Human.
Be Creative
One way to rediscover how your heart sings is to try new and different things. Be open to the adventure in every day life. Try it. What are some activities that open your heart? Maybe you’ll find they even connect with your vision – your purpose?
Perhaps you love great food and have a dream to study cooking in Paris. You have a feeling it may be your Soul’s Divine Purpose. What if, just what if, you could buy a French cookbook and start cooking French food today. Would that make your heart happy? Then you’d be living in the moment, not waiting for some future event to occur so you could be living your dreams.
Maybe you don’t even know what your heart-bursting activities are. We bury them inside where our childhood dreams live. Try this. Take pen and paper and quickly, write down 100 things you loved to do as a child. Don’t think about it. No censoring. Yes 100 things. Quick. When you run out of ideas keep writing the list of things you might have liked to do as a child, then add to it things your friends liked to do.
Remember inside what you love to do!
What did you get? Reading? Dancing, Running? Building rocket ships? Playing with dolls, studying the stars? These may be activities that will help get you closer to your dreams, and in turn, to your Soul’s Divine Purpose. Take one of the items on the list and try it. Want to dance? Your dreams don’t need dance lessons, try dancing around the living room, once a day for a week. Maybe your heart just wants to go outside and stare at the dark night for ten minutes. Great! Don’t wait for a thousand dollars and the new telescope to manifest. If you’ve got a dream, or a wish, this could be a window into your Divine Purpose.
What if all we needed to live our purpose was a gentle nudge to have more fun, open our heart, and be more connected to our own Spirit? Perhaps we each have the power to turn on the switch inside ourselves to ‘enlighten’ our heart’s desire? And that will lead us to Divine Purpose.
Eventually, you may turn your passion into a business or a job, but for today, bask in your spiritual gift of stargazing, painting, or sitting in the stillness. Your gift to the world doesn’t have to involve money or product. You don’t have to change jobs or dissect your dramas of the day. Your gift to the world is being you, fully Human, living in the joy with an expanded heart. Reconnecting with your Spirit. Rediscovering what makes your heart sing, here in the moment. Following your bliss.
And that is your Divine Purpose.
