Purpose ~ Do you know yours?
Lately, the idea of ‘Purpose’ has been in my line of focus (I completed a show with Tom Campbell on Purpose). Purpose is this interesting concept that we have. We believe that our purpose is somehow tied up with our identity. So we have this grandiose concept of ‘what we do’ is ‘who we are’. What I mean by this is that we identify with what we do, what our ‘work’ is as part of our identity. And we also believe that as we define ourselves by what we do, our ‘purpose’ is somehow linked to our work. And our ‘purpose’ is our Soul’s Purpose. Our ‘purpose’ is ‘Who we are’, what our Soul has decided to work on in this life.
We also look outside ourselves for assistance to uncover this elusive ‘purpose’ in hopes that someone else can direct us to our living our highest potential and our new ‘work’ will be reflected within this discovery by someone outside ourselves. I always find it amazing that we put our hopes in another’s hands to tell us what our whole life has been telling us.
Every core issue is uncovering our ‘purpose’! Every dream and turn we have made in our lives has been to right us on the path of discovery of Who we are. What we chose as our higher education – even for those who were pushed by their parents into their unfulfilled or chosen field. How we live our lives. Every relationship. All these have helped us uncover this potential of Who we are!
The problem of course is that we often are not our ‘authentic’ self and we are looking outside ourselves for our validation in hopes of discovering this ideal. As Tom Campbell suggests our Purpose is to Grow-up and BE Love.
A crystal child in the book “Communication with Children of Now” by Meg Blackburn Losey suggests we have two purposes: a major purpose is to ‘make a difference’ and the other purpose is to enjoy the game. Tom has added to the major purpose of this crystal child to not make ‘making a difference’ the goal, but to be motivated to BE caring and compassionate to others. This may seem like a subtle difference but if you are just doing things like volunteering because it’s the ‘right’ thing to do because it will make a difference in this world, then you aren’t doing it from your heart. Which means eventually you will bring your ego into this process, you will resent that some people get paid, that people are ‘doing it wrong’ and you will try to fix, change, or manipulate the ‘service’ and eventually be very unfulfilled and resentful because your ego is taking over your volunteer work. Offering to do volunteer work because you love it, because you want to care for others, and because you are a compassionate person means you will enjoy it without involving your ego.
Our purpose really isn’t this elusive ‘thing’ that we do or have to discover. It is the Gift of Who we are! It may carry over into our work but our work isn’t what defines us. In fact, we could fulfill our purpose in everything we do. If we are BEing authentic, if we are BEing ourselves then we naturally are our work. Meaning, someone who is a ‘leader’ will be learning all their lives about leading. They would have had early experiences of both good and bad examples of leading; they would have done both good and bad examples of leading; and they will lead wherever they are or in whatever they do. We don’t just all of a sudden have someone tell us our ‘purpose’ and we have nothing to do with this information.
However, we may not be aware of our ‘gifts’ consciously and this is often because we don’t always have an unbiased view of our world. And we are usually attached to BEing a certain way. So it is possible that we haven’t seen that from our childhoods we have always loved to communicate, that we have always been very social and extroverted, or that we have always enjoyed writing stories, blogs and exploring other ways to communicate. However, it should be no surprise that our purpose is to communicate because we have had many examples in our lives and probably ‘communicating’ is a large part of the lessons you are learning in your life. Do you see how this works? Our purpose is who we are and what we are learning in this life.
And if we are not be able to see what we do best our friends and family can often be the ones who can tell us what or who we are.
One of the ‘gifts’ in this life is uncovering the magic that lies in our lessons, in our struggles, and in our choices that we have made in our relationships. Experiencing this magic helps us free up so much energy and love within us. Remembering ‘who we are’ is so empowering when we can discover it ourselves when we find the magic in our lessons. And so it is important to know that all the struggles, pain and fears we have endured are part of the process of uncovering our Gifts and Purpose. And when we realize that this is all part of the Divine plan to own who we are and to live our Purpose it frees us from the struggle!
I invite you to find a way to BE who you are and express your Gifts through your Purpose in life. Then we can do the secondary purpose the young crystal child saw, which is to finally have FUN and enJOY the game of life!