Think of these intentions as written on a giant “canvas” nurtured inside the boundless consciousness of the Universe which can never be captured by a single interpretative modality or combination of modalities. The breadth of that evolutionary field does not appear to have an end, and its beginnings are enveloped in mystery.
Twin charts, and the charts of triplets and quintuplets, are great ways to deepen our understanding of how Human Design functions in the real-time, real lives of human beings. This is because of the fascinating phenomenon that no two charts of the same birth date, time, and place will ever express in the same ways. Why is that? Keep reading!
Our Design describes how our energy is meant to flow. It shows us our best tools for applying our energy, choosing appropriately, where our greatest strengths are, and what we will be drawn to. The direction in which our energy flows is intended to show us where and how to carry out our life plan and soul purpose. That is because our energy naturally flows towards what we are supposed to be doing, being, and learning.
Our Design energies express through our creativity, how we relate to others, how we find our place in the world, the kinds of vocations that interest us, and how we find meaning and fulfillment. In other words, our Design is the map of the path that will lead to the highest expression of our purpose. Above all, your Design is intended to serve your continuing evolution.
But the Chart is not the Soul. Your Human Design is not your Soul.
Although the themes of twin charts, fraternal or identical, are the same, they will be expressed differently through each twin. All of us are born with our own agenda, or soul contract. In addition, we are all impacted by multiple influences besides our Human Design. Our psychology, astrology, numerology, sociology, genetics, and upbringing, are just a few of the additional influences you bring to your Human Design. Even twins raised in the same family will not have the same perceptions or experiences. Understand also that each part of the Human Design chart has a significant range for how it can express, from lower (reactive, lacking self-awareness) to higher (awareness of why the self has particular responses, and also how acting on those affects the well-being of self and others), as well as an assortment of ways from which each part’s attributes can express. Every person chooses, with awareness or not, how they will express their Design.
Most importantly, we each have a unique soul trajectory that describes where we’ve been and who we’ve been, including how we have treated others, how others have treated us, and how we may have impacted collective history, for good or ill.
Our soul history affects the purpose and direction of our current lives. In other words, the dharma, or life purpose which we incarnated to express and explore, and the karma we came to restore, is influenced by our previous lives. Karma is inevitable, as all actions must be brought to balance. Dharma is necessarily woven into the fabric of our lives. This is because the direction of the Universe evolves towards higher consciousness. Higher consciousness is about unity; it is not about exclusion. Exclusion always results in imbalance, inequity, suffering, and the continuing creation of karma. The agreements or soul contracts we’ve made assist us to connect to our dharma and bring us to the karmas that seek resolution.
Your life is part of an unimaginably complex tapestry woven into the much larger intentions of an evolutionary field that spans the personal to the collective and beyond. Think of these intentions as written on a giant “canvas” nurtured inside the incomprehensibly boundless consciousness of the Universe. That consciousness can never be captured by a single interpretative modality or combination of modalities. The breadth of that evolutionary field does not appear to be measurable and its beginnings are enveloped in mystery.
The bottom line with how any Design will express has everything to do with the Soul that took it on for that lifetime. Again, souls are at different stages in their evolution — we have different histories; some longer, some shorter. Some of us are younger souls; some are older. All of these influence the unique goals (dharma) and different obligations (karma) for your life. As you become more aware of who you are and what you came here to do, your discernment about what choices are correct for you also increases.
These reasons, although not comprehensive, are why someone who has the same exact Design as you will, by the time they reach maturity, have a life that looks very different from yours.
What does this mean for the value of Human Design as a tool for self-discovery?
Because different people can be born with the same chart, does it render our Design meaningless? Does it mean that we can’t use our Human Design to identify our uniqueness and our purpose and use it to help us anchor into that purpose? Of course not.
You are the one who brings your Design to life.
Your Design already gives you a great deal of information. It will point you in the direction that you should go. Then it is up to you, as the unique individual soul who is “wearing” that Design, to bring it to light in the way that only you (your soul) intended. You are far more than your Human Design, but you are going to use that Design to find YOUR path and YOUR purpose.
Think of these intentions as written on a giant “canvas” nurtured inside the boundless consciousness of the Universe which can never be captured by a single interpretative modality or combination of modalities. The breadth of that evolutionary field does not appear to have an end, and its beginnings are enveloped in mystery. Even if you don’t believe that the Soul creates intentions, or that your soul has a trajectory comprised of previous lives, you will nevertheless be compelled to live your life by virtue of the yearnings that are unique to you and that drive you to create an authentic life.
I leave you with this: follow your Soul’s (or your authentic) intentions because therein lies the direction for your life.
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Positive thinking can help bring out the best in your Human Design. When you are optimistic, it is easier to access your innate gifts.
A positive mindset will help you to uncloud your emotions and keep fear out of your decisions. It will allow you to see your way more clearly. When you are not struggling with difficult emotions such as resentment and feelings that life is unfair, it is much easier for you to access the gifts of your Human Design because it is much easier to see your options and to become aware of opportunities as they show up.
In this way, optimism and positive thinking will help you to succeed. Be mindful that optimism and positive thinking will not change your original Soul Intentions or the inherent potential of your Design, but they will support them. If you agreed to be a teacher, a factory worker, or a retail employee, for example, optimism and positive thinking will not alter your Soul Plan. Optimism alone cannot expand your life choices such that you can now aspire to wealth, fame, extraordinary talent, or success. You will not transform from a nice-looking person to someone of great beauty or crowd-attracting magnetism because you are optimistic and have a good attitude, but you could become someone who is trustworthy and would make a good friend. And you will be able to bring out the highest expression of your Design.
Your Soul Plan was Decided Ahead of Time
Your Human Design was created to support your Soul Plan. You do not come in as a blank slate, but rather with a complex Plan that is intricately connected to and dependent on many pre-incarnational agreements. It is also true that we can make agreements once we are here, and these back-ups often replace those agreements that did not, for various reasons, show up. Or they can bridge gaps that we did not foresee.
Becoming an author or acclaimed speaker is a specific path that requires that certain types of agreements with others are in place, and also that these agreements will be followed. These goals also require specific types of talent, drive, and vision.
You must have something to say that will inspire many, and you must choose your words wisely. If you want to become a best-selling author or popular thought leader and speaker and believe you can because you are passionate, because you believe in what’s possible for humanity and are on the side of justice, it would be good to do some soul-searching. Look within to see if you are indeed designed to express your convictions from those platforms. When we use the talents we were given and follow what calls us, life is easier because we are in alignment with our agreements and with our gifts and Design.
When we use our gifts and apply them to our interests, we are well within the parameters of our original Intentions and the Design that was created to support and carry out those Intentions. Life is much harder when we try to become someone that we are not designed to be and for which we do not have agreements. We need our agreements to help move us along. Mentors are one such agreement. Those who provide introductions or connections are another type of agreement. Those who employ us so that we can keep food on the table and those who teach skills and knowledge for which we are suited are also in our pool of agreements. But when we place ourselves in arenas where we do not have agreements or the right “stuff,” we will struggle for recognition and support.
Follow the Unfolding of Your Soul Plan to See Where it Takes You
You will discover, over time, what is contained in your Plan, and if you find that you do not have the interest or desire to become a celebrity of this or that, do not think it is because of laziness, or that you lack or courage or ambition. Do not think you are failing your calling. And if you find that you are unable to produce material of the type that appeals to a wide audience despite your efforts, do not think that you are failing your mission. Do not think that it is because you lack insight or your own special brand of brilliance, or that you have no appeal. It could simply be that you are not meant for celebrity status this life, or that your talents are not intended to be used in this way.
Do not assume that if you live a humble life that you will lack impact and influence. All too often we discount our ability to have a positive impact if our actions are unseen by most and take place in humble circumstances. You do not know if you are the primary facilitating agreement for someone who has a “large” mission who needed your encouragement and information. You do not always know how many “students” benefited from your words and deeds.
You will be much happier when you can operate from who you are without feeling like you have to swim the English Channel or have a million followers on Instagram before you can prove to yourself and others that you have value and are doing what you came to do. You do not have to walk across Niagara Falls from a tightrope to find your Soul Plan. You do not need to go to India. Unless, of course, these things are written into your Soul Plan! How do you know what is in your Soul Plan and if you are to live a “big” or “small” life?
Follow Your Heart
Follow your passions and your interests. Take stock of the resources you have: physical, emotional, and financial, and especially include those who want to support you in your calling. Be aware that rest and nourishment are essential. You need your vitality and your health. Your health and well-being will support you to do what you need and want to do. And your well-being will always support you to feel good about your life as is even if all you do is sit on the back porch with a glass of wine while you watch your cats play in the grass under the late afternoon Sun. It’s also possible that while you silently muse on the vibrancy of the setting sun as the grass and your cats fade into shadow, that a remarkable revelation will seize your imagination. Then you will know beyond a doubt just what glorious dimensions are held in your Soul Plan.
Have you lost your mojo? And your vitality…your hunger…your passion…your hope…your freedom…your excitement…your energy…when was the last time you had the energy to do more than just sit? Have you lost interest in pretty much everything? Been there, done that, or even if you haven’t done that, it’s not compelling anyway. Nothing’s all that compelling. Nothing’s that fascinating, remarkable, or worth bothering with. It’s all mostly just — yuk and blah.
No mojo means you’re burned out. Burnout has multiple origins, and it affects every part of our being. We are physically tired, emotionally exhausted, unable to stay focused, and spiritually depleted. Nothing has appeal, and there is no energy for further exploration. When you’re burned out, it’s easy to question your purpose, it’s easy to question whether whoever put you here even cares about your life. It’s easy to believe you have been abandoned by everyone, including the Universe that created you. When you have lost connection to meaning, to purpose, to YOU, you have lost connection to life.
Burnout can last a short time or for years. Burnout can interfere with your ability to see how things can be different and to find solutions to how you can take back your life. This state of mind can even convince you that there’s nothing you can do to turn things around, so why try.
I. Where did my Mojo go?
Causes of burnout:
Have you been doing too much of “nothing;” that is, putting your time and energy into projects and endeavors that have little reward for you?
Have you entered into things incorrectly — was your heart in it, or did you feel obligated? Or did you just jump in, hoping for the best?
Have you been subscribing to the same dream, and it still eludes you? If so, are you sure it’s your dream?
Have you been overdoing it, and not giving yourself enough time to recuperate?
Have you experienced a loss of someone you loved, including a pet?
Have you made a geographical move you did not want to make?
Did someone betray you?
Did you lose a job or not get the one you thought you were a good fit for?
Do you secretly feel like you simply aren’t good enough, talented enough, or smart enough?
Or attractive enough?
Do you put out energy and effort to cover up your belief that you’re inferior?
Is the food you eat nourishing you?
Have you experienced a sudden change in circumstances that you did not see coming and that you never would have asked for?
Have you forgiven yourself?
Have you forgiven?
When was the last time you experienced beauty?
Has everything you’ve tried to get movement, to get unstuck, yielded zero results?
Have you just given up on anything changing for you the way you need it to?
II. So what can you do?
It’s time to take a break and rest. Take a break from your ideas and expectations of who you should be, of how you should present to the world, and of what you should have accomplished by now. It will not do any good to take the bull by the horns and forge ahead. When you are burned out, heroic efforts will only burn you out more. When you are burned out, you don’t have clarity. You will spin your wheels seeking solutions because the energy you need to get and stay focused simply isn’t there. And then again, you might conclude that there’s just no point in trying because nothing will ever change. You have plenty of evidence to support this.
But that is the seduction of burnout — to reach a point where we’re convinced there’s no more hope. There’s nothing that can be done. This is a good time to review your track record and see where you have used your talents to benefit others, to remember when who you were made all the difference. So much of what we think is important is transitory and superficial. So much of what we believe is true is nothing more than a tangled web of inoperative myths. Identify where you have been a slave to these myths. Free yourself. Walk away.
The important thing is to rest, to take the break. Nurture and nourish yourself by surrounding yourself with what makes your heart sing. The balm of nature, pets, music, poetry, and art are universally uplifting. Don’t put pressure on yourself to become anything. Do what you need to do to take care of your basic needs, and then let go. And don’t pressure yourself to feel wonderful right away because that probably won’t happen. Have patience. The important thing is you want things to be different.
Take a ferocious stand for your life. Decide that the only thing that matters is taking back your life. Despite the betrayals, the losses, and the shock of the unexpected, you are still in charge of your life. You still have the power to intervene on your own behalf. Understand that you are a creation of a powerful force, and there is nothing you need to do to prove your value, your worth, or your lovability. What you are here to do is live your life according to your soul contract. From here on out, every decision you make, from the most insignificant to the most important, must be in service to your best interests — to you. Not to or for someone else. YOU ARE WRITING YOURSELF INTO A NEW STORY.
Feel into the desires of your heart, mind, and body for the future you want to bring in. Embody these desires by making every choice in service to your future, to the life you want to be living, to how you want to look and feel, to the people you want around you, and to the experiences you want to have. Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Many who endured the extreme conditions of the holocaust found comfort in their good memories and in dreaming of a better future.
III. More things you can do:
Connect with the people who believe in YOU.
Put on music. Dance. Get your energy flowing again.
There is something you’re passionate about. Reconnect with it!
Believe in yourself. Choosing to do so will create your own personal movement.
Trust your intuition. Don’t second-guess yourself.
Focus on what is working, focus on your strengths. Focus on what makes you feel happy.
It’s OK to not know the outcome or the answers or how you will get from here to there. Allow the unfolding of your creativity to lead the way.
Surround yourself with beauty. Yes, there is still beauty! Create beauty.
Write your story the way you want it to be.
Treat yourself with love and respect.
Get out of your head. Stop the over-thinking and the second-guessing.
Create rhythm and consistency in your life.
Enjoy being YOU.
You can re-awaken your mojo by moving towards what calls to you, and taking small steps as you re-discover what it means to be alive. Being alive holds enormous possibilities. While you are here, there is a wealth of life to be explored and enjoyed. But first: rest, surrender to the flow of life, and give up all the useless demands and expectations. There is another vision for you, another life. When you are ready, take up your bed and walk. Go about the business of being who you are.
IV. Identify your core essential truth. Your core essential truth is indefatigable and primal. And it will get you moving.
There is something that endures at your core that has nothing to do with time or place. This is what gets revealed after everything has been stripped away. This truth is what your life is anchored into. It is unwavering and immovable. Stay connected to this truth, and it will sustain you.
What do you need to do to release, heal, and align to reconnect with your core essential truth?
It is part of the human condition to experience isolation, depression, loss of hope, and focus. This is what happens when we don’t pay attention to what is going on around us, and when we ignore our own needs. Still, it is a common human experience to reach rock bottom and then to have to find a way up from the pit we’ve fallen into (or even been thrown into). Many have fallen, but many have found their way back out. The thing is to not see what happened to you as permanent or as the end of everything. Whatever happens, it is a point, an event in the overall trajectory of your life. Something else will always follow as long as you are willing to say yes to your life.
Even if you have a sense that your original plans have fallen off their map, don’t despair and don’t give up. Your soul is a very potent force and will find ways to create new pathways for bringing its agenda into manifestation to the greatest extent possible. Even if the elements that come together to assist your intentions are different from what was planned and the timing of things has changed. Still, because you have a purpose, and that purpose is sacred to both the fulfillment of your intentions and the connections you planned, the force that drives their fulfillment is not easily daunted. Despite delays and alternate routes, your soul will strive to attract and create the experiences you were meant to have — the ones contained in your soul contract.
As long as you are alive, there will be change, and there will be new opportunities. Keep your heart open, and when a hand reaches out to pull you up, take it. Say YES to life!
Rather than struggling to identify a specific vocation (or career) focus instead on this: What do you care about? What did you love to do when you were very young? Look there for clues to a particular vocation. What is compelling for you? What creates excitement in you? What do you consider an adventure? What will cause you to leap out of bed? There are clues here that point to specific vocations. The activities you are naturally drawn to, what you long to learn about or explore, will point you to your next career. In other words, follow what calls you and your career will find you.
• What do you love to do? You want to enjoy your work.
• What types of activities or situations bring you so much joy that you forget your troubles?
• What did you used to love to do, but have essentially forgotten about or given up on because it didn’t work out at the time or simply made no sense? Or you didn’t get much support for it? Revisit it. Re-engage it. These things, whatever they are, are yours. These are your gifts. They are to be used in service to others and for your own continuing development.
• What are you really good at? Again, what you’re good at is also what is fun and meaningful for you.
• What are you really passionate about? Where do your yearnings lead you? Your passion will get you over humps, writer’s block, self-doubt, waiting for an invitation, pretty much anything that rears its ugly little head and tries to talk you out of embracing your natural design. Or, put another way, your inclinations and your yearnings.
• What are you passionate about sharing or teaching others? If you don’t think this points to your vocation, think again.
• What have you acquired much knowledge in just because you enjoyed going there? In other words, what have you really been training for all your life?
• What are you really good at? Take stock here. What you’re good at is more than a hint of where you should put your time, energy, and attention. What vocations does this translate to?
Having said the above things, consider whether your passions and yearnings best express themselves through a single vocation. Or even as a standard, conventional vocation.
We have been enculturated to believe that one’s talents and passions can best be expressed — or only expressed — through a particular vocation. That may not be the case for you. You may not be here to do “normal” or conventional work or specialize in just one area. Maybe you are here to explore, experiment, and do many things! Your passions and talents will likely connect naturally to several types of vocations or careers, but it is best to steer yourself away from thinking that what is out there in the ordinary workaday world will necessarily be your perfect match. What is important is that you put your attention and energy into what calls you. Follow that, and you will make the ‘career’ connections you need. In other words, you can find the right path for your gifts.
Understand that it is not uncommon that what you do for a living does not always require or ask for the highest expression of your gifts. Your official job may not be as fulfilling for you as a “hobby” in which you find a lot of joy, and where others also benefit. Our way of thinking is that what we do for a living has to match up with what brings us the most joy, and where we have the greatest impact. This is actually not true, and in real life, such jobs are not always easy to get, though it may work out that way. What is important is that you create the space to use your gifts, even if you are also working a regular job. In this way, you continue to cultivate your unique presence in the world, and most importantly, be your most effective self. You will also have the peace that comes with knowing you are being and doing all you can.
There is nothing more important than carrying out your soul contract because in doing so, everyone benefits. Your gifts are meant to be shared. They are part of an intricately interwoven matrix where each one’s gifts and callings are interconnected. Each time someone agrees to do what they came here to do, all of life is lifted up, and the healing and evolution that happens for everyone, including the Cosmos, is beyond measure.
Your life is about completing what you were put on Earth to do. Your agenda, or soul intentions for what you planned to accomplish, is contained in your soul contract. You took on many agreements, some large and some small, to fulfill over the course of your life. Each one of you has a soul contract brimming with agreements, and these include your overarching mission, a.k.a. your dharma, as well as the incomplete transactions that seek resolution and balance, also known as karma. How do you find out what those are?
Look at your history and notice where you’ve spent your time and given your energy and attention — notice what you’ve gone out of your way to access and investigate. Especially take notice of what you’ve been willing to move Heaven and Earth to do! These actions reveal your soul’s interests and desires. Your actions, motivated by your desires, are clear indicators of your dharma and your karma — what you are here to work on and complete. Additionally, how you take action on the way to fulfilling your desires is a clear indicator of two critical pieces of information: your gifts, and where you are to be of service.
The best way to find out what is in your soul contract is to follow what compels you. Most of us don’t know at the beginning of our lives why we are here or what we are supposed to do, but we can find out! Each one of us has built-in natural gifts that will not be ignored, and that the world needs. Every single one of you has important gifts. Your ability might be to make others laugh, it might be getting along with people, it might be cooking, it might be working with complex ideas, it might be bringing order and organization, or it might be holding space for others. There are as many gifts as there are people. Everyone has at least one significant gift (and the truth is you each have many), and they are waiting to be used to in service to the life you agreed to live, with the bonus that you will also experience deep fulfillment.
One more time, how can you really know what is in your soul contract?
Imagine that God and your Higher Self worked with you to create your current life. Then you were placed on this Earth and told to go out and do what you agreed to do, to begin unfolding the precious contents of your soul contract. What would God and your Higher Self have pointed you towards?
Would it be being a good person?
Would it be a specific career? Musician, dancer, actor, singer, doctor, scientist, lawyer, teacher?
Would it be doing well in your career?
Would it be about becoming famous?
Would it be about donating time and money to charity?
Would it be creating wonderful works of art to inspire the world?
Would it be helping others with your unique gifts?
Would it be a peacemaker?
Would it be a civil rights activist?
Would it be bringing in innovative solutions to humanity’s many problems?
Would it be animal rights?
Would it be teaching and inspiring others to have confidence and courage?
Would it be healing of the mind or body or spirit?
Would it be to create communities that meet the needs of their members and in turn serve the greater good?
Would it be about becoming a visionary leader?
Would it be amassing as much money as you possibly could so you could buy nice things?
You were put here for a reason and whatever that reason is, you need to discover it and then fulfill it. You have plenty of skills, and many interests that will lead you to develop even more skills. When you are working directly with your soul contract, not only will you feel contentment, you will find that your ability to understand life and what is happening with you becomes more clear and even more profound.
Your soul contract is intended to bring you joy. When you experience joy in being around certain things or having certain experiences, you have been given the clues to identify the contents of your soul contract.
The most important thing you can do with your life is to accomplish what you came here to do. Are you listening to the urging of your soul contract? Are you stepping up to meet its call? Acting from your own initiative is primary, but you are not alone. Your contract was created in committee, albeit a very personal one. Your Higher Self and primary Guides will support and encourage you.
There is nothing more important than carrying out your soul contract because in doing so, everyone benefits. Your gifts are meant to be shared. They are part of an intricately interwoven matrix where each one’s gifts and callings are interconnected. Each time someone agrees to do what they came here to do, all of life is lifted up, and the healing and evolution that happens for everyone, including the Cosmos, is beyond measure.
P.S. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or if you feel that you haven’t made much headway. As long as you are alive, there is always something you can do to fulfill your soul contract.
Navigating your calling is often fraught with challenges. And that’s not just because we’re not always clear on how to make the correct choices, but also because we live in a world filled with other people’s intentions and actions. These can definitely affect us, and their impact is not always intended to be a lesson meant specifically for us, if it is even a lesson.
Nevertheless, we can learn from everything that happens. If we are willing to stay open and curious, and we ask for help, we can become skillful at navigating broken bridges. I am not convinced that every unexpected event that comes knocking was intended, or was needed for us to evolve, but while we can’t always tell the difference between karmic payback, accidents, or lessons we purposely designed, we still have to manage what shows up while continuing to care for the infrastructure of our lives. We still have to manage the unexpected while following our calling, and we still have to maintain accountability to ourselves, our jobs, family, friends, and to current commitments and ongoing transactions. Trust that forces larger than yourself are working hard on your behalf.
It is often easier to fulfill your soul intentions for your INNER life — what you are passionately drawn to, what stimulates your creativity, what pulls you with the force of a giant magnet — because these serve your evolution, and because this is who you are and you can’t help yourself. When you feel compelled to move towards something, it is often because that situation aligns vibrationally with your soul’s overarching purpose. Our inner life — what we choose to read, study, make hobbies from, develop real skills in — is often more successful in achieving its original goals. That’s because these things are self-directed and don’t need other people for their fulfillment in the same way a professional career does. Because we are able to fulfill part of our purpose and meet some of our yearnings through an active inner life, we can still have a lot of joy. Fulfilling the needs of our inner life can make up for a lot that doesn’t happen for us in the outer world.
Fulfilling our “outer” lives through our professional and vocational intentions is often highly dependent on the honoring of previously established agreements. Important agreements are put in place prior to our incarnation, but some are made subsequently to further expand the original agenda, or as back-ups to failed primary agreements. If you enter into an agreement — it could be a business partnership, a decision to date exclusively and be monogamous, take a job where your employer has agreed to pay you a certain salary, sign a lease, be in a certain location by a date certain to meet — and these agreements are then broken by the other party, the goals you were aiming for are delayed. Then you have to rely on your resourcefulness to find other pieces that will fill in the gaps. Some goals can even become unattainable when they were dependent on a specific agreement. The loss of important agreements can make it more difficult to manifest your plans as they were originally conceived. With increased losses, we can find ourselves living ‘ad hoc’ lives, making things up as we go, and using what’s available to make our lives as agreeable and meaningful as possible, and to make up for having ‘missed the boat.’
Even if you have a sense that your plans have strayed far from their original intentions, don’t despair and don’t give up.Your soul is a very potent force, and will find ways to make new pathways for manifesting its agenda to the greatest extent possible. However, the elements that come together to assist your intentions may look very different from what was planned. The timing of things can also be quite different, often occurring at later dates, and sometimes years later. Still, because you were created intentionally, with purpose, and that purpose is sacred to both the fulfillment of your intentions and the connections you planned, the force that drives their fulfillment is not easily daunted. Despite delays and the unexpected, your soul will strive to create the experiences you were meant to have.
Although the manifestation of these experiences may be smaller in scale, and although not all of your original plans will come into being when core agreements are broken, you can trust that there are forces larger than yourself working hard on your behalf. Your job, when you are on permanent detour, is to surrender to the tides of change that have altered the course of your life. Though you had not planned on certain destinations, it is important to enjoy the journey and the scenery; your life will be easier this way. Rather than rejecting the course change, allow your imagination to be stimulated by the unexpected. If you yield to the new set(s) of coordinates without resistance, and continue to follow what calls you, there’s no telling what you can still accomplish.
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Following your fulfillment is what will result in finding your purpose. I use the word fulfillment deliberately, as opposed to the word success. Success is too often associated with social status, with money, and with power. While we might be able to sustain “success” for a time, it will be abrasive and draining if we are trying to be someone we are not designed to be.
It’s not hard to identify the tracks that will lead to a purpose-filled life that also fulfills YOU — follow your bliss, follow your curiosity, follow what calls to you, and keep following that. You will always come to forks in the road, and if you keep following your curiosity, you will know where your next turn is. The forks in the road force us to stay true to ourselves. They force us to be honest about what is truly correct for us. Even when we do take a wrong turn, no experiences are wasted because it is all useful information.
Some things you will visit or study for a short time, and others you will major in. But if you follow your excitement, your interests, and your passions — in every moment you will be living your purpose, and gathering the specific information you need to keep growing.
Purpose is found in your experiences of the moment, in expression as well action, and it is not just one thing. Purpose is not defined as an end-goal or a product launch. Your purpose evolves over the course of your life as you expand in self-awareness.
While purpose can be expressed through a particular vocation or vocations, the vocation actually provides the CONTEXT for the expression of one’s purpose. In and of itself, a vocation is not your purpose per se, even though some vocations will be beautifully aligned with your purpose.
Think about your purpose as a living and ceaseless dynamic of pursuing your excitement and curiosity — which always includes following your heart — rather than as something that is easily contained or defined by a business suit, scrubs, a gavel, a hard hat, an advanced degree, and so forth. The reason is: purpose is ultimately about finding and staying connected to all those things that will support the continued expansion of your consciousness and your joy. And this has no ending.
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Soul intentions drive your purpose. Intentions refer to what you agreed to accomplish prior to incarnating. Soul intentions, a/k/a your soul’s agenda, are created for many reasons. They include your agreements to your self and to others. They include your dharma and your karma. You will recognize your soul’s purpose by your inherent desires to experience and explore certain things. Some of these will be very compelling. Pay attention to information with which you especially resonate, as this will assist you to remember what you agreed to show up for.
Your soul’s purpose is not tied to the material world, though it must express inside of it. Bear in mind that the soul is not about hierarchy, ego, or one-upmanship. Your life purpose will not be found there. The soul is about sharing, giving, and receiving. It is about coming from love and being fully present. In its grandest sense, your life purpose is to learn to give and receive love.
Your purpose is not necessarily tied to a career; its focus may not be about making lots of money or being famous — at least, not for most of you. Maybe your life purpose is to make money, or maybe your life purpose will have the outcome of making money, but don’t assume that making a buck is your soul’s primary purpose for being in a physical vehicle. Rather than focusing on what vocation will make you the most money, focus instead on creating a life that gives you joy and provides you a forum to be of service. If you allow logic to overrule your heart’s desires you will miss the boat.
Your soul wants to be fully present and engaged. Whatever compels you to be present and thoroughly engaged is your life purpose, or part of it. By being present to your own life and following what calls to you, you will live your purpose.
TO BEGIN, STATE YOUR INTENTION TO CONNECT TO YOUR SOUL’S PURPOSE:
I am now connecting with my soul purpose. I am worthy of my soul’s purpose. Without me, my soul cannot execute or complete its plan. Through expressing my soul purpose I bring great clarity and joy to myself and to others. Through expressing my soul purpose, I support the continuing unfolding of my soul’s plan. Through expressing my soul purpose, I support the continuing unfolding of all of Creation. I now allow my soul purpose to come forth and call me to live it.
TO HELP YOU IDENTIFY YOUR SOUL’S PURPOSE:
• What experiences have been profound and meaningful?
• What do you love to do?
• What types of activities or situations bring you so much joy that you forget your troubles?
• What did you used to love to do, but have essentially forgotten about or given up on because it didn’t work out at the time or simply made no sense?
• What are you naturally good at?
• What are you really passionate about?
• What are you passionate about sharing or teaching others?
• What are you here to contribute? Don’t think about it. Just say it.
• What have you really been training for all your life?
• What have you acquired much knowledge in just because you enjoyed going there?
• What experiences do you desire to have? List them.
• Why do you desire these experiences?
• What do you need to do or have to get these experiences?
COMMUNITY and LOCATION: where and with whom you feel aligned gives you important information on your soul purpose.
• Who are your people (who do you feel accepted by, at home with, comfortable around)?
• Who are your people (who do you feel accepted by, at home with, comfortable around)?
• What organizations and environments do they tend to be in?
• What type of work do they do?
• What work environments attract you? Indoors? Outdoors?
• Do you like to be around a lot of people? A few?
• Do you prefer big cities, small towns, or rural settings?
CHOOSE YOUR TOP VALUES, starting with the following list of ten. Identifying what you value will help you to identify your soul purpose.
• Achievement – mastering goals
• Aesthetics – working with beautiful things, being surrounded by beauty
• Affiliation – working with people like you
• Authority – managing or directing other people’s work
• Creativity – ability to innovate, to try new approaches
• Ethics/Morals – free to work with your values
• High Pay – commanding a large salary
• Independence – free from other people’s direction and control
• Recognition – becoming known for your expertise
• Status – having a high prestige job
YOUR INFINITE SELF
Your Infinite Self is your Higher Self, your Super Wise Self that sends aspects of Itself out into the dimensional world in order to have a new way of experiencing Who It Is.
HOW TO CONNECT TO YOUR CALLING
Believe that you can create what you need. When you allow those things that are not yours to do to fall away, what you are here to do becomes much clearer. Here are some processes to help you let go of behaviors that lead to taking on responsibilities and obligations that aren’t truly yours:
• Get back inside of your own truth. This will reconnect you to your center.
• Re-engage your creativity.
• Do those activities that bring you joy and pleasure.
• Connect with people who truly see and appreciate you.
• Take breaks and rest!
• Have genuine, innocent fun.
• Reconnect with what is beautiful to you.
• Engage the rich world of your imagination.
• Remember that you are truly resilient.
• You are lovable and deserve love.
• You do have the power to call in and create your right life.
• Remember that you have a track record of courage and having made correct decisions despite how hard it was.
• You have a unique wisdom that has been built brick by brick from your life experience which you can share.
• Trust yourself to act in your own best interests.
• Strive to be real, that is, authentic to yourself and others.
• Value yourself. Understand that the time you have is precious and needed for your evolution and joy and for that of others.
• Get to know and respect your energy capacities and learn to work with them in a sustainable way.
When you apply these actions, what belongs to you will stay, and what is not yours will fall away. In this way, your purpose and calling can emerge freely. The gifts and challenges of your journey and the hard-won insights and knowledge you have acquired are too precious, too necessary and too much fun to be allowed to buried or put off by energy-consuming false callings (including wrongly assumed responsibilities) that distract from and are not in alignment with your authentic nature or purpose.
You have to do your calling. And that doesn’t mean you become selfish and unavailable. When you act out of integrity and faithfulness to your purpose, your responsibilities to others become much clearer.
NEXT STEPS
• Allow yourself to feel into your desires. Your desires contain your truths. Identify your truths so that you can live from them.
• Listen intently and deeply to your heart.
• Say yes to whatever causes your heart to zing. Your truths will make your heart zing.
• Let go of thoughts that say you’re not good enough. You can do this by facing your fears. The act of facing your fears will take you to the very edge of your courage. That edge is a place from which you can launch who you are.
• Become willing to just be in the journey (letting go vs. striving).
• Live each day as if it were your calling.
• Take action on what seems most right or most important.
YOUR SOUL’S PURPOSE IS THE MOST SACRED THING THERE IS!
That goes without saying! It was so in the beginning, and will be to the end. You have a unique purpose encoded within. You are here to act from that purpose. You are here to live, breathe, create, and experience health and great joy from that purpose. Living your purpose has immeasurable ramifications in the good that it does. Even if you cannot at first articulate that purpose, if you seek it with an open heart, it will find you.
How can I know what my life purpose is?
What do you care about? What have you fallen in love with? What did you love to do when you were very young? Look there for your life purpose. What are you compelled to bear witness to? What is it that loosens your tongue to speak the truth? What will cause you to leap out of bed? Look there for your purpose. The activities you are naturally drawn to, what you long to learn about or explore will point you to your life purpose. Follow what calls you.
Your purpose is driven by your soul intentions, and is not tied to the material world, though it must express inside of it. Bear in mind that the soul is not about hierarchy, ego, or one-upmanship. Your life purpose will not be found there. The soul is about sharing, giving, and receiving. It is about coming from love and being fully present. In its grandest sense, your life purpose is to learn to give and receive love.
Is it about living an exalted life, that is, one where you are famous and glamorous and impressive and influential and make lots of money?
Your purpose is not necessarily tied to a career; its focus may not be about making lots of money or being famous — at least, not for most of you. Maybe your life purpose is to make money, or maybe your life purpose will have the outcome of making money, but don’t assume that making a buck is your soul’s primary purpose for being in a physical vehicle. Rather than focusing on what vocation will make you the most money, focus instead on creating a life that gives you joy and provides you a forum to be of service. If you allow logic to overrule your heart’s desires, you will miss the boat.
Of course, there is room in any life for trial and error, especially around finding your life purpose. There is, in fact, the need to make mistakes. And it is inevitable that you will. No matter. Mistakes will teach you what is dear to you, and what you can live without. This discussion is not intended to imply that only a rigid course of action will get you on your right path. It is the willingness to test the waters and be resilient when things don’t work as planned or don’t follow a neat trajectory that will be the most benefit to you in identifying your purpose. The goal is to give yourself permission to experiment and to not know.
Does my life purpose best express itself through a vocation?
We have been enculturated to believe that one’s life purpose can best be expressed — or only expressed — through a particular vocation. And it can be deeply satisfying to pursue mainstream courses of study, or to take a job in an established and respected vocation. When that is the case, it is intended that you take those interests further. But many of you are not here to do “normal” or conventional work, or specialize in just one area. Many of you are here to do many things! Because there is an almost infinite variety of life purposes and ways of expressing them, it is not always possible to find a vocation that will seamlessly mesh with or match your unique purpose.
The reality is that collective culture and consciousness is behind in its understanding of vocation. As a result, most of you will live your purpose as best you can in conjunction with (or not), and in addition to, what you do to make a living. The important thing is that you live your purpose and do what you can with the support you have. When you courageously live your purpose, you are truly in the vanguard to raise consciousness on the deeper meaning of vocation, including making new criteria for the standards by which vocation is valued.
What does it look like when I’m living my purpose? More importantly, what does it feel like when I’m living my purpose?
You will know you are living your purpose when you experience a deep sense of personal fulfillment; you will know, from your sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, that this is what is right for you. Your purpose is something you do whether you get paid for it or not because it gives you tremendous satisfaction. Your soul’s need to experience profound fulfillment and the connection to all things that arises from living your purpose will light a fire under your feet.
What is the common denominator behind every life purpose?
Your life purpose is given specific form and meaning from the soul. Your soul is the driver of your life purpose. So you can ask: What does my soul want? What is meaningful for my soul? Your soul wants to be fully present and engaged. Whatever compels you to be present and thoroughly engaged is your life purpose, or part of it. By being present to your own life and following what calls to you, you will live your purpose. How do you get there? It’s actually quite simple. You do it all the time without thinking about it. Follow your bliss. Follow your joy; follow your yearnings. If you follow your joy you will find yourself gradually shaping a life that is in sync with your life purpose. Your joy and fulfillment are your clues.
I want to be faithful to my life purpose. I want to live it, but I don’t know what the next step is, especially because I’m still not clear on that purpose.
Trust that the next step will become apparent. Take the step that brings you the most excitement — this is always your cue for the right direction. Taking the next step on behalf of your joy is much better than not moving at all. If you find yourself losing your joy, then correct your course to reconnect with it. When you follow your joy, how you live your life will gradually come back into congruence with your life purpose. When you follow your joy, what is right for you will find you. If you cannot feel anything, move forward anyway. You will again find what feels best.
Believe in yourself.
Believe that you have a right to be here. You have as much right as anyone to be here. There is a place in this world for you, and it is yours alone. Your role and your contributions are needed more than ever.
What is calling you at this time?
Pay close attention to what you are drawn to. There are large clues here to help you find your purpose. Are you responding to those or ignoring them because they are not practical and perhaps even somewhat crazy? Trust that you were built to surmount the obstacles to your purpose. Trust that you are meant to follow your path, however crazy and unwise it appears to everyone else. If you are authentically living your purpose, you will be supported to live that purpose.
Our world desperately needs your gifts! This is what makes it imperative that you live your purpose. Pay attention to what will not leave you alone. Living your purpose is not just for your sake, although that is important, but it is also for the world’s sake. Because each one of us contains a unique piece of the creative genius behind this world’s design, every human being’s participation is required. Therefore, understand that being who you are is everything. Your divine assignment is meant to be a force for the evolution of this world; it is effective only to the extent that you are living your purpose.
Develop your talents to their greatest extent and use them to make the greatest contribution you can – this is true success.
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The soul is that part of you that never dies and is re-birthed into incarnation after incarnation. The soul is the part of you that was made by the Creator Source, which is of the Creator Source, and is the Creator Source. Your soul is your portal back to God, it is your piece of God, and it is what makes you God. It is your unique experiences, contributions, mistakes and insights that inspire and teach God and the Universe, and cause them to expand.
Each one of us is a unique, never-to-be-seen again expression of personality and soul. And just as no snowflake is alike, neither are any two souls alike. Each one of us is created in a manner that is like no other. Each one of us has a legacy to fulfill that is like no other. This is why it is so critical for you to do what you agreed to do. Your legacy begins with your unique piece of the Tao. That legacy is the result of the path your soul has traveled lifetime after lifetime. Your signature, or frequency, is unique. This frequency is your piece of the Tao, or your chip off the old block that is God. No one else has it.
Your soul transmits your legacy of evolving consciousness to your physical being. This legacy of consciousness incorporates the body of experience gathered from both the incarnate and discarnate planes. It is the sum cumulative of the trajectory of your soul (the history of where you’ve been), and it was set in motion long ago. Your soul’s trajectory compels you to seek your purpose for this life. It is your soul that is equipped to guide you, first and foremost.
How do I draw down my soul?
This can also be asked as, how do you bring your life into alignment with your truth? There is no manual other than listening to the call of your intuitive knowing. When you listen to the call of your intuitive knowing, you become more and more adept at discerning the next right action. You do not need to wait for inspiration per se. By taking actions that reflect best what you know is true for you, you will connect to your path. It is critical to take action, even if it is not clear exactly what that action is or how it should look. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is necessary to stay engaged even if you don’t know what your next step is. As you move forward, you will innately self-correct because you will know when you’ve stepped off your path.
More tools for drawing down the soul
Follow your yearnings. Your yearnings are very useful pieces of information. It’s important to know what will give you emotional satisfaction. If you want to be happy, you’ve got to tune into your yearnings and follow them. When you follow your yearnings and allow for their expression, they will lead directly to your appropriate way of being and expressing in the world. And that is because they demand a certain kind of focus and experience. In fact, whether or not you are conscious that you carry an internal agenda for your life, you will connect more and more to your soul intentions because that is the inevitable result of following your yearnings.
How will I know when I’ve drawn down my soul?
Latent powers, talents and abilities that you had no idea you possessed will appear. You will feel, along with great excitement, great fear. You will find yourself blasted right out of your comfort zones. You will be challenged to walk a path seemingly covered with burning coals, and this path apparently continues – and continues. You understand that you will have to plunge ahead into the unknown and into terror if you are to take a stand for yourself, for your right to live your right life. You will also have the inexpugnable sense that you are the one in charge of the creation of your life, and this recognition alone will empower you to slog on. You are, after all, your own highest authority, and you do know what is best for you. You will come to know without hesitation that you have finally come face to face with the Divine. Your great excitement will lead you to your Great Work – the creation of your life, the life you were meant to live.
Your soul purpose continually expands and evolves
Drawing down your soul is not an act or event that takes place once; it is ongoing for the rest of your life. And that is because your soul seeks mastery. Your soul seeks expansion. The soul needs expansion. Once you have mastered a subject or activity, you will feel the urge to create something new. It is the nature of soul to continually reach towards greater and greater exploration, and greater soul-expression. It is the nature of soul to create without end. Each time you are in a process of expansion, bear in mind that the map has not yet been created, and it is your ongoing willingness to be creative with your next step that will create that map. Working with your soul purpose will stretch you beyond what you thought was possible for you. No one develops mastery or finds their greatness without being stretched or taking on some struggle.
In that struggle towards mastery your soul is your biggest and most loyal ally. You will be empowered to bring your divine plan into form by unfolding and activating your gifts. With your soul as your co-creative partner, you will be motivated to fulfill your purpose. Your soul is your blueprint for your life. Your soul is you.
~ end ~
For a session on finding your purpose, see Life Purpose
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Your birthright is to express your true gifts. The activities that you are naturally drawn to, what you long to learn about or explore, are the indicators of your birthright and your soul purpose. The key is to follow the paths that you find fulfilling. Every human being is an aspect of the Creative Impulse that spurs the evolution of humanity and the world. Therefore, understand that being who you are is everything. It is what truly matters, because your part as a positive force for the evolution of this world is effective only to the extent that you have drawn down your soul, activating your true nature.
When you find your efforts repeatedly obstructed, it is because you are applying yourself towards goals that are not appropriate for you. Closed doors and rejections are clear indications that the approach you have been taking is not for you. The other side of this is that when you are making concerted efforts towards those activities that are your birthright, you will receive assistance to move ahead. This assistance comes in many forms: through dreams, through words not necessarily spoken to you but meant for you just the same; through strangers as well as through co-workers, family and friends; through those who share your values, and through open doors. You will feel as if you have just emerged from deep waters that you have aimlessly swum in for a long time. You will have broken through to a brightness and freshness that offers new vistas you had no idea existed.
Your soul is in partnership with the universe. When you are on a sincere quest to identify and follow your mission, you will receive assistance from many quarters. When we say that the Universe itself is available to help you, we include every one who makes themselves of service to answer your questions and reflect your thoughts back to you; we include the words you read and hear and with which you especially resonate, finding deeper meaning in them; we include the images that speak to you; we include your dreams; we include physical sensations and emotional responses that invoke a sense of heightened knowing that something is right for you. These are among the ways the Universe conspires with your soul to guide you.
Sometimes things are really, really tough. There will be times when you find yourself in extreme life circumstances where, as the saying goes, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Some examples of these are job losses with protracted periods of unemployment where you watch your available resources whittle down to nothing; or where you find yourself in a health crisis that disables you from being able to support yourself and care for yourself and your dependents; or where someone you depended on to maintain your financial stability leaves. Add to this dismantling of your life the crippling losses of a beloved pet or a break-up with your long-time beloved. When your house is burning down, your only recourse is to surrender. I know, you didn’t ask for this. You didn’t want it, either. Not by a long shot. Not ever. And you’ll be damned if you surrender. Until you can’t take it anymore.
But now that your house has burnt down, and the resources you depended on to maintain the coherence and stable foundation of your life are gone, you are dependent on your wits and the kindness of strangers. And of your friends and family. And hopefully, there will be some kindness. It is in these times of extended crises, where we are stripped of our anchors, our comforts, and our very identities, that the soul has an opportunity to assert itself in full-blown clarity. It’s hard to believe, I know, but when we are stripped down to nothing that is when we can truly see, once we clear the terror from our eyes. And you will not clear terror until you walk right into and through it. Let me give you some examples of those who worked with seemingly insurmountable life circumstances and a great deal of terror. Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa. These are among the well-known who did not permanently succumb to despair, but instead surrendered to the calling of their soul. They pursued their truths despite tsunamis of opposition and heaping platefuls of personal sufferings of every conceivable kind, too painful to contemplate. And there are others — Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Chelsea Manning, and Chris Hedges. These outspoken truthsayers experienced ridicule and denunciation by many because they raised to the light information — against the will of the powers that be — that the world community desperately needed to see. These courageous persons could have continued to live their lives in relative privacy and quietude, but they were compelled by a calling greater than the peace and safety of their immediate lives. Your soul’s assignments will sometimes take you completely out of your comfort zone and land you straight in the middle of terror.
Your soul is an out-of-the-box thinker. When we experience terror, the choices available to us expand or contract depend on our ability to think out of the box and to push back against the impossible. We can engage a higher level consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, thereby gaining insight into new options. Your soul is an out-of-the-box thinker. Having traveled thousands of years through time and space and between, it has a perspective and problem-solving capacity that far exceeds the limitations of a frightened mind. When we reconfigure our thinking to include what is possible beyond the bounds of what we formerly believed to be possible, entirely new vistas open up. With the creation of a new paradigm and a new lens to look through, all previous paradigms are eclipsed and collapsed. We can now go to places we have not been to before and find solutions that we did not know were available.
It is human nature to see only a very small picture of the totality of what is going on at any moment. True, we can’t possibly see everything, but we can train ourselves to go outside the normal boundaries of how we respond so that we can see more of the picture. Our capacity to see is often limited by our needs of the moment – whether they are physical, emotional, or survival-based, etc. There are always many influences coming to bear on a given situation. Some of those influences can be challenged and removed. Some can be eliminated with ease, and some with effort. But once certain influences are removed, we have simplified our situation. With our expanded soul consciousness we can train ourselves to hone in on what the core issues are in any given moment and armed with this information, we can problem-solve with relevance. We can deconstruct the terrible in what is happening right now so that we have a much more effective handle on dealing with a complex and frequently messy situation.
~ end Part II ~
For a session on finding your purpose, see Life Purpose
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When I was a very little girl and I looked in the mirror I had a powerful feeling that that reflection wasn’t really me. I silently asked: Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here now? I would get chills when I asked those questions, and the shadows of timelessness would begin to envelop me. My image in the mirror morphed into a thousand different shapes. That was absolutely frightening to my four-year-old self and I would run away each time. Even so, I continued to go back, surreptitiously stealing towards the mirror to again investigate my reflection. As I got older, I forgot to pursue this adventure. I didn’t, however, forget my questions, nor did the deep need to have those answered go away.
To draw down your soul
you must drink from its well.
But where is that well?
It is the depth you have always carried.
It is the murk in which you’ve hidden your deeds
and the light which exposes and cleanses all imbalance.
It is your inheritance and your legacy.
It is you.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
What Does it Mean to Draw Down the Soul?
When we draw down our soul, we are seeking to align ourselves with our authentic nature, our true nature, so that we can remember who we are and act on what we came here to do. It is inherent to our authentic nature to act in concert with our higher self. Drawing down your soul refers to aligning yourself with that aspect of yourself that resides permanently in the higher vibrating planes. And it also means to activate that eternal aspect from within.
Why Draw Down Your Soul?
So you can find out what you planned to do when you got here. So you can come to know who you really are. The great yearning we have to uncover the mystery of who we are, and the great yearning we have to take ourselves on our own heroic journey is what propels us to draw down our soul. It is through coming into alignment with our souls that we will come to know ourselves and really see what we are made of. The current trajectory we’re traveling – what we do, who we meet and bring into our inner circle – will drastically alter.
When you bring down your soul you will be moving out past your comfort zone, but you will also experience your high potential as it unfolds before you. When you are aligned with your soul’s plans and purpose, you will be astonished to discover that you can stretch beyond what you ever thought possible around what you can create for your life and the benefit of others. You cannot wait to get out of bed so that you can get back on task, because when you bring down your soul, you are bringing Creation into manifestation. You are standing in the shoes of God.
You Were Born to Greatness
That greatness unfolds through living out your soul purpose. But to live your greatness, you must know who you are, and then do what you can in each moment to support that. Your soul contains vast reservoirs of knowledge and abilities that you have acquired over the course of your many incarnations. When you bring forth the sum cumulative of those gifts you can create profound change in yourself and in the world. Think of your soul as your personal library filled with everything you need to guide you to a life that is clearly directed, resounds with rightness, and is deeply fulfilling. The greatness of your purpose is not defined by fame, conventional forms of power, or fortune and wealth. Greatness is not defined by your being in the world’s limelight in an exalted way – it is about successfully identifying, pursuing, and accomplishing your purpose.
When you are not living your purpose, your life is at best dull, ordinary, and unfulfilled. At worst – your life is characterized by setbacks and even cruel experiences. It is difficult to overcome the limitations imposed by being in the wrong place and situation. It is nearly impossible to come into our own when we are in the wrong environment, with the wrong people, and applying ourselves to tasks which are not ours to do.
You Were Born to Power
Most of us never access the power we have because we have agreed to conform to the paradigms of culture. You were born the leader of your life. You are in charge. Sometimes, or even often, it seems absurd to think of ourselves as leaders, and especially as powerful leaders of our lives when we don’t seem to have much power or control over anything. When our livelihoods don’t yield much in terms of paycheck or meaning, or when a livelihood is nowhere to be found, it certainly does not feel or look as though we have much say over our lives. But these circumstances, painful as they can be, are not statements about our value or our true power. They are not reflections of who we are. We may believe that we have no value, but the truth is, our value always stands outside of time and place. You cannot give in to any belief that tells you your value rises and falls with your accomplishments and the approval of others. We may believe that we have no power, but the truth is we have the power to move heaven and earth.
Can you say more about this power we have to move heaven and earth?
When we say that you have the power to move heaven and earth, we are referring specifically to your innate capacity to bring in the life you agreed to live, even despite the challenges you find yourself in, or have been in for quite some time. We are referring, specifically, to your personal power, the power that comes straight from your soul. That is the power to be the leader of your life. We are also referring to your capacity for resilience in the face of uncertainty and opposition. Your soul will lead you, but you must be open to receiving its information and instruction. This information comes in many ways and through many sources. They are the sources that speak to the depths of you, causing you to experience a heightened sense of excitement and increased curiosity. You will know when you are hearing your truth – it will have the unmistakable ring of conviction. You will know beyond a doubt that it is your soul speaking to you.
~ end Part I ~
For a session on finding your purpose, see Life Purpose
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These are facts – job loss and long periods of unemployment are experienced by millions in this country, and not just once. It can happen, unbelievably, over and over. I personally have experienced layoffs multiple times, and so far there is no such thing as real recovery when I have found employment again. For many, the financial losses that accumulate in periods of unemployment have yet to be made up. After your savings are gone – if you were lucky enough to have had a salary where you could put something away – the next phase in the downward spiral is to accumulate increasing debt. How else to make ends meet? Unemployment benefits are a pittance and require that you choose between paying your rent or eating – if you want to avoid maxing out the credit cards. Realistically, this is not a choice. Even when employment is found, most have accumulated so much debt that recovery of their original situation is as likely as finding a ring lost in a lake. There are those who believe – and sometimes insist – that personal responsibility or even karma are the causative factors in job loss. This may be true in some cases, but not for the majority. Look up and observe the reality of the bigger picture. Unemployment and resulting poverty is a historical issue of such magnitude, sweeping across race, gender, education levels and more, that it eclipses personal responsibility, pointing to a much larger, vastly more powerful origin. What most conversations on self-reliance fail to include is the context in which each of us thrive, or fail to thrive. The assumption behind self-reliance is that focus and hard work is sufficient to ensure conventional success, yet it is clear that the myth of the rugged individual who need only rigorously apply himself has failed the majority of those who have, in all sincerity, done just that.
What bears witnessing here, obvious as it is, is that it is not our personal efforts alone that get us employed. Each time we present ourselves for a paying position, we engage in a dialogue with those who ultimately must advocate on our behalf if we are to get the full benefits of the effort we made in pulling ourselves up by our “bootstraps.” As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
My Personal Story
Towards the end of 2010, I was laid off for a period that turned out to be 14 months long. In that time, I applied to over 300 openings, all of which I could reasonably fulfill, at least from the job description. Out of those 300, I was offered only two interviews. The first did not result in a job offer, but the second landed me a position in a law firm where the advertised job description and the actual job duties bore no resemblance. Unfortunately, the downgrade in job duties was not to my liking or a benefit to my resume, but after 14 months of looking and severely diminished resources, I was grateful for what I had. At the end of a little over a year I was laid off, ostensibly due to the firm’s economic restructuring. This was another in a series of layoffs that began for me in the early ’80s.
In my quest to understand how things had gotten to where they are, I sought input from others about the possible causes behind my current dilemma. Well-meaning persons volunteered various insights, most of which were expressed as “Your circumstances are the result of karma that you are now paying back;” “This is happening because you have consistently run from what you agreed to do with your life,” and “It’s a wake-up call – better figure out what the Universe is telling you before it’s too late.” All of these perceptions awarded me 100% responsibility for having created my situation, but the upside of being the creator of so much discomfort is that I surely had an inimitable capacity to manifest far more joy and abundance. And have at least a little insight into what the “Universe” was allegedly calling me to do that I couldn’t do by keeping my job.
What is Karma?
I want to take some time to explore the feedback to my question, “What do you think might be going on here?” and we’ll begin by getting on the same page with an understanding of karma. According to Hinduism, karma is the reaping of what was sown previously – in the current life and/or a previous one, and perhaps even several previous ones. It’s a cosmic principle that you will not ultimately get away with stealing what rightfully belongs to another, especially those things which are needed to keep that person alive (food, clothing, shelter, funds) and which also enable their well-being (education, reputation, health) such that they are able to live the life they agreed to and have a right to live. Stealing someone’s foundation of support is akin to stealing their life force and can be akin to murder (where all choice is removed). It is a major tear in the matrix of both personal and universal balance that must be repaired by being paid back at some point. No one really has a choice about eventually returning what does not belong to them. You may get away with putting it off for several lifetimes, but the irresistible force behind the immovable demand for balance through restoration will compel you, sooner or later, to do the right thing. Whether you want to or not.
Karma is magnetic. When you are in the vicinity of someone to whom you owe restoration (or who owes you) you will feel drawn to them. Often you will feel an overwhelming attraction. The intensity is not easily dismissed. This is necessary in order to create the relationship that will provide the opportunity for resolution of past painful interactions. Note that there is also attraction with dharmic agreements (but perhaps without the burning intensity of karma), such as teaming up to perform a mutual task. Follow the yellow brick road as it were, and the purpose of the connection will eventually be revealed. In both cases there is a mysterious pull that you will want to explain as “that person is really interesting” or “that person is really attractive” or “they have something to offer that I’ve been looking for.” In any case, your karma has hooked you – or your dharma is calling.
Sometimes karma takes on the form of direct payback. What you did to another will be done to you by that same person. In this instance, the other person is forcibly taking back what belongs to them rather than waiting for you to graciously return it. This is far less pleasant than engaging a relationship that may have other mutually rewarding aspects, but lacking gracefulness as it does, it gets the job done, and you are released from that karma. This is the form of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but more advanced souls prefer to avoid such literal payback. It is far more pleasant to heal the broken connection between you by offering gifts that serve the same purpose as returning stolen goods. This also opens the opportunity to take the relationship to a higher level, one in which you mutually find ways to assist each other’s journey. The willingness to do this will depend on the severity of the original theft. It will be much harder to accept someone who previously murdered you as a friend you can trust. It can, however, be done.
Often karma works like this: instead of being drawn to a person or a situation (place of employment, organization, course of study, educational institution, and so on), you find yourself the surprised and unwilling recipient of a series of unpleasant and life-altering events. Bewildered at how and why these events have occurred to mess up your life, you may begin to search, not only for the cause behind those events, but for the meaning that might be behind them. In this scenario, you are experiencing what it is like to have crucial support taken from you, allowing you to know intimately what you did to another when you stole what they needed to live a flourishing life. This type of karma is sometimes referred to as self-karma because it is not brought about by the direct manipulation of another person but by an agreement you made with your higher self to understand the ramifications of undermining or destroying another’s life options.
Unemployment as Prima Facie Evidence of Karma
Applying the understanding of karma as above described to my current status of joblessness/ lack of cash flow, I could conceivably draw the conclusion that I am in the throes of self-karma. If it isn’t self-karma, I could be receiving direct payback from those who hired me to work there, assuming they suffered the termination of employment as a result of actions I once took against them. In either case, applying the belief that stressful circumstances are always indicators of karma at work, finding myself unemployed is the direct result of a forced restoration – where my employers took from me what at one time I took from them – much-needed livelihood. And that is one answer to the question “what is going on here, or why did I lose my job?” There are other perspectives, of course. Perhaps karma was being made against me, or perhaps personal karmas play no part at all. The immediate reason why something happens, downsizing in this instance, can point to greater complexity than can be explained away by one simple cause.
How to Know If It’s Karma
How do we determine when karma is at work? I don’t believe there is any way we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we have entered karmic territory, but when you feel as though you have stepped into the twilight zone – meaning that the status quo of your life peels away unbidden to reveal strange images, dimensions or new insights, or time seems to slow down and even freeze, or there’s nothing you can do to convince the other party of your good intentions, then you might be in the zone of karmic payback. Other things may also be going on that have nothing to do with karma and which are not the subject of this discussion, but suffice it to say that karma can feel like what I’ve just described. However, the proof of release from the karmic pudding ultimately comes down to this: you will know when a karmic tie has been released when the charge of the situation is gone. You no longer feel compelled to remain in relationship with someone, or at a job that was replete with unsolvable issues because after the restoration has occurred, you begin to feel calm, balanced, and neutral about the whole thing – that is, after you are done processing your human reaction. It is as if you have awakened from a long nightmare, and you know you are now in your right mind because the fever that once held you in its thrall has finally broken. At this point, it is a matter of choice whether you walk away (assuming you haven’t been irrevocably dismissed), or stay to create a new, healthier configuration which all parties agree to take to a higher level.
Signs of the Times
Sometimes it isn’t the karma of the immediate parties that is in play. It could be the signs of the times, that is, the historical context which everyone is inside of, and which is the common denominator to which everyone across the board, regardless of station, status, creed, race or gender, is subject. According to a July 28, 2013 article, Survey: 4 in 5 face near-poverty, no work (published online at TPMLIVEWIRE by Hope Yen), “Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data…points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.” From another article: “The vast majority of people in the United States will experience poverty and economic insecurity for a significant portion of their lives.” For the statistics behind that statement, see Gary Lapon’s article, Poor Prospects in a “Middle-Class” Society, August 18, 2013, published in the online magazine Truthout.
Without too much argument, I think we can agree that national and world affairs are an inextricable superimposition into the course of our lives, mixing their enormous bandwidth into the much smaller frequencies of our own. We barely need to raise our heads to see that fracking, the broken nuclear reactors of Fukushima, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, ethnic genocide, human sex trafficking, and many, many more life-ravening actions have a reach and impact far broader and deeper than any personal karma could hope to claim. These acts are karma against the entire planet, generated intentionally on an incomprehensively large scale by the abusive politics of power.
The Global Karmic Pandemic of 2020
In 2020, the entire planet soon found itself at the mercy of a pandemic brought about by a new virus, the Sars-Cov-2. I believe this virus was cultivated through the horrific imbalances resulting from the cruel and unconscionable ways human beings treat animals and the environment. The extreme physical cruelty that caged animals in wet markets and factory farms endure affects their immune system. Forced to live in filth, and lacking health and freedom, they become easy hosts to bacteria, parasites, and viruses which quickly overwhelm their bodies. These malefic entities easily pass to humans (and then the animals get blamed and subjected to inhumane wholesale slaughter.) When you consider that these beings have emotions, live in constant terror and endure horrific pain, it is clear that the damage done is multi-dimensional with far-reaching effects, and is nothing short of sacrilegious.
There is a tremendous disconnect and regard for life generally, and for living beings specifically, including tremendous ignorance about the impact to our planet of continuing to act as though individual actions do not reverberate across the entire matrix of life. I believe this novel coronavirus is a manifestation of the “butterfly effect.” The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. Of course, we now have a monstrous impact from a powerful yet microscopic virus that likely began with an assumption that it is OK to do as you please, regardless of the consequences. And this assumption has been repeated innumerable times through the innumerable actions of millions of people around the world.
The effect of this virus, whether one wants to call it karmic or not, is nevertheless karmic in its impact. When I first wrote this article in 2013, the numbers of people suffering from unemployment were far, far fewer. Yet each one of those people suffered no differently from those whose multiple sufferings are directly related to unemployment. At the time the numbers were not enough to influence change in federal and state policies. Now the numbers are striking — off the charts — and yet Congress must argue and delay taking obvious action to do what needs to be done. It is imperative that they do their job and take care their people, or add yet another straw to the unraveling of the structures that support the lives and well-being of human beings. Not doing what you have been tasked to do with the explicit power to do so, especially at the level that can make or break civilization, creates karma.
Karmic Impact, Delays, and Detours
It is not sustainable to be repeatedly knocked down in the name of paying back karma. It doesn’t make sense to continually remove a person’s livelihood from them such that they are unable to carry out their life task and agreements. In other words, it may not be karma that is at work. When we painstakingly created the agenda for the current incarnation we agreed to address our karma – working through past unbalanced painful situations with others, the working out of our own self-karmas — as well as our dharma –through the continuing expansion of our souls. We do this by surrendering to experience, including specific life tasks, agreements, facilitating and mentoring others, relationships, upgrading old skills and learning new ones, and stepping up into a larger (or smaller) game, to name a few. To do both karma and dharma we bring through the themes of a half dozen or so past lives that are consonant with the themes of our current life. The goal is to more fully realize who we are.
But things don’t always work out as planned. Sometimes we have to fill in the gaps, creating and re-creating from scratch. We can get delayed, detoured, or taken out. Sometimes there’s a deliberate abdication by those who agreed to help us. And, life isn’t set in stone. The best-laid plans of the wisest souls are still subject to the slings and arrows of unpredictable fortune – accidents and other people’s choices.
When your efforts to make yourself at home are repeatedly obstructed, it could be because you are presenting yourself for membership in a tribe whose tasks and agreements are not in alignment with yours. They will not recognize who you are or what you have to offer. This is true even if you can function competently in their environment. The phenomenon that occurs in these instances is the lack of familiarity at the soul level and the lack of agreements. It makes one a foreigner. And although foreigners can be seen as attractive because they are different, those same differences can be seen as threatening, and even repulsive. If you find yourself in a workplace where you experience constant abrasion, and the tribe is busy creating “evidence” to support their low opinion of you, it is time to leave. It is not likely you will be able to convince anyone of your value. You may consider that what is at work here is a form of self-karma in which who you are is ironically mirrored back to you by reflecting who you are not.
Finding yourself in situations like this doesn’t always mean that you are working against your own agreements. It might mean that, or it might mean that your community of agreements is not available, and your creativity and willing participation in wherever you find yourself is needed to keep the seams of your life from unraveling. Sometimes it is necessary to make things up as we go. The upside is we develop mastery in flying by the seat of our pants, using our own initiative and wits to keep body and soul together.
The Larger Context
All of us live inside a context that has been written and is being written by, capitalism gone wrong. Those of us who know better make no bones about this – human beings have created a political and economic civilization that is built on the belief of power-over, competition, and “survival of the fittest.” This paradigm is pervasive, and even if one does see right through it, we as individuals are still left to deal with its fallout. Without a cultural belief that embraces the right of everyone to the tree of life, which includes making available the financial resources and opportunities to allow the individual to bring forth his or her best contribution, each one of us is on his/her own. Some of us have family and friends who can from time to time help bridge the gaps, but many do not. Even so, without a larger societal support structure that recognizes the grave reality of unemployment and resulting poverty, the suffering of millions will continue. These comments are also meant to include the handicapped, the aging, the lesser skilled, and those who suffer from debilitating physical or mental issues. Their entry into the “game” is even more severely circumscribed.
The reality is that for most of us, our voice is limited, and our contributions undervalued. Still, we cannot give up or surrender. We must believe in our right to be here, and the right and necessity of carrying out our unique agreements. We must also believe that there is universal truth in this: without our full participation, the evolution of life and of the Tao Itself will be impeded. These times call for collective courage and digging deeper to manifest it. They call for us to be conscious of the ways in which we personally contribute to injustice and inequality, the places where our words and deeds are thoughtless or cruel. Individually, we must do all we can to consciously live righteous lives. In so doing, we can stem the fallout of individual and collective karma.
These times also call for the creation of community that takes its directives from an ideology that fearlessly declares: We are all one; it is unthinkable to leave anyone behind.
I wrote this piece because I wanted to look at a few perspectives regarding traumatic events that result in life-altering circumstances. I also wanted to touch on how we might work with irrevocable alterations to our lives such that we stay engaged in life. Additionally, I wanted to look at the questions that arise when our life path is derailed: was it an accident, or was it planned?
The following discussion is limited in its exploration of these ideas, but I believe it offers a beginning. ~ Gloria
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If I do what I agreed to do (follow my soul intentions), will my life unfold smoothly?
This is not the astral plane where it is impossible to give or receive injury. On the physical plane, your creations and the creations of others frequently collide. When they do, there can be conflict and disagreement which sometimes results in acts of destruction. Obviously, under these circumstances, things do not proceed without a hitch. While you are pursuing what you believe to be the reasons you are here, you will encounter those who are not in alignment with your vision and who may even express contempt for you. While this may not feel very good to you, it should not be a reason to change course. It is important to stay on track with what you believe is your unique purpose.
In other words, if you follow your intentions it does not mean that you will be admitted to a zone where there is no longer a need for hard work and focus. Hard work alone may give you a reason to run in another direction, but if you do, you will also give up the meaning and purpose your soul craves. When you are tracking your purpose, your choices and actions will be based directly on what you believe in, and what will support your goals, rather than on what you think others expect of you. When you are faithful to what you know to be true for you, you will have an increased sense of clarity that you are on the right path, along with the deep satisfaction that comes from that.
Your soul intentions will cause discomfort.
It is true that following your soul intentions will from time to time cause discomfort, but unless you feel discomfort, you are never going to leave the nest. Unless you feel discomfort, you will not seek solutions to get out of that discomfort. When you are chafing, you will be automatically inspired to seek ways to get back your comfort. Although seeking comfort is not in and of itself going to lead you to your highest good, it will get you moving! It will shake up your inertia because you will be forced to engage with your own life in order to save it. In the process of seeking solutions you will exercise your creativity. Life is not meant to be easy, but the truth is that all creation comes from tension. If you are too comfortable, the likelihood is that you will remain on idle, creating nothing of consequence until you are forced to act when your security and well-being are at stake. This is how life’s intrusive barbs can serve you. By kicking your ass, they can breathe life back into your creativity and your reason for being.
What if my world explodes even though I’m doing what I agreed to do by following my soul intentions?
Every now and then life throws us some serious curve balls. Every now and then we enter a field of unexpected and unprecedented dramatic shifts. I will use the 2000 film Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, as the launch point for this discussion. In the story, protagonist Chuck Noland is faced with a deep survival crisis when he finds himself stranded on an uninhabited island after his airplane crashes into the South Pacific. At the time of the incident, Chuck is a federal express employee with an established life. He has a girlfriend who is about to become his fiancé, and his network of co-workers, family, and friends, are solidly in place. Suddenly he is cast into utter isolation, cut off from his loved ones, and completely dependent on his personal resources to survive. This period of his life will last an eternity of four years.
A hypothetical exploration of Chuck’s soul choices.
Holding up a lens which looks at the events in a life as the direct result of soul choice, some questions (far from exhaustive) come to mind about Chuck’s life-transforming event:
1. Was he following his original soul’s agenda before he crashed into the ocean, and was the course of his life untimely ripped by an unforeseeable accident?
2. Or, was he reminded, by harsh intervention, to route back to the original intentions for his life? In which case, what might they have been?
3. Or, was the life-changing event of living on the island simply the next phase in the story of his unfolding life plan?
Before I go further, let me state that I do not know the definitive answer to any of these questions. I pose them because the process of giving them consideration may offer insight into what provokes the unexpected to come calling, and how we might handle the resulting harsh and permanent repercussions.
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Question 1: Was Chuck following his original soul’s agenda before he crashed into the ocean, and was the course of his life untimely ripped by an unforeseeable accident?
Scenario 1: As an employee of an international company, Chuck was doing what he came here to do. He was developing leadership skills, skills in managing others, skills at managing time, skills at relating to co-workers, supervisees, friends, and intimates. He was successful at his job – he accomplished his goals and he was competent, trustworthy, and reliable.
He was planning to get married. He was planning to have children. He planned to support his family emotionally and financially. He had developed a high level of maturity with his capacity to deal with stress and accountability to multiple relationships. He was living the life he came to live, one that was mindful that time is a limited resource. His future was set.
Then his tightly crafted, intentionally designed life was completely derailed by a horrific accident.
This accident functioned to destroy his existing agreements with others and with himself. He was called on to re-invent his life. He was called on to make it up as he went, ad hoc’ing and creating every moment of his new life. What could he bring to bear on this unexpected major shift in his life’s journey? In a nutshell: everything he knew, and everything he was physically capable of.
Chuck could have died in the ocean, but his raft drifted to an uninhabited island. Perhaps he was guided there, or perhaps it was just another accident.
If he was guided, it would seem that there was a higher intention for his life to continue despite it being thrown so completely off course. If it was an accident that he landed on a shore, he was still faced with the choice to give up on his life, or to do whatever he could to survive and find a way to return to the life that had been ripped from him.
Do we choose to give up or persevere?
Whether or not there was a higher force that guided Chuck to the island shore, he still had a choice to make. He could continue living, or he could find a way to make an exit.
When we find ourselves stranded and isolated, we are always faced with the choice to give up or to surrender, applying everything we are to chillingly unfamiliar and hostile territory. Isolation and limited resources are superlatively daunting circumstances and they will pulverize the faint-hearted or catalyze your courage to reach for new life – even if you have no clue what that life will now look like, or how you will get there.
Although the horrific experience of ripping Chuck out of his life was not planned, he was nonetheless confronted with the urgency to do something with it if he wanted to live. He was being asked, should he choose to do so, to continue the act of his own creation by creating his life without the support of community, peers, or comfort. He was on his own, absolutely and irrevocably. If he was to live, he had to become the Creator and stand in the shoes of God.
**~**~**~**
Question 2: Was Chuck reminded, by harsh intervention, to route back to the original intentions for his life? In which case, what might they have been?
Scenario II: As a successful employee, Chuck was not doing what he came here to do. Yes, he was exercising leadership skills, skills in managing others, skills at managing time, skills at relating to co-workers, supervisees, friends, and intimates. Yes, he was competent at his job, but this was not what he had agreed to work on for his life. Chuck had already polished his current skill sets and was relying on them to get him through life comfortably without having to do the grinding work of developing mastery in a completely different area.
Sometimes we ask for wake-up calls.
The truth was that Chuck had resisted taking on new skills and relationships in his previous incarnations, and now his resistance had come home to roost. In fact, he had asked that this time around, if he failed to track his original purpose, that he be reminded in no uncertain terms that a change of course was required. Enter a horrific accident. Now his tightly crafted life was completely and intentionally derailed – by his own design.
This accident functioned to destroy his stale agreements and relationships. He was called on to re-invent his life. He was called on to make it up as he went, ad hoc’ing while creating every moment of his new life. As daunting and traumatic as this new situation was, it was exactly what Chuck needed (and had asked for). Without being forced into circumstances that stripped him of reliance on his habitual way of being, Chuck would not have made the effort to reach deep within and begin to cultivate new skills, nor would he have had any incentive to step into becoming the person he now needed to be. The person he needed to evolve into required a new mindset, new tools, and a new perspective on what his life was about.
What does the soul want?
Who was this person that Chuck needed to become? It was the person his soul required him to become. The soul wants to be fully present and engaged. The soul needs to have experiences that challenge it to expand and grow new anatomy. It is inherent to the soul to be creative, and to be dynamically so. As sparks of God, we are each god in our own right. God is the mastermind par excellence of Exploration and Creation, and when he/r incarnational expression spends too much time going over the same lesson plan, the soul will endure boredom only so long.
What was included in Chuck’s new lesson plan?
• Self-reliance. • The courage to persevere in the face of an unknown future. • The courage to persevere without external aid from tools or others. • The courage to tend his own wounds. • Profound creativity in designing new applications for otherwise mundane objects. • Learning to deal with, and accept, severe restrictions and limitations. • Learning new skills.
What else did he learn? He came to know his heart’s desires. He understood what was truly meaningful to him now that he was removed from the din of his former noisy and hurried life. He came to be in far greater alignment with his soul.
**~**~**~**
Question 3: Was the life-changing event of living on the island simply the next phase in the story of his unfolding life plan?
Scenario III: As an employee of an international company, Chuck was doing what he came here to do, but there was more he had agreed to. He was developing leadership skills, skills in managing others, skills at managing time, skills at relating to co-workers, supervisees, friends, and intimates. He was successful at his job – he accomplished his goals and he was competent, trustworthy, and reliable.
The truth was that Chuck had resisted taking on new skills and relationships in his previous incarnations, and he had asked for an intervention that would require him to make a radical departure from life circumstances that no longer offered his soul either challenge or excitement. However, he still wanted to polish his abilities to handle the challenges of high-level leadership demands, and so included those in the first part of his life. When the time came that he had achieved sufficient mastery, he wanted to be given an opportunity to step up to new life skills. And so it came to pass.
When Chuck was finally returned to his former life, he had a medicine bag bursting with new skills and self-knowledge. With these hard-won and intrepid tools under his belt, his capacity to handle whatever life brought him had increased by magnitudes. Whether or not he had asked for training in new levels of mastery, he was nonetheless given a stark and unprecedented opportunity to do so.
**~**~**~**
Additional Reflections
Sometimes life gets out of hand, taking unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes we don’t have much in the way of resources or know-how to deal with unknown territory. What can we do? We can find help where help is available – usually in unexpected places. We now have a genuine opportunity to reach deep within ourselves and beyond to seek solutions that will give us the momentum for getting unstuck from dark places. Not only do we seek for solutions, we seek courage to face our terror. We find hope in each breath, and we receive messages and guidance from sources that were previously hidden from us. In extremity, our senses intensify, giving us the ability to understand the language of signs and symbols that were previously invisible and incomprehensible.
Aligning with our souls
There are some exquisite gifts to be attained in the process of standing for our lives. The more difficult the challenge, the more ferocious we must be in our resolve because that is what is required if we are going to live. The more difficult the challenge, the more ferocious we must be with our intentions to live the lives we agreed to live. The more difficult the challenge, the greater the demand to find the creative solutions that will get us clear of the breakers. And why should we live? We must live so that our souls can continue to experience more love, more beauty, more joy, more knowledge, more connection, more excitement, and more anticipation of what is yet to come and what we can yet become. There are some exquisite gifts to be attained in the process of standing for our lives. The biggest one is that we become more aligned with our own soul. And when we are aligned with our souls, we know intuitively what our right lives should look and feel like.
We will infrequently remember or truly grasp the reasons for life reversals.While we may have asked for intervention on behalf of our souls, it is also possible to be thrust helplessly into irrevocable life shifts that were not part of the original plan for our lives. Despite being cast away – whether or not of our own choice and design – we can still forge our way forward in reliance on the most powerful intrinsic attribute each and every one of us possesses. And that is our legacy, as chips off the old block that is God, to be the Creators of a new life.
When you are expressing your unique piece of the Tao, your life will be a beautiful reflection of who you are because you will be being who you came here to be, and doing what you came here to do.
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Carry on my wayward son
There’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don’t you cry no more
Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
The center lights around your vanity
But surely heaven waits for you ~ Kansas
You are already whole. The part of you that is manifesting in the here and now – the physical plane as you call it – is a much reduced, though still beautiful, expression of you. That expression may be functioning at physical and emotional peak, or it may be experiencing wear and lack of recovery. You may even be under attack.
However, no matter what is going on, only part of your spirit has come along for the ride. There is an aspect of your spirit – your essence (or higher self) – that never incarnates, and it is this essence that monitors and makes adjustments to the part of itself that is your soul. It is also your essence that retains its original wholeness no matter what you are experiencing. In fact, your essence/higher self extends all the way to Source, giving you the power to negotiate and endure even life’s extreme challenges. Because of its constant connection to Source, your essence always has access to limitless recuperative capacities.
That’s quite the claim, you may be thinking. How can anyone possibly believe that we are always connected to our wholeness given the depth and volume of unspeakable atrocities that are engaged in daily, and have been engaged in, for hundreds of thousands of years? Not to mention our own myriad personal sufferings! How does one summon the courage (or entertain the stupidity) to believe that we can still experience a state of wholeness at the hands of unmitigated evil? Or even more ridiculous – believe that we never left the state of grace, that we are still inside of it?
Let me spend a few moments reflecting on the nature of the human spirit. This spirit demonstrates a persevering quality of indomitability and resilience, and despite unbearable physical and emotional circumstances, asserts its vitality again and again. History is replete with persons of tremendous courage and spirited resilience. There is a great deal in our experience of being human that is beyond bearing, and yet, there are those among us who do not accept great pain or defeat as the ultimate truth of who we are or what our lives are about. A few examples of those who battled the demons of racism, oppression, and general disregard for life: Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Theresa. They did not surrender to despair, but to what they believed in. They pursued their truths despite the tsunami of opposition and a heaping plateful of personal sufferings of every conceivable kind.
How did they do this? What kept them going?
They accessed their eternal Spirit. They believed in a cause larger than themselves. They believed in the need to take action, knowing that if they did not take action, conditions would never change. They understood that they were here to act on their truth and that if they did not do so, their truth would never be made manifest. They remembered their original purpose, and even if they did not remember it in so many words, they were nevertheless compelled by the truth behind that purpose.
How do you keep going if it’s just you?
You cannot take on every cause that’s out there. You must follow your guidance and discernment. The strategy in dealing with the overwhelm of multiple causes is to stay on your own path. This is about manifesting your unique soul purpose – and that comes of following your dharma. As well, you are not expected to carry on solo! You cannot turn back the tide on your own. It is unreasonable to expect this, or to demand it. But you can join with the efforts of others. Seek out those organizations devoted to the causes that call to you. There you will find your mission mates.
How do I know what my dharma is?
What have you fallen in love with? What are you in love with? What do you care about? Look there for your dharma. Look at what your gifts are, and use them to everyone’s benefit. You were given these to assist with the unfolding of your dharma. What are you compelled to bear witness to? What is it that loosens your tongue to speak the truth? Therein lays your dharma.
To do the work of strategizing on how you can be of service to the needs of social justice, it is important to have a community that you regularly meet with to share ideas and reflections, and to encourage and uplift each other to be channels for grace. You cannot face evil without being in the field of Grace. Grace is active in the world through us, and through the Divine. How do you become a channel for Grace? Respect yourself as a sacred being on a mission from the Divine. See yourself as the Sacred Will of the Divine acting through you. Grace is the supplement from heaven that will support your spiritual immune system. It is the force and field of life that is the breath of God, and the mystical force that unfolds in service to your life path.
It’s all an illusion anyway.
Since we are already whole, is it correct to state that the horrors of the world are an illusion? Some new age schools of thinking have no issues with making the statement, “It’s all an illusion, anyway; everything is perfect as it is.”
Tell that to the Syrians who are being turned out of their homes and massacred.
Tell that to the victims of Sandy Hook.
Tell that to the 27 million women and children who endure bestial treatment in the enforced slavery of sex trafficking.
Tell that to the victims of the Holocaust.
Tell that to the Vietnamese who were decimated by the murderous ideology of “Kill Anything that Moves.”
Tell that to the women of India, who have been raped and murdered, many generations over.
Tell that to the Native Americans.
Tell that to the Native Americans who walked the Trail of Tears.
Tell that to the slaves of African ancestry.
Tell that to the undocumented workers.
Tell that to women who have been subjected throughout history to violence against their gender.
It’s a worthless debate, isn’t it? It is most especially worthless when we are the ones in the midst of great suffering.
How can you be whole and maimed at the same time?
Your ultimate self exists in wholeness. The part of you that is experiencing life in the current dimension is the one doing battle and sustaining sometimes excruciating wounds. Connect to your Spirit Body and ask it to heal your Physical Body. Then ask it to heal your Emotional Body, and again, your Mental Body. You are ready to remember the promise you made, and your obligation to live up to that promise. Why did you agree to come here? Who did you come here to be? What service or contribution that is uniquely yours to make is not being made because you’ve forgotten your courage?
Now, use the tools that will bring heaven to your aid. You are already holding them.
What are these tools?
Grace. Prayer. Community. Friendship. Self-reflection. Self-care. Connecting with your heart. Remembering. Bending, but not breaking. Staying strong. When you have plenty of energy to draw on, it’s much easier to take on the devil.
Grace is what compels us to go out and live life boldly, despite the terrors. Will grace protect you? It cannot protect you from every encounter, but it is set up to protect you so that you can carry out the great measure of your soul intentions. The field of Grace is always present. Grace is in action in the world. You are still here, are you not?
What if you’re too depressed to take further action? What if you’ve given up in overwhelm? How do you transform your condition?
The real question is how do we transform the darkness?
Refuse to surrender to the belief that darkness is more powerful than light.
Refuse to surrender because you do not accept that darkness, no matter how powerful, how painful, or how savage, is the ultimate reality.
Refuse to believe that you have nothing of value to contribute.
Bear witness to your own suffering.
Continue to act on what you believe is the greater truth.
Connect to the eternal flame of the peace within, the peace that passes all understanding.
Stick to your dharma.
Know that your spirit has what it takes to be in this world. You would not have been put here otherwise.
****
Choose your actions based on what will serve humanity. You never want to say to yourself, “I should have.” It is always a good time to step into your higher self, to open fully to your Divinity, and take it on with everything you’ve got. The truth is this: you have the power to be and do what you came here to do if you set forth your intentions and follow them. This is a basic rule of life. Develop your talents to their highest degree and then use them to make the greatest contribution you can – you have no idea what you are capable of. You have the capacity to move heaven and earth.
On Grace: “I never know where I will find You or how You will speak to me. Some days it is through a new person and other days it is through a new experience. Each day I become more aware of something I did not understand or realize before. I knew I should be grateful for all that I have but now I realize I should also be grateful for all that I do not have. For I do not have traumatic war memories and I do not have scars from being a refugee and I do not have the fear of a homeless person. I am grateful for all I have and for all I do not have. If I am grateful for having been spared a suffering, give me the grace to help those who are suffering. Amen” ~ Caroline Myss
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(This is a continuation of a discussion that began with Soul Intentions, Part I – A Reflection on Soul Purpose. Part I can be found in the November archives.)
What is Soul History? How Soul History and Soul Intentions create your Soul Trajectory
Soul History is the record of what you have been up to in each of your incarnations. Your Soul History also includes your role within your originating group and the groups your Soul has associated with over its many incarnations. These groups are formed around a larger vision that require everyone’s cooperation. That larger vision encompasses an aspect of Divine Evolutionary Intention that is beyond our ability to truly grasp. We can, nonetheless, try to guess at what that larger intention might be through the part we play in it. Soul groups themselves create trajectories for better or for worse, and your various incarnations will move between different groups, learning from the primary focus, or dharma, of each one.
Some groups focus on breaking down what no longer serves; others have agreed to create what sustains all, and yet others will preserve and protect what sustains all; others build bridges that connect cultures to each other. These are just some of the foci that groups rally behind; there are many more. Over time, soul group intentions (or their failed expressions) make their mark in history, and where they have failed, much work and attention is required to repair, reinvigorate, or even create new forms that will support the original intentions. These experiences inform and define your own trajectory.
A trajectory is the arc described by the progress of your soul as it creates, with each incarnation, its unique history across time and space. Your trajectory is characterized by how you have lived your life. If we were to assign a thick ribbon of light to a life well lived and a thinner ribbon to a life handled less well, a soul trajectory could show increasingly thick ribbons connected to thinner ribbons and then again to thicker ribbons, as it etches its record through time. Or, we could graph a trajectory using a 100-point system with the highest points given to lives well lived and fewer points for lives handled less well. The graphed trajectory for a life that went back and forth could show some dramatic rises and dips. We can do well in some lives and then find ourselves taking the proverbial two steps back in subsequent lives.
Of course, one could reasonably argue that if one does well in a life, overcoming desires for revenge, for example, and generally rising above most fears, the trajectory should improve, arcing higher with each life. In lives where the heart expanded with unconditional love and a person’s actions were informed by that expansion, the graph would spike. Or, using the ribbon of light analogy, the ribbons would increase markedly in thickness. It is true that some life circumstances will be far more challenging and require more “light” to manage, but over time your soul’s trajectory will reveal its unique pattern.
A trajectory is not created randomly. It is created by the Soul’s Intentions. Soul intentions are created for the purpose of fulfilling your agreements to your self and to others. These intentions compel us to take on incarnate form, for life is required to fulfill them. Their agenda is driven by what your soul desires to experience, and also what you may need to release or delete from a former life.
We do not always live out our Soul Intentions; there are many lives in which we become decoupled, in whole or in part, and this can sometimes happen through no fault of our own, from our original Intentions for incarnating. When we lose connection to our Soul’s vision, we disconnect from higher guidance and our purpose for being here. We will, however, eventually address the karmas that were created when we separated from our Intentions, while also continuing to live our dharma – that which we came to be, to express, and to contribute.
One soul’s history and how that history demonstrates how a soul might seek to express its intentions
Now we will look at the trajectory of a young woman, Emily, who sought to understand the origin of the pain in her heart. Emily is seated before her Council of Elders. She is deep inside Spirit territory, in a regression process that has already taken her through a past life in which she died by her own hand. Emily tells the Council she is experiencing pain in her heart. She believes this pain is from her attachment to a man she loves. This man, Brian, is much older than she is, and he is also married. The Council is gathered in what appears to be a bright open meadow. Emily is feeling optimistic. She knows that she is going to get the answers she seeks.
Emily asks how she can let go of the powerful attachment she has to Brian, and how she can fulfill her highest purpose. The Council tells Emily that Brian is connected to her purpose, but she has to be patient. There are things yet to unfold. She asks again about the pain and wants to know – what did she agree to do with this life? First, the Council begins with a review of her past life connections to this man.
A Council Elder speaks: This soul is not a member of your originating soul group. He belongs to a “mate” soul group. You first met approximately 4,000 years ago. This took place in the desert; it looks like Saudi Arabia. You were a member of a nomadic tribe that lived in the desert, moving from time to time when the water sources dried up. The tribe had sheep and goats. You were a small girl when a group of marauders traveling on horseback raided the camp dwellings. Their way of life was to plunder and destroy, to take what they wanted of supplies, food, and women. The man you are currently involved with was a young teen then, and his heart did not truly embrace the violence of this way of life. Nevertheless, it provided him with survival, skills, and companions. The young teen intervened on your behalf, saving your life and henceforth, he cared for you. This was the beginning of the love that grew between you, although it was not an easy love. This young man did the best he could to raise you, but it was a hard life for a woman, and you died at an early age, still filled with grief. This is the originating source of the pain in your heart.
The next life where Emily and Brian meet is in Oregon, in the late 1700’s. They were siblings. She and her brother were very young. They were playing by a creek when they were shot with arrows by an Indian who was angry about the white “invaders” who were settling in Oregon in greater numbers. As the souls of Brian and Emily departed, they promised to be there for each other the next time they incarnated together.
Emily and Brian meet again in rural England, in the early 1800’s. Retaining the same gender as before, they marry and live out their lives on a small farm. They have two children – a boy and a girl. They live a happy, though hard life, caring for each other and their children, and they die in their 50’s. They had a strong and loyal connection, and supported each other in every way. The heart bond between them increases with each successive life they share.
The Elder shows Emily one more life where she and Brian again find each other, this time in London. Brian is well-off and entitled. Emily is poor, and lives outside the city. They occasionally see each other when Emily goes to the city to purchase supplies. When they first see each other on the streets, they experience a sense of familiarity and are drawn to each other, but do not act on this. Their interaction consists solely of glances. Emily, ten years younger, would love to approach Brian, but she cannot do this outside of an appropriate social context. And given that she is not his equal, the meeting will never happen. Not having much to do, Brian hangs out in the saloons, drinking and gambling. To Emily’s sorrow, Brian eventually marries someone of his social standing. He later dies in a saloon brawl, shot through the chest. Emily sees him in his last moments, as he lies dying in the streets. This life where each was forced to keep their distance, not able to explore their real connection, added to the pain in Emily’s heart.
Emily’s and Brian’s heart connections to each other were initially forged from circumstances that were deeply painful for her, while at the same time Brian experienced an opening to compassion despite his warrior-marauder perspective. The plight of the small girl whose parents were murdered offered him the opportunity to rise above the lawless, insensitive ways of his band. As the Elder revealed, Emily’s heart-pain around Brian had its origins in that life. After that life, the souls of Emily and Brian saw a spiritual opportunity to apply the lessons of the open heart and so made the decision to explore these through incarnating together. As we can see, the pain in Emily’s heart is complex. It began with great anger towards him for 1) what he did to her desert tribe so long ago, and is also complicated by her appreciation of his efforts at saving her life. In summary, Emily’s heart bonds to Brian further include: 2) her love for her little brother, 3) her love for her husband, 4) the unrequited love from the London life and 5) the current situation in which Brian is not available to live his life with her.
In this trajectory, successive incarnations between Emily and Brian do not necessarily create increasingly better connections – at least as we understand these from the level of personality and what most of us would like to see happen. There is a difficult beginning through forced contact where Emily learns to love her enemy and then a series of lives where there is familial bonding. However, in their most recent lives they are prevented from sharing the profound affection they genuinely have for each other. Personality would much prefer a story where the lovers are happily and permanently reunited each time, but the soul – like the heart – has its own logic and more importantly, its own higher purposes.
Now the Council is ready to answer Emily’s question about why she chose the current incarnation. Don’t you remember? You came here to be a peacemaker. We have formerly told you the best way to bring peace to this world is to help individuals find it inside themselves. You are going through this struggle with Brian so that you can learn peace in the midst of personal turmoil and uncertainty. The best thing you can do at this time is to stay connected to spirit, to trust the process, and to be joyful.
Emily is also told that each of their souls is working to manifest their individual purpose. She is told that the path of joy and love is the one that she needs to commit to. If she can do this, her attachment to Brian will diminish as her focus turns more and more to accomplishing her unique soul intentions. She is encouraged to pursue her studies in psychology and meditation. They tell her: Yours is a peace-making soul; it is also an illuminator for love. Healing vibrations for others emanate from your heart when it is open, and you are following your path. These soul gifts are able to be expressed through the venues you seek to study and work in. When Emily asks again about the possibility of a future with Brian, she is again reminded that it is the path of love and joy that she must pursue. It is best to understand that this is the highest approach to living your life. The path of heart is the path of wisdom. The future cannot be foretold; you make your destiny by the choices you make in each moment. The more your choices are informed by your soul’s intentions, the more joy and fulfillment you will have.
Through her incarnations, Emily’s soul was specializing in the path of the open heart. A heart that is open will be broken, but the power of a broken heart that is navigated well is its ability to create an expansiveness that can hold space for the brokenness of others. It also teaches by example that the gifts of an open heart lead to wisdom and compassion. The cumulative influence of her incarnations created a gentle, approachable personality that others find safe and welcoming, and her successful passage through some difficult experiences gave her the insights and tools for showing others how they can do the same for themselves.
Understand the ways in which we can recognize our soul intentions
Emily’s need to understand the purpose of her current life is indicative of her desire to align with her original soul intentions. Emily’s natural interests in meditation, psychology, reincarnation and harmonious connections with others have been persistent and strong this life. She received validation from her Council that these are areas where she could fruitfully focus her professional efforts, but they also observed that while these approaches to fulfilling her purpose are appropriate, there are other ways she could express her soul gifts, and suggested that she might want to further explore this. In other words, Emily should follow the general warp and weft of what she seeks to accomplish because this will allow her to discover additional ways her objectives can be satisfied. She will be surprised and delighted to find that the spiritual path she is committed to is richer than she realizes.
“What is it I need to do in order to fulfill the requirements of my intentions, and what is my next step to getting there?”
Pay attention to experiences with which you especially resonate as this will assist you to identify and remember what you agreed to show up for. Pay attention to your emotions as these will guide you. Letting go of the paths not taken and the roads not fully traveled, begin here: live each day as if it were your calling. Without excessive attention to detail and over-thinking, choose those activities that seem the most right or important. And instead of demanding immediate results, revel in the quietly unfolding intrigue of each moment. Take small steps, one at a time. There is no need to offer up arguments or resistance; simply do each step, improvising as you go. You do not need to know the next step or the next action – by responding to the choices that call to you, to those impulses that seek expression – your life plan and purpose will reveal itself.
As you faithfully listen to the call of your intuitive knowing, you will become more adept at discerning the next right action. You do not need to wait for inspiration. Simply take actions that reflect best what you know to be true for yourself, and you will steadily regain footing on your course as you remember your passions, which will re-connect you to your soul intentions.
For a session on finding your purpose, see Life Purpose
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I lived with this question for years, but I didn’t know I was asking it. Later, in my studies of transformational tools and principles, I was told that “Something unique wants to express itself through you – something that only you can give birth to.”I thought this was, at best, a nice sentiment. It was very egalitarian as it left no one out, and it even made everyone special.But I had also heard the phrase often enough, expressed somewhat less loftily: You are special. There is no one like you. By the time I heard it again I was already seriously inured to it and perhaps even somewhat cynical.Of course, we’re unique; who isn’t? And that’s where, for me, the whole concept of personal uniqueness distilled itself to not having any significant meaning.
So, for quite a while, I succumbed to the enervating perception that uniqueness in and of itself is not unique. Since we are all uniquely distinguished from each other, what’s the big deal? You’re tall; I’m short. You’re muscular; I lack definition. You have red hair; I have black hair. Your eyes are green, and mine are brown. You excel in tennis, but I can sing. You’re great at math and I write more clearly than you. What’s to get excited about? Now, if you’re handy, I’m feeling some excitement. But I digress.
At some point it occurred to me that I was looking in the wrong direction, on the wrong concept, and that I was stubbornly myopic.I decided to challenge my habitual perception of uniqueness by changing my stance that uniqueness is a common attribute with no benefits.In a departure from my earlier pronounced state of jadedness, I asked: What exactly is it that is unique to each of us? In no time, a realization asserted itself with incontrovertible clarity: It is our soul’s longing and the agenda contained in that longing that leads us to our purpose. Our specific longings show us the paths we need to take and who we can become. So what makes us unique? What makes us who are we? So what makes us unique? What makes us who are we?
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV. 4.5 tells us that it is our deep, driving desire.
You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
Here is the beginning of knowing your soul purpose: identifying your deeper truths through your deep desires.Therein lies our uniqueness and our destiny: in our desires.In those things that awaken our passion. What comes of following our desires? Everything.When we base our actions on following our unique desires, we will feel compelled to seek what is correct for us. And what is correct for us also nourishes us. And there is even more to be gained from following our true desires: we will attract what we need so that we can become who we are meant to become. And the best thing of all is, by following our soul’s longing we will inevitably express our soul purpose, and there is no greater fulfillment.
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