Finding Your Life Purpose
by
Julia Melges-Brenner. Copyright Sabrina Scott, Inc. All rights
reserved. Written for and originally published in Kajama.
Dear
Julia:
Many people talk about the
higher purpose of life and our reason for incarnating. This has always
been so confusing to me, for most of us seem to busily pursuing
material possessions and the accumulation of wealth. Is there any
higher purpose to life? If so, how can an individual discover his or
her life purpose in order to pursue it? I'm sure no one wants to leave
this world not having fulfilled their highest purpose. I would be
grateful if you shared your thoughts on this matter.
Muralidhar
Dear Muralidhar:
There are indeed all sorts of ideas about the higher purpose of life on
Earth. Most people look to religion for such explanations. I'm in
harmony with some of the teachings of all the major religions, such as
the Christian focus on love and faith and the Buddhist belief in karma
and reincarnation. I'm in greatest harmony with the oldest religion,
Hinduism, and its core teachings that we are all part of God, and
through learning and growing via the cycle of birth, death and rebirth,
we can progress toward enlightenment and eventually remerge with our
Divine Source.
My personal views are based on the information I've received from
Spirit throughout twenty years of spiritual reading work in combination
with research into the near death experience and life between life
therapy. (In life between life therapy, people are regressed to the
period between lifetimes to review their plans for their next lives as
well as all sorts of other very deep spiritual issues.) The main tenets
of all of these sources mesh well, which suggests that even though I
may not be able to firmly grasp the entire picture, I am honing in on
some big truths.
The two main life purpose themes that emerge time after time in my own
experience as a channeler of Spirit and in the NDE and LBL research are
the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom and the development of an ever
greater capacity for selfless love. While we all share this general
life purpose, how that translates for each individual is of course
unique. I believe we make our own plans for each life before
incarnating, and that these plans are based on the karmic lessons and
issues of previous lives combined with the desire to move to higher
levels of learning and development.
The higher purpose for our life does not equate to a set plan, however,
for we always have free will. In fact, once we get here in the
physical, it can be very challenging to stay on track. This is why life
on Earth is such a powerful learning experience: when we are plunged
into this dramatic situation where we have to find a way to survive and
get all our physical and emotional needs met, we tend to forget about
the higher truths and lessons our soul is hoping to master.
The analogy of Earth as a school is popular because it is so apt. When
we first begin the incarnation cycle, our lessons are simpler and more
mundane in nature. There are people whose goal is to simply learn how
to work with their divine creative power in order to create the
material things they need to physically survive and enjoy life. Often
when people graduate from learning how to physically survive, they
spend a lifetime or two "playing" with their newfound power to manifest
<q>the good life.</q> Eventually, this naturally gets
boring and they start to ponder deeper questions and issues, at which
point they begin a conscious
spiritual journey. (They've been on a spiritual journey the whole time,
of course, but they may not have been so conscious about it.)
To denigrate others' goals and values is a bit like a college student
sneering at kids who are just learning arithmetic; we've all had to go
through the same basic lessons, so just because those classes no longer
challenge or interest us is no reason to put them down. In fact, I've
often seen that people who have been through a very difficult journey
in life are being prepared to fulfill a very high life purpose. Their
highest destiny is to move through the experience to the other side of
it so they can become a source of help and healing to other people who
are going through the same thing. In order to help people, we have to
understand what they're going through, so people destined to become
great healers may go through years of darkness and misery.
In some ways, we are all always living our higher purpose, for whatever
we're going through is what we need to experience in order to grow into
a higher level of experience. Thus we see people who have been touched
by cancer creating cancer charities and support groups, and people who
have lived some very dark years battling addiction becoming mentors and
healers for other addicts.
To determine your own higher purpose, it's wise to listen to your own
life story and trust that it is leading you to the knowledge,
experience and wisdom you need. It's also important to honor and trust
your passions and interests, for these are also trying to guide you to
fulfill your destiny. This is how my own life's work came about: I
experienced the death of my first love at a very tender age, which made
me all too familiar with grief and encouraged me to develop great
compassion for the grieving. I also had amazing spiritual experiences
that produced unwavering faith in an afterlife. As my own journey
ultimately led me to profound healing, I developed a strong desire to
help others discover the peace I had found.
Perhaps our highest destiny is to find or create something good out of
our suffering. It doesn't matter exactly what form it takes, the point
is to transmute the darkness we encounter into something light. With
this in mind, some key questions to help you determine your own life
purpose include:
What unusual or extraordinary
experiences have I suffered through? How can I turn my own struggles
into something positive? What am I most passionate about or interested
in?
Please note that your higher purpose in life does not necessarily
relate to what you do to earn a living. Since someone has to build the
houses and grow the food, what people do for a living should never be
taken as a sign of how evolved they are spiritually. By way of a very
famous example, someone can be the very embodiment of wisdom and
unconditional love but work as a humble carpenter. In fact, having
simple, straight forward sort of job can bless us with the time and
mental energy to pursue higher aims.
Also, having psychic experiences does not necessarily mean you are
meant to become a psychic professional. I often hear from people who
have been having psychic experiences and want to know what they're
<q>supposed</q> to do with them. Since we are all psychic
to some degree, that's a bit like saying that lately we've been hearing
noises and we want to know what we're supposed to do with our ability
to hear. What we do with our gifts and talents all depends on what we
want and/or feel called to do.
To determine your higher purpose and find a way to fulfill it, you must
listen to your intuitions, insights and conscience, for it is through
these channels that you receive guidance and direction from your soul.
The more you work with processes like meditation in order to clearly
hear your higher self, the more you will tend to fulfill your higher
plan for this lifetime. With this in mind, perhaps the most direct and
powerful way to determine your life purpose is to engage in life
between life therapy. For more information on this amazing process, I
recommend books by Michael Newton, Ph.D., who wrote Journey of Souls, Destiny of Souls and Life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression.
-
Julia
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