Life's Purpose

What is life's purpose? Is meditation going off into a cave in the mountains? I know from personal experience that by incorporating it into your life you will allow yourself to access a more profound and reverent part of life. It's a part worthy of your involvement, expenditure of energy and time. You'll receive answers to your questions, such as why am I here? You'll awaken to who you are and what you are about, what you’re here to learn, do and create with this marvelous experience of being human.

What do you need to be happy? A better job, more money, more leisure time, bigger house, car, and material things? On the surface, these seem to be the most important things in our lives but they are also temporary. That's the problem with the physical stuff and possesions is that they don't and won't last.

Have you experienced periods of restlessness, very active sexually, frustration, highs & lows in your life? Do you know why? Many of us are like the epic tale of Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long sleep. You're waking up to embracing life and getting on with it. That's your soul's way of shaking you and getting you to experience new things so that you can learn and evolve.

Is life really and bitch and then you die? Most see life's problems from two viewpoints - suppress them or vent them. If we subvert them what happens? If we vent them what happens? What's left? Use the experiences to learn and grow with and not to react.

Solving problems requires compassion. Often that's why most of us can provide expert advice that we don't or won't use ourselves. Where does this advice come from, why don’t we listen to it? Do we believe it applies to others and not us? Or is it because we are not objective with ourselves or place enough belief in our Self to provide the correct answers. Perhaps it's the compassion we show others when they cry out for help that is also something that we must learn ourselves.

Placing problems at the center of our attention and concentration and meditating on them causes them to become "lighter". Then in this area we can become "enlightened" or "illuminated". Meditation doesn't make things disappear, it allows us to take control and transform them so that solutions can appear. These solutions were always there; we just weren't able to see them because of scattered attention.

Take the example of something that you fear say spiders or snakes, flying, or public speaking. There are two approaches 1) fight or flight or 2) learn from the experience. The latter is often the more difficult. Take for example cobra venom. One person may kill the snake, another capture it to put it on display or still another use the snake to make anti-venom.

What kind of attitude does this require? Using reason (attention, memory and imagination) instead of running away allows us to create a different outcome. In meditation this spirit (attitude) is fundamental.

Ask yourself whether your in the act of doing things or being? Which is more important? Take workaholics for example. What's at the center of their attitudes? Security, afraid of being alone, insecure, lack of love, wanting to be loved, some of each? I believe the problem is a lack of balance and a lack of harmony in their lives and especially their spiritual lives.

We are mental, emotional and spiritual beings; spiritual entities having a physical experience. We learn through our emotions and our physical experiences by applying reason to evolve or change and grow. If you take away the workaholics work, what's left? It's by recognizing and working with our weaknesses as well as our strengths we can develop more self-confidence and realize a quicker more balanced growth in the process.

By choosing to undertake learning in the areas we haven't previously done that well we can and will make the most rapid progress physically and spiritually. In the places where we struggle, strain or are vulnerable, (i.e. - love, compassion, getting along with a difficult person) we can find diamonds of growth potential. These places require admission of shortcomings because we're expressing the desire to learn more. To do this we must "BE HERE NOW". When we are vulnerable we find our areas of strength that we haven't tapped into. By using these new resources we discover a greater sense of what life and we are all about.

Meditation can make us face these personal poisons and create the anti-venom. It does require desire, willingness to change, persistence and the will power required to make it happen. When we are open and accept who we are, 1/3 of the challenge has been won (one - Me, myself and I).

You can find anti-venom in anger and fear if you choose to look within for them, for the value of justice and integrity. What happens when these are transformed? Similarly denial, resentment and procrastination serve to produce more of the same in our lives. "Thought is cause - and everything else is sub-cause". We become what we think about…

Recognition and acceptance of our limitations, working with and through them are powerful techniques for personal change and spiritual growth. Are you up to it? The seeds of our peace, contentment and enlightenment are inside each of us. We must plant these seeds in the fertile existence of our subconscious minds so they can bear fruit.

A student asked his teacher whether the butterfly he held in his hand was alive or dead. The teacher sensing the deception replied, "It's up to you - you decide." So it's up to you. You can read this, and think, hey there's a lot of truth here, then continue on your way. Alternatively, you can choose to do something extraordinary with the information - "apply it in your life." The saddest fact of all is that most won't.

So for those of you who do, here's an exercise: For the next week, every day, examine everything in life that comes your way as something that is here to help you change and grow physically, mentally and spiritually. Life isn't out to get you - it's here to help you.


Namaste


Jim