Discovering your Soul Purpose

Souls incarnate on the earth for many reasons. I like to believe that my Soul or Higher Self chose to come to earth and have this physical experience, as did your higher self.  Of course, we tend not to identify with our God-Self, but with our ego - the "mental/emotional vehicle" of our soul in earthly life.  Thus it's difficult to say "I chose to come here for such and such a purpose", because we tend to think of "I" as our ego rather than our greater spiritual being.

The nature of earthly living means that we become caught in the lower densities of existence and become disconnected from our higher self and our soul purpose. I love the story told by Dan Millman in his book "Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior" (my interpretation here rather than direct quote)about souls that looked down at the earth and chose to explore and experience the material realm.  However, once they incarnated they became trapped in the lower density or lower vibration of matter
and thus forgot their true identity.  Waves of souls followed on rescue missions but all became trapped upon the earth and entered the wheel of reincarnation in order to evolve and remember their true selves.  Several waves of souls, deeply aware of the risks, consciously chose to sacrifice and attempted to incaranate with higher consciousness.  Though also caught in the lower densities these souls retained a higher consciosness and memory of their spiritual nature, and attempted to help others remember their higher selves.

As I read various forms of spiritual literature I find many variations of this story. As I further explore my soul purpose I am discovering that I came to earth to be light and love by maintaining a connection with my true soul identity. Yet being so "spiritually minded" the challenge now is to integrate fully into an "earthly" existence and appreciate the experience rather than abandon the world in pursuit of spiritual experience. The conscious waves of souls in Dan Millman's story have come to be known in New Age circles as "Lightworkers".  While I am not completely comfortable with this term I acknowledge it's popular acceptance and so use it accordingly.

So my Soul Purpose is dual - to remain conscious of my spiritual identity thereby being a channel of light and love into the world while embracing and exploring the nature of the material world.  The latter  half may sound strange to some, but I know many will identify with the former.  Believe me, my greatest struggle in this life time has been the acceptance of my presence on the earth and the ability to engage with the societies we have created upon it.

But enough about me!  How do you discover your Soul Purpose? If you identify with the idea of being a Lightworker, then stay tuned for more blogs, or refer to "The Lightworker Series" by Pamela Kribbe at www.jeshua.net.  This is a great resource.  However if that is too airy-fairy for you, then read on!

In order to discover our Soul Purpose we need to remember two key principles:

1.  The material world is created through the spiritual, therefore is a work-in-progress, fluid and shifting despite its rigid and concrete appearance.

2.  We are the creators, the artists behind this fluid work-in-progress that we often mistake for unchangeable reality.

Now these are pretty big concepts and I will address them more completely in further blogs.  However for the time being practising the following steps may help to guide your awareness closer towards your Soul Purpose.

Let Go
We become trapped in lower vibrations of the physical world because our ego consciousness fuses with the world we see around us and the society we are born into.  This means, we believe the physical world is the authorative reality.  As a result we are convinced of its laws, dictates and way of life, which in turn generates needs, wants and limitations in our thinking.  If you've ever had that nagging empty feeling that there must be something more then you've identified your higher self trying get through and wake you up to the illusion.  If you've ever had experiences when what seems to be impossible occurs, or even incredible coincidence, synchronicity or extremely good luck, then you've had moments of piercing the veil of illusion and getting a glimpse of your soul's creative spiritual artistry in progress.  To tune in to our Soul Purpose we first need to disentangle from our fusion with the material and social world around us and start to acknowledge a Higher Purpose at work in our lives.

Take Responsibility
Things don't happen to you that are not in some way intiated, created or authored by you.  We are the creators of our life experience and corporately the creators of this planetary experience.  Begin to turn your eyes inward (yes, do some navel gazing) and ask yourself "how have I contributed to this experience in my life" rather than externalising the source of your suffering or good luck and blaming or acknowledging other people or things.  If negative things keep happening to you, if you are in conflict, suffering or experiencing failure - start by looking at your fear.  Be honest with yourself.  All suffering in our lives will almost always have some form of fear at it's source.  Our fear.  Yes, I really believe that!  Good things are drawn into our lives through love and acceptance of ourselves first, and the experiences themselves secondly.  If you are experiencing success, observe the self love and acceptance that is behind your success and also reinforced by it, and try to transfer that love and acceptance to other areas of your life that you would like to change.

Look for the Opportunity To Heal
Our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, memories and history are like a filter through which the creative light of spirit emerges casting flickering images on the walls of our lives.  You make like to think of your soul as the light of a movie projector and our memories, beliefs, thoughts and wounds as the strip of film that gives form to the light.  In the ego stage, this is how we create our life.  Unconsciously generating illusions all around us that are purely a reflection of our inner pain, fear and unresolved wounds.  Spirit is of a higher vibration than the material world.  It is the nature of our true self that still abides deep within your physical being.  However as that  powerfully creative true nature emerges outwardly, it passes through thoughts and feelings and is shaped to reflect those thoughts and feelings as it lowers in densitiy to materialise as the physical realities that we experience every day.  You, my friend, are a creative genius!  Your entire life is sourced from within your creative self and is simply a reflection of the filter that you have unconsciously established around your Life Source, Soul, or Spirit.  So it is not a question of if you are creating, but what you are creating.  Turn your eyes inward and look for the opportunity to  heal.  The clearer the filter, the more aligned your life will become with your Soul Purpose.

If you are committed to or even just curious about the discovery of your Soul Purpose, then these steps are a good place to start.  In my experience these are principles that I have to apply and re-apply regularly and forget too easily. To add to this, our Soul Purpose is constantly shifting and changing.  As soon as you become conscious of a new aspect of yourself - everything changes.  Kind of like going back in time and changing an event in history.  With our new awareness and new consciousness we see life differently, and we begin to create an entirely different experience almost immediately, which in turn has a direct impact on our Soul Purpose.  While our Soul Purpose can be summed up theoretically in various ways such as "to experience the universe and discover who we truly are", there is no substitute to consciously living the journey.

It is likely this article has raised more questions than answers.  If that's the case I'd love to hear from you.  I'm  looking forward to posting further articles so check in from time to time if this has been helpful.

The Dilemma of Money

In a recent newsletter Dr. Joe Vitale challenged me in an attractive advertisement with the following comment: "You are either a) attracting wealth, or b) attracting poverty.  There is no C option." So I clicked on his link to determine whether I was in the A or B category and hopefully prove that there is a C.  Having been raised in a fundamental Christian environment and having spent my life since pursuing all soughts of spiritual values, I was not surprised to discover that I fitted the "A" category.  What I was surprised to discover was how angry I am about money.  As I worked through the survey I felt the anger welling up inside me at the challenges about my attitudes towards "wealth", "success" and "abundance".


My journey has brought me to the belief that the material world is largely an illusion that, as spiritual beings, we dabble in to have the kinds of experiences that we cannot have outside of this world of opposites and contrasts.  So I had to ask myself - if money is only an illusion, why am I so angry about it?  I have spent my life consciously ignoring the idea of money as being a significant issue.  Working in not-for-profit organisations, often for a salary that was far less than the effort, time and experience that I brought to the job. But I was determined to follow my passion and ignore the issue of my wallet.  After completing the survey it became evident that to me, money was not an illusion.  If it were I would not feel so angry.

I have done this in my life before, thinking that if I ignore an issue that I consider unspiritual or detrimental to my spiritual journey that I am "transcending" it.  But the old adage returns to haunt me - "what we resist persists".  My very resistance to the idea of money indicated that money is a problem in my life, not through my over-attachment to it, but through my rejection and adversion to it.  Different sides of the same coin.

As I reflected on my aversion to the mighty dollar, I realised the true source of my pain-generating anger.  Measurement of my personal worth.  Why is my success in the world measured by it's dollar equivalent?  The same may be said for the ideas of abundance and wealth.  I realise now that I have felt "measured" by my ability to produce a dollar for most of my life. The jobs generally aspired to in my circle of society have big incomes attached. Being succesful is reflected by assets, annual salary and overseas holidays.  I have none of these.  Does this mean I'm unsuccesful? Does it mean I am living (and thinking) in scarcity? I am angry with money because it is the measure by which my personal value and worth as a human being appears to be judged.

Here is the illusion!  The real or perceived judgement of others.  The measurement of my value and worth against any scale that exists in my head or anyone elses.  As I step outside this mortal world and raise my consciousness to higher spiritual values, I am convinced that each one of us are born with intrinsic value and worth - not just a human beings but also as devine spiritual beings who exist beyond judgement and fault.  As we incarnate into these human bodies we often forget our true beauty, our true divinity, our true nature and get lost in a world of competition, fear, and the struggle of life and death.  If we can just momentarily shift our consciousness out of the illusion into our spirit-selves we can be reminded that we are devine, that our value and worth is greater than we can imagine and that the universe is a playground of abudance in which there is no lack, no void nor emptiness.  The experience of poverty is as rich and valuable as the experience of financial wealth.  That without judgement I can experience and accept both ends of the spectrum just for what they are - an experience of poverty or an experience of wealth recognising that neither are a reflection of anything more than the experience.

Phew! I think I found my "C" option.