At the core, the purpose of our life is to learn and grow. When life presents us with an opportunity to learn, we need to stick with it even if it is difficult or emotionally painful. We often choose a different path to avoid pain or change. However, if we leave the situation before solving the challenge within ourselves, we will not learn what we need to get to our next level of understanding.
Life also has another purpose for us. That purpose comes through understanding and compassion. It is the path to unconditional love. The more we can experience the opportunity to love (even for a short time), the more we can practice compassion for others. When we begin let go of self and become truly present in life, we can begin to experience unconditional love.
While these core life purposes are central to our existence, there is a path and journey for our life. We don’t necessarily go straight from childhood to full enlightenment and elevated consciousness. There is a journey of experiences and choices involved. Life wants us to get there as quickly as possible, but we typically get in the way of ourselves.
Life is Here for You
We often don’t see it, but life is always so patient with our feeble attempt to control our circumstances. Life quietly continues to care for us, like a loving parent does for their child. It does whatever it can to help guide us and to protect us. What an amazing gift to be loved so much. Its just so hard for us to see truth through the veil of our mental fog and wrong perceptions.
We constantly try to avoid and escape our challenging circumstances. But life always works to get us back to our true purpose. Life will continue to present us with the same learning opportunity until we overcome it.
This pattern will continue over and over until we address the growth we need within ourselves. The key words here are “within ourselves”. Life is a gracious teacher, creating opportunity after opportunity for us to learn the lesson.
Instead of accepting our challenges, we instinctively try to avoid or control our circumstance. We try to escape the focus pointing back to the core issues within ourselves. As a natural defense mechanism, we place blame on things external to us. Through the lies of our fragile ego, our mind convinces us that the issue is someone else’s fault.
Avoiding the Real Issue
We don’t accept that our suffering and pain is actually coming from within ourselves. Admitting that an issue is because of something lingering inside of us is very difficult for our ego to bear. We naturally will continue to place blame and seek happiness in things outside of ourselves.
If we look at this in context of a relationship, we are even willing to end our relationship before we work through what we needed to learn. Look at the divorce rates in the world today. A clear demonstration that life’s values and lessons are less important in our modern culture.
We choose to avoid the exact opportunity that was constructed for us by life. We build a story we want to believe to make it easier for us to accept our decisions. But this is just a way for us to avoid the “real issue” within ourselves.
Amazingly, life doesn’t give up on us. If we are open enough and begin to inventory the challenges we have experienced in our life, we can begin to see patterns. This is a big step in your awakening.
Powerful Self-defense Mechanisms
Our defense mechanisms are so powerful that we often do not see the patterns of our suffering. Our perceptions are skewed to keep us from seeing that our situations are created for us. As an opportunity to learn and overcome. Sometimes we even come to this realization, but still end up trying to escape from situations to avoid pain or change.
We will even subconsciously sabotage, or realign our thinking so we can avoid having to face the “real” situation within ourselves. As humans, we fear the sensation of emotional pain, so we avoid it at all costs. We are even willing to lie to ourselves and prefer to remain in denial.
I’m not trying to sound harsh or conflict with your view of reality. I really just want you to understand that the thoughts and feelings we have often cannot always be trusted. Our minds will play tricks on us to conserve energy or to take the easy way out. We are hard-wired this way to protect us. To ensure our survival.
What we can do is be open, we can become more present. We can observe our thoughts and feelings. This connected state of awareness is the path to life’s purpose. This includes:
- Learning and growth
- Acceptance
- Selflessness and compassion
- Connectedness
Life Does Not Give Up
Life is so amazing; it does not give up on us. It will continue to present us the same opportunity over and over to learn and grow in the areas we need. Not as some cruel torture, but as a way to move beyond it. To elevate our awareness.
The answer lies on the journey of ourselves. We should seek to understand ourselves first. We need to understand, love and accept ourselves before we are able to love and accept someone else. This is the great mirror of life. We are beings of energy. We must learn how this energy works.
Sadly, society teaches to do the opposite of what we really need. Its no wonder there is so much discrimination and anger in the world today. We neglect the two most important relationships we have:
- The relationship with ourselves
- Our relationship and connection with life
To seek the source of our suffering or unhappiness, we should try to calm our minds. Through mindful breathing the storm of our mind can be quieted. With continued practice, deep insight will show us the things holding us back from understanding, compassion and love.
Begin With Self
In our modern society, we tend to seek out relationships with others before we have had a chance to first learn how to love ourselves. We think that by having someone it will help make us happy. The desire to be in a relationship can be very strong. We crave acceptance and many people need someone to take care of. Someone to laugh and enjoy life with.
We think that this other person will make us happy. This is a wrong perception and often the opposite is true. The person becomes the obstacle to our happiness. This is part of the paradox of life. Cravings and desires cannot be satisfied. It is their nature. Happiness can only come from within, not from external situations.
Happiness only comes from accepting the present moment, whatever the circumstance. The first step is to learn to be present for ourselves. Without judgement, control or expectation.
Our True Purpose
Once we have understand and connection with life, the path to our purpose will become much clearer. Our life’s purpose can be quite simple. Perhaps its one of these:
- To learn and grow
- To eliminate fear-based thinking
- To learn to love unconditionally
- To connect with life
We often mistake our true purpose with something that involves work or payment for our services. It is true that your true purpose in life can be aligned with your gifts. Each of us is given a set of natural capabilities that brings value to those around them.
We often get so caught up in society’s view of us that we become something we are not. Driven by career or success. Only when we begin to get our life in order and begin to align our inner and outer worlds will we begin to understand our true purpose.
Life is not supposed to be complicated. It is actually very simple. We need to return to simple values and spend our time cautiously on things that make the world a better place. You probably have some gifts in this space, but have forgotten about or neglected them.
Learn to let go and put life back in control. Deepen your connection with life. Learn how life communicates with you and life will reveal your purpose.
The Mirror of Self
Until we learn to love ourselves and to be present, we will not be able to truly love, communicate and be present for someone else. Ask life to give you the strength to face this truth without fear. Life is a mirror of what we feel about ourselves.
Commit to working on yourself more. Work on learning about how life really works and to be open to it. Its never too late to seek greater understanding. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
I like to begin each morning by reciting this prayer to life:
Thank you for this amazing day! Please give me the strength today to be open and to learn and to grow. May I be present in the moment without judgement. Please help me understand and be more compassionate of others that I might become more loving.
Wishing you peace and love,
Until next time…
—
Greg
