Category Archives: life purpose

Aug16

the language of the heart

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Shortly after moving from the suburbs of Detroit to Traverse City back in the 1980’s, I became friends with a man named Prof Mondol. Prof wrote a novel titled Operation Tibet. It’s based on his service as a fighter pilot in WWII, having served with the Royal Indian Air Force. Published in 1979, I still have the copy he signed and gifted me. He was such a wise man. I regarded him as an unofficial spiritual teacher of sorts and held him in the utmost respect.

Due to fly somewhere on business, I offered to drive him to Detroit Metro Airport one weekend. It was an opportunity to talk for hours, and I could also take my young son to visit his father in Midland along the way. That trip would prove quite enlightening on several levels, although not in any way I could have expected.

After introducing Prof while dropping my son off, my former husband asked if he could speak to me privately for a minute. We walked down his long driveway off M20 just west of Midland. He was very direct with this statement that if I ever dared to expose his son to a black person again (Prof was a native of India), he would see to it that I never saw my son again. Specifically he explained in detail how he would have drugs planted in my car and ensure that I spent my life in prison. “Are we clear on this? Do you understand me?!” he bellowed in a whisper. Ha! As if I could be anything but clear about who I had divorced years prior. While also perfectly clear about being responsible for who I had married…and why he felt so familiar. Ass-holes are familiar to me.

I did not know that day that Prof was dying of cancer, and that trip would be the last time I would spend with him. I did not know what a gift it was. I still remember our conversation, and I have just thought of it again. Triggered recently, of course, by a family member reminding me how different we are; how I have always been, and will always be, an outsider in my family of origin. Because Prof asked me a question that day that would subconsciously affect my entire adult life: “do you believe that God created the universe – or is creating the universe?”

“Creating,” I replied without hesitation. It was an intuitive response. Immediate. From the depths of my being.

For reasons I may never comprehend, road trips seem to provide some precious insights for me. Don’t know what it is about setting a block of time aside and getting away from the house; maybe it’s the open highway…maybe it’s just making myself available to drive for people I love. My natural tendency is to stay home. I really don’t like to leave the house, and often don’t for long periods of time. To say home is sanctuary for me is a gross understatement. Home is renewal; home is life.

Sitting still does not even remotely mean I am not experiencing constant change. I guess I am living an internal life. Nature visits me at my door. The world quite literally revolves around me; I remain still at the center. You might be surprised to know that no two days are ever the same from my chair here in the corner.

But returning home recently I found myself on a detour. Road construction in Michigan happens in summer, when the weather allows. I would be passing so near to my family cemetery that it seemed disrespectful not to stop. And so I did, for the first time in years. It made me feel acutely sad. The grave sites of my parents and brother, among those of multiple generations of ancestors, were overgrown. Rocks were strewn willy-nilly. My parents graves had a headstone; my brothers did not. Later that week I was talking to my sister and mentioned this. She is the only member of my family I have much contact with at all, and then it is infrequent. We live 10 hours drive apart.

A couple of days later she asked if I would be willing to place grave markers if she were to purchase them. I agreed. She researched online and asked if she could ship them directly to me. I agreed. Within another day or so I was informed that the two grave markers had been ordered and were being shipped to her. And that she had enlisted her son, my nephew, to drive up with the markers and meet with the township for placement. He would be overseeing the project and I would be notified when it was done.

It isn’t that I mind being dismissed. Certainly not in this instance. It did startle me for a moment. And reminded me that it has always been this way in my family. I might be temporarily enlisted to participate. But then they will think better of it. As in, better not trust this to Susan. Better not let Susan make a decision. Better to handle it without Susan and then inform her. It’s been this way as long as I can remember. I am a member of the family…but just barely. They scoot over at the last minute and give me a seat on the bench. I’m an adjunct member. By default. By default that we had the same two parents, that is. But I am certainly not an equal.

And in this specific instance, the truth is that I don’t much understand or value the physical need to visit the remains of dead loved ones. They aren’t there. Although it has been documented that all wild animals in nature pause when passing over ground with remains below. It is known that elephants will spend some time stopping on their migrations pausing over long buried remains far under the ground. And they will spend almost twice as long IF those remains are of their own herd.

Which brings me full circle to what this essay is about (finally, eh?) How do the elephants know? What is the built in telepathic sense that all life on earth seems to possess? Why don’t humans understand, acknowledge and value it? What is this telepathy inherent in nature?

For lack of a better word, some would call it psychic. We are psychic beings. Acknowledged or not, we are all living a psychic life. Everything is psychic. God is psychic. You learned “all-knowing.” Same thing: interconnected.

So how am I depressed? Why am I so debilitated by grief? What is death? How can I reconcile the injustice of the world I live in? What is this perceived divide in reality?

We humans seem to have made such a clusterfuck of this ark we were entrusted with. We don’t even know we were placed here. We are in a panic that we will miss our purpose. We’ve been allocated to adjunct caretakers. Our seat on the bench is dwindling. Our time for being trusted has come and gone, and we don’t even know what is happening here.

But I do understand it. My cells get it. My psychic field, my spirit, knows. We are all part of the same God. We are infinitely intelligent. God isn’t done. The universe wasn’t created. It is becoming. We are becoming.

May8

how to find your life’s purpose

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Finally, once and for all, I am going to tell you what the purpose of your life is. In some way I feel uniquely qualified. Not because I am old. Not because I am psychic, although I am. And not because I am a tarot card reader, although I practice that also. If you’ve been here long, you know I have been reading the tarot since given a deck in high school…so, going on 60 years. If they’ve taught me anything, it’s how to listen.

Tarot card readers, and psychics, by the way, are simply unqualified counselors. I used to shy away from the younger ones for this reason, wondering how much life experience they could bring to the conversation. I don’t do that anymore. Young people, if paying attention, are sometimes less influenced by the world around them and more present. Young people like Rob Bell, Kyle Cease, Steven Bright, just to name a few readily available to you on social media.

When you make yourself available to new acquaintances under any guise of offering wisdom (as if…) you will find that many people come searching to know their purpose. And so I have been a curious student of this question for decades. And I actually do think i might have some wisdom to offer.

I can absolutely tell you your purpose, but first I must tell you what it is not. Then I will reveal what it is. And then, thirdly, I need to tell you something you need to know that is even more important than your purpose. There is one more important thing.

Firstly, your purpose is not a job. You think you know that. But when you start seeking to know why you are here, you will undoubtedly try to condense your life’s purpose into actionable knowledge – into something to do. It’s the human way, and hence the third point of this soliloquy. So it is important to know the difference between purpose and right livelihood.

Right livelihood is a purposeful way to work, to earn a living, to support yourself. It’s right because it fits you. Like a glove. But there is not one glove for every purpose. You don’t shovel snow in the same gloves you garden in. And so there is never A singular right livelihood for each of us, or for all the stages of life. Right livelihood changes and grows with you.

There are things you love to do and are naturally adept at. Those are passions, and talents. Some are genetic. Some are environmental. All are interesting and fulfilling, even if they do require study and practice. Often those will lead you to right livelihood, to a vocation that is satisfying and contributing. But these are not your purpose.

You – yes, you are a spy. You are a spy for God. For consciousness. If you were born human your purpose is to observe life on the planet earth and report your findings. Specifically to the Akashic Record Department, but simply say to consciousness. Feel free to share generously what you observe. We will all take what we can use. Your purpose is to live in service to the life on the planet, to the living planet itself. So that we may all continue to evolve life here. And developing your skills of observation takes tremendous practice. It will consume your entire life. And it will not come easy.

Here is the third – and most important – thing you need to know: you have been sold a bill of goods about purpose. It’s a cult. You were groomed and inducted before you knew what was going on. You were subconsciously and intentionally indoctrinated into a cultural belief system that convinced you that you had better not miss your purpose. You better find that purpose or you might waste your life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Quite literally, that program was designed to keep you from the truth. It was designed to keep you in slavery. To hustle to survive. You make other people a lot of money that way.

As Gloria Steinem so wisely said, “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” She understood the assignment.

So…how, exactly do we train to be a spy for God? We pay attention. And we don’t really have much precedence for that, so we must first train ourselves to withdraw our attention from distraction. That means developing a constant daily routine of saying yes and no as consciously as we can. Our days are packed full of choices and decisions. We learn to say no to some, yes to others. We eventually learn to pay attention to our gut instincts. To our intuition. Intuition: the voice of God inside of us. We have to learn to pay attention to our bodies, our internal barometer.

I can use my recent bear encounter as a metaphor. “They” say never to run from a bear. You will not outrun it. You are instructed to stand tall, arms stretched upward and make noise. If it’s a black bear, anyway. I did not do this. I bolted. Of course, I was only several feet from my front door (up a flight of stairs). I did not think. What is thought?! I had no thoughts. I was all reaction. I took those stairs two at a time. I was in the house behind a dead-bolted steel door before it occurred to me that A) I might want to react differently, and B) I took those stairs two at a time! I normally drag my painful creaking knee up one stair at a time ever-so slowly, moaning the entire climb. Would I react differently on a trail through the woods with nowhere to hide? M a y b e…

Another “they” says it is good practice to allow for a little space in your thoughts before reacting. You know…learn to respond rather than react. Maybe next lifetime. Maybe if I’m face to face with a bully. Nah – who am I kidding?! Haaahhahahaaa……