THIS INCARNATION 5

P.94-97

It was Mark Twain who suggested the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.

It is a continuing question of the Mind asking, “What is the purpose of life?” We could deal with that in a general intellectual way or we could look at it as a question we need to ask ourselves individually, “What is the purpose of my life?”

Without spending much time on the general awareness let us just say two things. One is that there is a deep resonance with a statement by Kurt Vonnegut when one of his characters in a novel was presented with the question about the purpose of life. His answer was, “To be the eyes and the ears in the heart and the mind of the Creator of the universe.” That's pretty profound from one of America's leading cynics. We might also explore the idea or the sense that Love, which is the essence of God, is not a static entity. In other words it evolves. In the limited expression of our language we could say it grows, it goes deeper, it continually stretches. So then we might say the purpose of life is to continue and contribute to the continuing expansion of the energy of love and creation.

What we are exploring today is an approach to answering the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” “What is the purpose of my existence Here and Now.” In simple language the book expresses the idea that our soul, our spiritual nature, has come here to class room Earth and has contracted with itself to learn certain lessons. In order to learn the contracted lessons, situations are created where these lessons can be learned. The choice is always here we can learn the lesson or not.

Most often lessons are learned in the midst of what we perceive of as challenges In general the challenge usually presents itself in such a way that we can choose the way we have always chosen, we can choose the way we have identified most with our personality self, or we can choose differently. The difference in our choice is when we follow an old entrenched pattern it is easier to flow with the natural inclinations that we have created within our own comfort zone, or we can choose to go beyond those self-imposed limitations and choose that which is of a higher vibration.

We do not pretend that choosing “the road less travelled” is easy. There is usually a goodly amount of inertia and resistance to overcome.

“Now difficult things happen in a lifetime. We are not pretending they do not. We understand that many things happen that cause great pain. There are losses, there are changes, there are challenges that would boggle the mind. But we will also tell you this: Your soul has creations that it requires you to know to move forward and to develop in your choices to express yourself in your higher vibration. You are being given opportunity to grow in every opportunity that is presented to you in the form of a challenge. But you must say yes to the new way of being and no longer attend to that aspect of the self that says, “Yes, see, it happened again. I will never know love, or peace, or worth.”

When we say natural inclination what we mean is that you have created patterns of thought and behavior and those patterns have become part of your your style, your identification. It is very easy to think that if I do something a certain way often enough then it simply becomes natural for me to respond that particular way. After sometime or some lifetimes I hardly give that response any thought.

Let me share an example from my own understanding. One of my lessons here on planet Earth is to move beyond the sense of victimhood. What I mean by that is to cease giving my power away to people, places, things and situations in my life that somehow trigger within me a response of being overwhelmed, that I can do nothing about this, that is bigger than I am.

I can get into this consciousness of limitation quite often and quite easily. If I am in a state of low vibration to begin with, a spilled cup of coffee or a forgotten grocery list can be enough to push me over the edge. Then what happens is I sink more deeply into my own sense of helplessness and I do not even realize I have a choice. When I wake up enough to realize what I have allowed to happen, it still takes some time to move back into an awareness of my worth, my power and my authority. (all three of those-- worth, power, and authority are ways of expressing being in alignment with my divine self.)

So I realize if this is one of my lessons, but I also create the circumstances that will trigger my old response and then I will be offered the choice whether I respond in the old way of being a victim or the new way the way of Grace claiming my power and my authority and my worthiness over my sense of helplessness.

“There is no one on this plane, like it or not, who can tell you who you are with more authority than you. This does not make you special. It means, finally, you have to know yourself because you are the only one who really lives with you, and what do you want to be? How do you frame your expression and how do you live your life in accordance with that you have been taught? You’ve become so ignorant to your own behaviors—“This is the way it should be because I have always known myself as this,” “I have always chosen in accord with what I have been taught so I don’t think otherwise”—that you miss the opportunity to decide anew. If you have eggs for breakfast six days a week and on the seventh you have toast, you are choosing that. If you don’t want toast, eat something else.”

Now that does not necessarily mean that everything outside of me changes. What it does mean is that I become consciously aware of my ability to choose differently. The different choice could be as simple as reminding myself that “God is my source; I am a Divine being in human form; and that nothing of importance can be taken away from me.”

Is the spilled coffee or the broken blind or the flat tire or the  illness unimportant? On some level yes, but on a human level, they still need to be dealt with. I still might have anger, fear, judgment. All my human emotions do not disappear, they need to be dealt with, and they need to be dealt with lovingly.

One of the more difficult challenges, no matter what form it might be can express itself through, is physical illness. it would be very easy to fall into judgemental questioning of “Why did I create this? Why did someone else create their illness?

It is now we enter into the realm of Mystery, aspects of our spiritual nature and our spiritual life that cannot be completely explained by our intellect or our thinking mind. Spiritual lessons involve learning on multiple levels and usually involve learning and healing of the number of people not just a particular individual.

Although the learning part of our experience is chosen, the form or the particular circumstances that provide for that learning are governed by so many, almost countless forces that it would be difficult if not impossible to explain or predict. This is one of the reasons why the questioning mind that asks “why is this happening to me?” creates an internal conflict which has no resolution. The continuing question that the person must ask is not “why did I choose this” but “what am I supposed to learn from this.”

The example I used was out grand daughter’s illness. Did she create that? In a way, yes—(but I do not know what her lesson is in all of this); I can only be aware of my lesson. Did I have hand creating this, yes. You see how “sticky” it gets? Did I create my grand daughters illness? Well, no, but I did create this life experience for me to learn from—what are my lessons? “You are not your body; you can be courageous and strong even though your body is broken. You can open your heart in love and compassion  even though on human level it is painful to be with one you love who is suffering—and on and on and on.

Margo has a different learning here because she is involved with both her daughter and granddaughter. You can get a sense of how multi-layered this is. And then if you introduce the concept of karma it even becomes more difficult to fathom.

We have spoken of previously that you are free to settle for a superficial answer to that question or to allow yourself to delve deeper into the meaning your soul is chosen.  Let us explore another example of victim consciousness. Suppose another person becomes angry at you and you believe the anger is unjustified . You could find yourself sinking into a self-critifal state of consciousness that keeps reminding you there must be something wrong with me. This is the old pattern of victim consciousness showing itself in this particular form.

“You must understand right now that you are all in agreement with the teachings you require on one level or another. So you bless each other in the opportunity to have certain experiences as your life unfolds. “I will be the mother, I will teach you independence.” “I will be the lover, I will teach you your passion.” “I will be the child, I will be learning from your worth so I may create my own.” You go into these agreements prior to incarnation and you choose them as you go forward, as you recognize each other in spirit, and call each other into being in a practical way in the incarnation you exist in.”

Now in your awareness of having a choice, you might decide that the lesson is not to ever listen to this person because they are always full of negativity and toxicity. I don't need them in my life.

This might seem to be a workable understanding and solution. However, if you are aware enough you will begin to realize that eventually you will probably make a similar decision about most people in your life. You will find instead of healing or learning that you are simply continuing to justify your own behavior. You might find yourself at a higher vibration because you are not caught up in some of your own self-centered negativity, but you will also probably discover the limited learning you have chosen to hold has simply scratched the surface.

If you choose to go deeper and deeper, you would become faced with an inner truth that challenges you to believe in and to act upon this belief’’ “That nothing of importance can be taken away from me,” and we would add, in this situation, no matter what another person's anger or criticism may bring to me.

This is significant because it demonstrates that one of the signs of truly being in touch with the lesson or lessons you need to learn is that with the learning, you literally become free. You become free of an old pattern that might have existed for many lifetimes, and once you make that choice in Freedom and in truth, it becomes easier to make similar choices more and more often.

So your soul has been challenged by this chosen lesson and it has stretched and grown through the experience.

Again, we are drawn back to asking ourselves the basic question, “What is my lesson(s) in all of this?’ and knowing yah the answer(s) will be given to us as the mystery unfolds.

An essential awareness is to know that nothing is being done to us. The life circumstances we find ourselves in are the teachers for the lessons we have already chosen.