Self Employment – Finding Meaning and Purpose through Work
Have you ever considered your work as being a primary way to find meaning and purpose in life? Work is something that many of us are engaged in on an everyday basis. One of the key ways of personal spiritual development is to live, and love, the work that you do and be fully engaged in the work that creation brought you into this world of form to uniquely express. The word “work” is more than simply doing a job.
It is the creative way in which you allow the life force to move and express through you. It is more than making a living and it is certainly does not have the addictive quality of living to work. When you are engaged in expressing work that has meaning then work and life do not fall into separate categories. When you are engaged with work that is filled with meaning and purpose you are not waiting for the weekend to arrive when you feel you get time to express who you are.
Meaning and Purpose and Self Employment
The way of self-employment is a fast track way of personal and spiritual development, and if you live it rightly, then it will take you beyond the development of self into the living wonder tale you are here to be. When you move through the stages of personal and spiritual development that I refer to as the path of the chakras, then you very quickly learn to integrate many skills and qualities within yourself. One key reason why people take the challenge of self-employment is freedom. They have freedom to express who they are and why they are. If you enter the wild life of self-employment only for the sake of making a lot of money you are focused on the means and not the essence.
What is it that is calling to you from the deep heart’s core to find meaning and purpose inwhat you are here to do? To begin to answer this question is really the first step on what is called the Hero’s Journey. This is the step on the Hero’s Journey that is referred to as the Call. It is the voice of the unconscious asking you to make conscious what is to be made whole within you. It is the still small voice within that asks you to merge the opposites within you that you then gift to the world. It is this gift to the world that you market to your community in the widest sense of that word. There is no sense here of making a killing. There is no sense here of exploiting and opportunity.
There is the opening up to the creative within you whose sole purpose is expansion to a point where the work that you do is the work that Love does through you for the highest good off all.
When you learn to come into alignment with this universal creative process that arises from the stillness that speaks then you find that you love to express how that process moves through you. You give of your life force in the unique way it designed you to give. This becomes an energetic flow where you live life from being and not simply from doing. Of course you do have to do. You need to be engaged with time and space and form. The key to aligning your work that gives meaning and purpose and abundance is in how you allow this movement to arise from within you and move through you. When you work from a first chakra motivation, which is the motivation of fear and lack, you work from a deep sense of separateness. Your world view is about trying to make life fit into a box called me, my and mine. Essentially, you view the world as finite and the best that you can do is to get as much as you can while you can.
This is the prominent world view at present. It is the consumer society gone mad. It is a view that is based on fear. It leads to moral and spiritual bankruptcy. In Ireland at the time of writing this article, it could even mean national bankruptcy. This is also the case in other parts of Europe. The USA is more indebted than at anytime in her history to the point that for the first time in recent history her triple A financial rating has been down graded. When you are primarily focused on working in order to alleviate fear – fear of failure, of not making ends meet - you attract the very energy that you are trying to avoid. We see this happening more and more as the media promotes fear for its own interest. Fear allows vested interests to enact laws that allow for more control and less freedom.
To live a wild and precious life you need to be free. Primarily, you need to be free to expand into infinity (seventh chakra). The forces that keep you in bondage are those energies that you lock away in your personal Pandora’s box (second chakra). When these energies are not integrated into the personality (which is a third chakra process) then the unconscious blocks your freedom to express the wild creative and precious energy of your creative self. The result is that you mistrust the creative energy available to you to express into form and allow you to give and receive in ever more expansive ways.
Now there is living to give instead of to get. As you concentrate on the giving, you discover that just as you cannot receive without giving, so neither can you give without receiving – even the most wonderful things like health and happiness and inner peace. There is a feeling of endless energy, it just never runs out, it seems to be as endless as air. You seem to be plugged in to the source of universal energy. – Peace Pilgrim
I hope you can begin to see now why this path to finding meaning and purpose through self employment has the name “The Hero’s journey.” Anyone who takes the step into this journey – and, to be frank, we are all moving on this journey in unique ways – is a hero. To move from the known into the unknown, no matter how uncomfortable that feels, takes courage. It takes courage to own the work and the worth that you are here to give to your community. This is work that invites communion with the Love force that created you. This is the infinite force that created you to be the expression of Love in form – giving and receiving – at higher and higher levels of beauty and power for the greater good of all.
No amount of consumer society trinkets will compensate for the loss of this process. In some traditions the loss of this connection to the universal creative process is called loss of soul. It leads to a loss of meaning purpose and the pursuit of ever more emptiness. We see this experience happening as the Western world sinks deeper into the possibility of bankrupcy. This is a distortion of the unending creative expression we are here to live – to give and to receive in return. This alignment with this universal creative process is true prosperity.
Let the Beauty you Are be the Work that you Do – Rumi
This is the real work. When you align with it then the wild and precious life is the life of work that gives you life meaning and purpose as well as access to true abundance. Making a living is love’s purpose and the only work worth doing. This is because it arises out of the uniqueness of the human endeaver which is first to be and then to do. You need freedom to do this. By committing to being employed in your own right and for the service of Love in action, you are free to do and be as Creation intended for you.
Whatever way you choose to do your work and at higher levels of personal and spiritual development, allow the work to be done through you ensure that you align yourself with true empowerment. You are the power of one but you are also aligned with the One who knows how to bless this world in working through you. In the book A Course in Miracles we are told that there are only really two choices. This is the choice between fear and Love. I leave you with an inspiring invitation to finding meaning and purpose in allowing your work to fully be expressed through you.
The women who gives such an inspiring talk in this video says that nothing in life happens without a cost. This might be true but it is also true that nothing of meaning and purpose happens without a cause. Be the cause you are here to become and allow this cause to be expressed as the highest good that you have been created to gift the world. Let the very cause of your very being be aligned with your core values and trust the creative process to reveal to you how that work you are here to be is to be expressed through you. This will give to you the blessing of finding meaning and purpose in work.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
spirituality at work
STAGES OF PERSONAL GROWTH – This article describes four levels or stages of Personal Growth — social accomplishment, psychological growth, spiritual progress and transformation.
THE HERO’S JOURNEY – Video that outlines the personal and spiritual development called the Hero’s Journey
INFINITE BEING – Spiritual metaphysics articles to help spiritual seekers find inspiration, love and creativity through heart-powered consciousness.
Desiderata – A List of Desires for Meaning and Purpose (A Series)
In this post I invite you to find meaning and purpose from a poem called Desiderata. The title Desiderata means ‘a list of desires.’ This opening post will become a series of blog posts centred around this piece of inspirational poetry called Desiderata written by Max Erhmann . If you want to come back to this series of posts related to the inspirational poetry of Desiderata then simply press CTL + D and save it to your bookmarks. I will enfold for you the deeper meaning and possiblility for finding meaning and purpose by following your true heart’s desire – which is your true Desiderata.
Here is the poem:
Continue reading
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labours and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
This example of inspirational poetry begins with the active principle. It invites you to take action to
go placidly amidst the noise and the haste.
This is a very powerful opening line of inspirational poetry from this poem Desiderata. It can be taken to include the dynamic of the masculine (which in this invitation to go) and the feminine (which in this Desiderata poem is referred to as placidly) and transcend the opposites within that are represented by the noise and the haste of everyday living. This is also the invitation to the transcendence of the noise and haste within, key to finding meaning and purpose as well as deep inner peace. There is a difference between always on the go and ‘go placidly.’ The always on the go leads to burn out while the ‘go placidly’ is the movement of the active principle – the masculine principle to the feminine principle that at its deepest level is the movement of Love in Action.
In Desiderata this ‘go placidly’ is the movement from what this writer and storyteller refers to as the Still Point Centre. The still point centre is that place within you that gives you that sense of deep inner peace. This deep inner peace is surely one of our personal list of desires – a personal desiderata. In order to find this deep inner peace, this still point centre out of which speaks the wisdom of knowing your true heart’s desire, you paradoxically need to enter the noise and haste in a very conscious way! The primary way of doing this is some form of mindfulness practice or prayer or some other form of activity during which you can lose your sense of time and separation.
This going placidly (and mindfully) into the noise and haste could be taken literally. Poets, however, do not write on a purely literal level just as the Bible and other religious scripture teaching are not to be taken on a literal level. This
go placidly amidst the noise and the haste
is really an invitation to turn inward and follow the desiderata – the list of desires of the heart. The way this is done is through the recognised disciplines of mindfulness, prayer, contemplation or meditation. All of these are what this writer and storyteller calls ‘sacred technologies’ for finding deep inner peace and connecting to your true inner desire and your true desiderata. These practices of mindfulness, prayer, contemplation and meditation are the technologies of timelessness. They allow you to be on the go without being at risk of burn out. They have a magical quality in that they expand time in a way that the logical mind cannot comprehend. These sacred technologies allow you to find your true heart’s desire, your true desiderata.
May Prinsep (Prayer) – George Frederic Watts
This desiderata is not an endless list of desires that are promoted by the culture of never quite enough that is the noise and haste of our everyday lives. The word placidly relates to the power of the feminine. This is a central power for living the One wild and precious life. It is a paradoxical power. It is the deep interior silence out of which the desire of the heart that the desiderata arises. It is placid in the sense that it is allowing. It is the allowing of your heart’s desire- your personal and unique desiderata – to arise and go now into its full expression. The masculine dynamic as represented by the word ‘go’ and it serves this placidity. The full movement of this placidity become love in action. This is the way to move in the world of noise and haste.
This movement benefits the both the mover and those who come within the orbit of the mover. They become attracted to the stillness that has real power to move and create rather than simply produce and always be on the go in order to achieve some list of goals or desires which are a means to an end that become addictive and without end and, even tragically, have no real meaning or purpose except for the limited purpose of self-service. This powerful poem Desiderata gives you the invitation to your true list of desires. These are desires arising from the deep heart’s core and arising from the still point centre. Be practical! Learn to go placidly amidst the noise and haste in the power of your inner still point centre. Be practice and enter the stillness that speaks the knowing of your hearts desires. Develop the practical capacity for going placidly into your deep interiority and in this way you come to the gift giving tree that offers the fruit of your true desire. Give yourself wholeheartedly to this world of form and bless the world with the deep desires of your heart.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
desiderata
PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION – Spiritual evolution is about growth of being, an ever brightening of the godspark that is your consciousness. Knowledge is the crucial cornerstone of this process, but a cornerstone alone provides no shelter. Unaccompa
SOUNDS TRUE – Tools and teachings to spark your inner evolution. Download FREE spiritual development podcasts from inspirational teachers
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE – SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.
Spiritual Words of Wisdom – Where is your Heart’s Treasure?
The Light of the World by Holman Hunt
In this Personal Development and beyond blog I like to share spiritual words of wisdom from all kinds of sources that have inspired me. I have over a long period of time been in recovery from my Christian upbringing in Northern Ireland. I have down the years resisted any spiritual words of wisdom from the Bible because of associated shame and guilt. When I was graced a certain revelation early in my 20’s I was a practicing Buddhist and I might have become a monk except that I met a woman who took me places that religious texts could not reach. The strange thing for me was that all the symbols within that revelatory experience were pertinent, not to the teachings of Buddhism, but to the teachings of the Christ. I didn’t want them to be. I wanted them to be Buddhist. However, over the years I have sought to reconcile the teaching that were central to my upbringing. Even though I resisted them I found myself being inspired by the teacher called Jesus of Nazareth. I still find his teachings inspiring.
In this personal development and beyond blog I also like to share personal experiences that have impacted my life in one way or another. These are often experiences that have challenged me to grow and which I have resisted because of feelings of shame and denial. Sometimes I choose, however, to make a change because of circumstances that I feel need to be changed. This blog post shares with you an experience I had which, in part, influenced my return to my homeland in Ireland. One of the reasons I returned from England to my homeland of Ireland was because of my sister Mary’s death. Related to her death was her funeral service. Related to the funeral service was the teachings invited by several self-established religious teachers who quoted some spiritual words of wisdom from the Bible with what seemed to be one intention. This was to scare the assembled mourners into accepting Jesus Christ as their only Saviour and thus avoid the fires of hell. Speaking to friends and family afterward I found that I was not the only one who was appalled. It is now referred to in the family as “that awful funeral.”
I personally feel the way in which the spiritual words of wisdom from the Bible are being promoted are, for the most part, doing dishonour to the Teacher of Love who was the Christ and the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. I am not a Christian in the sense that I attend any recognised denominational church. I am not one who is at the stage of spiritual development that is termed Formal/Institutional One doesn’t have to be a Christian in order to recognise spiritual words of wisdom from the bible and, in fact, the willingness to identify with a specific label very often ties you to the sign post. That label allows you to cling to the words rather than propel you into take the lonely journey invited by the life of the one called the Christ. Over identification with the words of any religious teaching often leads to fundamentalism which as we see can lead to the very opposite of what the teaching is intended to invite you to live and to be.
Let me say at the outset that I do not read the Bible. Neither do I read any other religious texts. As readers of this Personal Development and beyond blog will be aware, my inspiration for this writing comes in large part from mystical poetry. This is mystical poetry from all traditions and none. I have met people who can recite the Bible chapter and verse. I met them throughout my young life living in Northern Ireland. I have met those who quote their religious texts but when I ask them to tell me what they know of these teachings they are confused by the question. What they know is what they ‘know about.’ ‘Knowing About’ something is not insight, nor is it integration of the text with the personal experience that the text invites them into and the experience from which the text was originally written. I have never been to a Bible Study class. Thus I am not an expert in the Bible and neither do I claim to be or would wish to be.
However, I do claim to be and wish to be, a lover of wisdom. There is much spiritual wisdom to be had from the teaching of one of the worlds greatest wisdom teachers and one of the world’s greatest Lovers. I also want to share this wisdom as a kind of counterbalance to the nonsense spread by those who invite the teachings of Christ through emotional manipulation of guilt and fear. This says more about them than the people they are trying to ‘convert.’ I confess that this sort of manipulation makes me angry. Here are some great words of wisdom from the Bible. It is one of the great spiritual teachings of the world.
Where your heart is there shall your treasure be also.
This finding of the heart is a key personal development and beyond teaching. This is life coaching at its best and spiritual life coaching at its best. If you were to make this line the foundation of your life’s direction, I honestly cannot see how you could fail to live the wild and precious life you are intended to live. However, most people turn this spiritual wisdom statement around and hope that it works for them and the culture that we live in the west certainly promotes as its focus…
Where the treasure is let your heart be also.
1. Where Is Your Heart
The heart is an invisible compass. The energetic that pulls that compass is the energy of Love. When your heart is not in something then you feel less enthusiastic and less motivated. There is a huge volume of material available on the issue of procrastination and how to overcome it. The view of this Irish writer and storyteller is that procrastination is often a sign that your heart isn’t in it and that your head is intent on averting the heart’s promptings. Procrastination means something belongs to tomorrow. The heart has its focus on the present and the invitation to presence.
2. Your Heart is Your Expert
We spend so much time in our heads that we have no sense of the way in which the heart guides us. We often know what we don’t want to do and we ignore our inner guidance system and seek advice from so-called experts. It is good to seek advice. In certain areas of your life there are people who are dedicated to serving you in that way. If you wish to build a house then it is best to ask an architect to make a plan and engage a builder. However, when you have issues about your sense of life’s direction it is best to go inward and trust the promptings of your body. If you decide to use a life coach or a spiritual director make sure they focus you on trusting your inner guidance system and not their personal agenda. A life coach can help you focus but they cannot, and should not, tell you what you ought to do. Your heart is your true focus and guide. Wherever that points, begin to trust its promptings.
3. Where Your Heart Points Can Sometimes Be Scary
The heart is expansive. The ego likes to play safe. It is the heart that leads you into what, in this personal development blog that I call the beyond. The heart is the bridge between the the personal and the higher aspects of yourself that connect you to the Universal or what I sometimes refer to as the impersonal. The ego likes to live within in its established comfort zone. It like things that are familiar. The heart loves expansiveness. It is a kind of energy that wishes to go where no man or woman has ever gone before. It loves creation and is the movement of Love into higher and higher forms. This feels scary because it takes you into the unknown but it is this moment that keeps you feeling alive and authentic. Thus the heart invites you into change and we all know that change is scary for most of us, including this writer and storyteller.
4. Your Heart Knows While Your Head Supposes
There is what is called cerebral knowledge. This is knowledge of the head. This is the world of facts. It is the world of information. It is the world of ‘knowing about.’ You might, for example, be a teacher of Bible Study and you may have read the spiritual statement that is the foundation of all wisdom teaching that tells you
God is Love.
However, there is a vast difference in knowing that statement intellectually and knowing it as experienced in your heart. The heart knows what the head can often only suppose. When I listen to people who claim authority in certain matters of religious teaching their focus on the above statement tends to imply that
God is Loving.
The statement that God is Loving is not the direct knowing that ‘God is Love’ To say that God is loving suggests by its very nature that there is subject and object. That is to say that there is an experience of duality. God is Love does not have this subject/object duality and neither does the experience. To say that ‘God is Loving’ is more a psychological projection of what the head wishes God to be.
5. How To Make Friends With Your Heart
Again, as ever, in this Personal Development and Beyond blog we come back to first steps. The first step, as well as the continuing steps, are those of trust and having faith in the process. Your becoming is a movement. Whether or not you know it this is a Universal movement. It is the movement of the energy of Love creating forms to express that love in unique and specific ways. One specific and unique way that this Universal energy chose to express through is the form that you identify as you. Your head didn’t create you. Neither did your mother or father create you, although they certainly had a hand in it. What created you, and is still creating you in each and every moment, is the movement of the Universal birthless and deathless energy of Love that is God or whatever name you care to identify this never ending forever becoming process.
6. Alignment with the Process of Love
The guidance system that aligns you with this infinite treasure house of Love is your heart. It is not your head although you need not completely ignore it. If you feel lost it is because you have ignored the promptings of your heart. This is usually because you have been hurt in some way and you armour your body and its responses in order to negate the pain. This closing of the heart and armouring the body in a psycho/physical way is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. No pain gets in and no joy is allowed to flow out.
7. Finding the Boon Tree
The boon tree is the story of a magical tree. It is a symbol of your true heart’s desire, not the desires that are perpetrated by the media or advertising. The access to this boon tree is your true inheritance but this access is not granted to those who are unwilling to do the world of unifying those aspects of themselves that are unloved and that are left hidden in the dark of the unconscious. This is why the Way of the heart as taught by the Master Jesus tends to be given lip service. It is simply the mouthing of phrases from spiritual wisdom texts that are claimed as cerebral knowledge but have not been processed through the fire of sacred unity. It is out of the the ashes of that fiery energy that the spiritual wisdom of the heart arises.
8. What Do You Treasure?
If you answer this question from the dictates of your culture and the media promptings of that culture that fills you full of desires that are unending and never slaked, then you are moving from the corruption of the wisdom teaching that invites you to live
Where your treasure is there let your heart be also.
The spiritual journey to the treasure of the heart is an inner journey of trust and faith in the unknown. You are the treasure that your heart seeks because the truth of who you are is priceless. This is the experience of knowing that there is nothing you need or want other than to share the beauty and grace of who you are from an infinite source that is Love, never beginning or ending and forever becoming.
The question then becomes:
9 Where is Your Focus?
Is your daily focus on the cultural norm of never quite enough? Or is your daily focus on the practice of inner knowing? This doesn’t mean you do not act in the world to provide for your material needs but it does mean that your focus becomes one of expansion and not necessarily a focus on playing safe. My teacher Rumi invites:
Risk all for Love.
This is what your heart invites and your ego resists. This is essentially the choice that “A Course in Miracles” invites. It is the choice between Love and Fear. Your ego fears that your heart will be broken. This is the risk. The greater risk, however, is for the heart to be closed. The writer of Original Blessing, theologian Matthew Fox says:
Ultimately there is no protection for the heart. There are boundaries but ultimately no protection.
There is within you a treasure so vast that nothing compares to you. These spiritual words of wisdom from the Bible point the way toward such treasure. There is, however, a paradox in finding this treasure. If you do not give it away you lose it. When you give it away there is more to give away. The result of giving it away is joy. This is the movement of Creation. It is God is Love moving within form. This movement is your true treasure and it is never lost. I invite you take these spiritual words of wisdom from the bible and follow your heart and find the treasure that allows you to know that you are priceless because you are not apart from this experience called God is Love.
OTHER GREAT CONTENT
Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.
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MIND PERK – More personal and spiritual development articels from leaders in the field of spiritual development and spiritual growth
PHILOSOPHERS NOTES – The ultimate personal growth tool. Giving you more wisdom in less time. The essential teachings of 100 optimal living books condensed into convenient 6-page PDFs and 20-minute MP3s.
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION – The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in “inner work” through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
Finding the Stolen Child Within – A Search for Meaning
The stolen child in the poem by W. B. Yeats can be viewed as an invitation to search for meaning in life. The stolen child, who appears in Irish fairytales such as A Brew of Eggshells is about young child who is stolen and replaced by the one they call the changeling. The changeling tends to be wooden and is does not speak. We, in our own way are changelings. What brings the changeling alive and releases the ability to speak is the discovery of the new and witnesses something that has not happened before. This story of the changeling and the Stolen child is the story of rediscovery of who we truly are and within that discovery finding our life’s meaning and purpose. The central invitation from the poem by W. B. Yeats called The Stolen child is this:-
Come away, O’ human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Terri Windling the folktale website Endicott Studio writes about the Stolen Child as follows:-
Yeats was a folklore enthusiast and a life-long believer in the fairy folk. His poem “The Stolen Child” is rooted in changeling tales found throughout the British Isles, as well as in other lands with fairy traditions of their own. Changeling stories are not “fairy tales” as the term is commonly used today. They are not set “once upon a time” in magical lands distant from our own, like fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Puss in Boots. Changeling stories are folk legends, usually set in the same country as the teller, and come from an ancient belief system in which fairies are real, co-existing with mortals.
That which is stolen from each of us is our connection to our souls. It is in order to find that which is stolen from us that we go on a search for meaning. This is usually in the 2nd half of life and is often preceeded by the crisis to meaning called the midlife crisis. This goes hand in hand with our ability to live a wild and precious life filled with passion, purpose and prosperity. Prosperity, in the way this writer means it, is the prosperity of meaning. This is your life’s energy allied with creative activity that expresses that meaning within form. It isn’t simply the acquisition of more nor is it simply production for productions sake. It is what is truly productive that arises from a hand in hand connection to the dimension of the infinite.
We get disconnected from the water and the wild. This is the water of our unconscious. This is the disconnection from the living of our dreams. This invitation to the waters and the wild is wonderfully invited in the writing of Robert Johnson. He writes in his book Living Your Unlived Life: Coping with Unrealized Dreams and Fulfilling Your Purpose in the Second Half of Life
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the worldtoward that same church, which he forgot.
From Sometimes a Man Stands Up during Supper – Translated by Robert Bly
A Yeats tells us in his poem this world is full of weeping and you might not understand the why of it. This is because there are aspects of creation that are a mystery and will forever remain a mystery. There is suffering but there is also the end of suffering. It doesn’t mean that you cannot understand your part in that mystery and especially your part in such mystery as a co-creator. In the wonderful words of Marianne Williamson written in her book entitled Return to Love she invites meaning and purpose in this way.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
In the words of Rumi, which I often quote to school children when telling them stories,
You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly! – Rumi.
To often the changeling in us forgets that we are born to make manifest the glory of God (or if you prefer, Love) within us. In a culture where everything becomes homogenised we become wooden and unable to speak the truth of who we are as unique individuals. This truth is not a fixed truth codified in words but a living of life moment to moment that arises from the waters and the wild of our unlived life, and all to often, our unloved life. The fairy element in this poem refers to to a vaster experience than that limited by the five senses and the dimension of time and space. This is the dimension that I refer to in this blog and its related website as the beyond. It is a state of being beyond the limitation of the persona (persona meaning mask). When this beyond is allowed to flow through you it radiates within the personality. The word wild here does not refer to being wildly out of control. It is more akin to the experience invited by the Master Jesus when he gives the advice,
And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Neither is the above an instruction that suggests you regress to becoming a child again. The invitation is to reveal the stolen child within who knows how to be wildly creative, wildly spontaneous and wildly loving. Children know how to do this without doing this. It is natural to the way that Creation moves through them. In this way you go into the realm of the timeless hand in hand with time. All too often there is the wish to transcend the world in order to avoid the weeping than you cannot understand. However, this is your world and the way in which it is seen is in most part is a reflection of the waters of the wild unconscious that are within. When you change the way you think the world will change to reflect that new way of thinking.
The changeling is often depicted as a wooden creature. This is symbolic of a way of thinking that has become inflexible. In its inflexibility thought has stolen the spirit of the child within. The midlife crisis, which is the call to return the stolen child to its place in the family of man, is a difficult time. The story of the changeling involves roasting the changeling on the fire until it cries out and the fairies return and reclaim their own. During the midlife crisis it feels like we are being roasted in the fire of experience. The symbol of fire is the symbol of transformation. It is the element of the firebird, the phoenix that rises from the ashes of the unlived and unloved life.
In the poem you are invited to come away and not run away. I invite you to come away from a culture that keeps you wooden and that keeps what is unspoken within you from being heard and thus being manifested in your life. This world is more full of weeping, more full of suffering, because you are not a revealed one. You are one who has not yet authorised the water and the wild as it is intended to flow wildly through you. To invite the wild and precious life within you, and to get you to come away from a culture whose growth is depression and violence, I offer you practices. These are practices that invite the Wild Old Wicked Man to grow within you or the Dangerous Old Woman to grow within you. These are the people who are potential within you and who will allow you to live from meaning and to act in the world from a connection that goes hand in hand with that dimension called the timeless.
Let me say this. What is true within you and what reflects the glory and the grace of Creation cannot ever be stolen from you. You can lose your hand and hand connection to this source of grace and power and beauty but it is forever available. To the extent that you do not make your life meaningful and commit to a search for meaning, especially in the second half of life, is the degree to which the world will appear to be full of weeping. In the story of the changeling the change comes about when the parents of the stolen child do something that has never been done before. This is a key piece of knowledge that begins the transformation. It is the invitation to radical creativity. It is the invitation to live the new and not live simply tied to the limited idea of persona. It is to invite the revelation of Love that is then radiated through the personality. This is the fullness of personal development and beyond.
I hope that in some little way you can begin to see the potential that is held within the power of poetry and the power of storytelling to help you transition some fairly intense personal development and beyond stages of life. These poems and stories that I invite you to discover at this blog contain images and symbols that have one purpose. This is the purpose of soul revelation that gives human life meaning. Symbols are the language of the soul. They contain the invitation to the deep hearts core. They do not reveal themselves to the consumer mind that would grasp and possess them. They are gifts of the spirit that inspire and are available to those who would serve Loves purpose.
My purpose is to invite you to take a first step toward the waters of the unconscious toward the wild an precious life. I invite you to go hand in hand with that dimension within you that knows (beyond intellectual knowing)that this world is not just a vale of tears and a place full of weeping. This world has within it a revelation that gives a peace beyond understanding. This revelation is a practical process. It needs practice and it needs commitment. It is easy to lose that hand in hand connection to the source within the focus of our day to day lives. To live the wild and precious life of meaning and purpose you have to find the inner voice that brings the changeling within you alive. Within the fire, that is the crisis of the unlived and unloved life, there are wings that will allow you to fly. You aren’t meant to crawl. You have wings. Use them and fly.
Take any of the practices as outlined in our related website and commit to at least one of them. When you commit with intention, and pay attention, then the Universe listens to that commitment and moves in mysterious way to fulfil your true hearts desire. This is not the desire that is promoted by market forces but is the desire that arises from your willingness to live as loves purpose. When you are so willing then, although the world is full of weeping you, will feel empowered to take that weeping and transform it into the waters of the wild and move as Love in action. You will act in this dimension of time and space for the highest good of all.
I ask you to commit to surrounding yourself with words and phrases that speak to your deep heart’s core. Make it a practice to send such words and phrases to friends in need through a practice of prayer or meditation or by sending them a note of appreciation. Combine such words and phrases with some art that has spoken to the deep hearts core throughout history. You then move, hand in hand, with a symbolic power that creates universe. It is in this way that you become truly empowered. You do not sink into a form of apathy and wonder what on earth the meaning of all this weeping in the world is about. Refuse to listen to the changelings who invite fear and anxiety. You have a voice within you that knows a world beyond weeping, beyond financial crisis, beyond fear of terrorism and beyond the idea of the separate sense of self. I say to you, as W B Yeats says to you,
Come away O Human child to the waters and the wild.
Meaning and purpose is found within. Don’t wait until the time when you are so wooden in your ways of viewing the world that you are afraid to move and a time comes when you find that it is not death you are afraid of but the fact that you have lived an unlived life. Simply begin to practice a daily practice. Trust in the process and the way to the waters and the wild will be revealed. Then you will have revealed to you the life you are here to live, to love and to give. I leave you with one of my favourite songs. It is the song by the Waterboy’s and is from their album entitled Fisherman’s Blues. It is their interpretation, and I think it is a wonderful interpretation, of W. B. Yeats poem The Stolen Child which we have been reviewing above. If you have an iPod then you might like to download it
If you do this heartsong practice then it begins to set up an intention within you that puts the Universe on notice. The universal intelligence that creates all things from no thing knows that you are making a clear choice to embody and align yourself with your soul purpose. The Universe will then come into alignment that intention. This is how life is designed and how you are designed as a co-creator with, and as, Love. The quest for meaning in life begins with a real quest and a real question. The degree to which you are aligned with your wild and precious life will be the degree to which you are willing to answer by direct experience those existential questions that will allow that meaning to arise from within you.
Let it be so.
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U2 Can Find Meaning & Purpose from the 2nd Half of Life
In order to live a life of meaning and purpose you too (U2) must learn to give yourself away. As the knight Percival (Parsifal) asks in the story of the search for the Holy Grail, “Whom does the Grail serve?”, you too must ask what the holy meaning and purpose of your life is here to serve. I love to watch U2 clips on YouTube. Their song With or Without You is, for this Irish storyteller and writer, is a kind of mystic poem and modern day rock anthem. This song, like all great heart songs, works on various levels. It is a song about the struggle to live in relationship. At a more mystical level it can be considered a song about the struggle to live in duality. At the heart of the song are these lyrics
And you give yourself away
You give yourself away
and you give and you give
and you give yourself away
This giving yourself away can be giving yourself in the surrender of physical love making. It is the giving one’s self away in the union of the mystic with the Beloved. It is giving your self away to the work that expresses your soul essence and not simply work as a means to an end. It is a mother giving herself away to build a world of safety for her children. It is the mature male who is focused on protecting all children who he meets. Whatever way in which this giving yourself away happens it is important that it does happen. This is not simply about giving yourself to a project for the purpose of ego satisfaction. This is not what I take these lines from the U2 song With or Without You to mean.
What you give yourself away to has to be bigger than your individual ego self. It is in this way that you find meaning and purpose. It is a paradox that in giving yourself away you find what you are seeking. This giving yourself to something larger than the ego is important at some stage of your life. It is especially important during the second half of life beyond the age of fifty. This is when you begin the process of individualisation and you leave what is culturally expected of you to go in search of your personal holy grail, asking the question, “Whom does the Grail serve?” This is another way of asking, “Whom will my heart serve?”
The Grail is the cup that is said to have held the blood of Christ. The blood is the container of primal life energy that flows through the body. The Christ is the experience of non-dual consciousness that allows you to know and to be all that you are here to be. The Christ is the servant of all and serves from the knowing of Love. Do not confuse the Christ with the time space body of Jesus of Nazareth who knew how to give himself in total surrender to Love as one who lived from the experience of Christ Consciousness. This confusion of the historical Jesus with the dimension of Christ Consciousness is such a common error that no one really ever questions it. No one has Christ Consciousness. It is not something you own but is who you are to become as the revelation you are intended to be.
In the first half of life we give ourselves to creating a career, a family, a home and a kind of identity. At the midpoint of life many people struggle and begin to ask a question from another song,
Is this all there is?”
These three cycles are universally recognised – at least for women in the maiden/mother/crone cycle. I am not quite sure what the three cycles are for men except that they are there. The tragedy of many people’s lives is that they refuse to transition from the first part of life into the second. This resistance is experience by both men and women as the midlife crisis. They think that the skills they have learned in the first half of life prepare them for the journey of meaning and purpose in the second half of life.
In the case of many men, they continue to live as boy men, living the idea of success as opposed to failure. When they retire they live a life of narcisstic self-indulgence and all too often they find that their life has lost meaning. Most high powered executives who are men and who have heavily invested their time and identity in their work die within three to five years of retirement. I suspect they exit on the planet because they feel they are no longer of productive use. This is a tragedy.
If you are between the ages of thirty-five and fifty you will be experiencing mid-life. For many of you this is a cycle that might be termed ‘the will to meaning.’ If you do not have this experience of will to meaning then it might come later. If it does not come, pray that it arrives. I mean that literally. The sadness is that these cycles are known but not taught. They were known and ritualised in indigenous societies but ours is a culture that focuses only on the first half of life, which is, in reality, only half a life. In India it was traditional for a man to leave his wife and family and go off to a forest or mountain to find out who he was. Fifty is a good age for someone living on the Indian subcontinent even in this day and age.
There is no need for you to leave your wife or family or husband or partner or job. There is a need to leave the culture that invites a never ending focus on self-serving. There is a need to transition and turn around and quest. There is a need for you as an individual to answer for yourself the question “Whom does the Grail serve?” The grail is a symbol of sacred unity. It symbolises what is whole in you and what way in which you can make the world whole.
The quest begins with a question. What are you going to do with your “one wild and precious life?” In the second half of life you learn to give it away. You learn to surrender to Love’s purpose and not your own. You listen to the still small inner voice. You listen beyond the manic clamour of your mind and the collective mind. You learn to centre yourself and become the knower within. You claim your true King within or your true Queen within.
You too can give yourself away and live a life of meaning and purpose. It is an antidote to what they Jungian analyst Robert Johnson terms the unlived life. It is an antidotes to the pull of a depressed life energy that destroys so many lives. You become, in the words of the poet W B Yeats a Wild Wicked Old Man or what the storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estes terms the Dangerous Old Woman. This Wild Old Wicked Man and Dangerous Old Woman are those who are ready to give to their community the best of who they are for the highest good of all.
Giving yourself away with a sense of purpose begins with intention and moves through faith into Love in action. It is not simply ‘do gooding’ but leads to the knowing that giving yourself away is the only sensible answer to the question of existence. In this way you give meaning to your life and live the wild and purpose-filled life. So rather than grow old and slip into a loss of meaning in the second half of life remember that U2 can find meaning and purpose for all your life by giving yourself away.
For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul.
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Finding Meaning in Life via Lifes Transitions
To live a wild and precious life and find meaning in life is to live a legacy that could only be dreamed off. This is the legacy that will give meaning to the second half of your life and far beyond the second half of your life. I have purposefully written the words,
that could only be dreamed off.
In this blog I focus on the transition between the first half of life, through midlife and beyond, into the opportunity to finding meaning in life and a life of meaning and purpose. This is what I refer to as the life of the Wild Old Wicked Man, and in the case of a woman, is to live the life of a Dangerous Old Woman. These are not my terms. The Wild Old Wicked Man is the title of a W. B. Yeats poem. The term Dangerous Old Woman is a title of a series of recordings on that topic from http://www.soundstrue.com by the storyteller and Jungian analyst Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
In the first half of life which I measure as the years from birth to the age of thirty five to forty most of us are building a life around achieving and the attainment of some idea termed success. The energy of the life quest is focused on the question, “What’s in it for me?” or “How big a slice of the cake can I acquire for myself and those who are closest to me?” In the first half of life there is a lot of ego even if the goal is to get rid of the ego and attain to some kind of personal salvation.
Midlife, which is somewhere between the ages of thirty five and fifty,there is what is called the midlife crisis. This is what I call a crisis of the will to meaning. This is the call of the soul. It is the invitation to cross a threshold and begin the Hero’s journey. It is a time that very often causes havoc in many peoples lives. Then there is the transition to the second half of life between the ages of forty five until the time of the death of the body. This stage is also filled with crises and opportunity. In this stage one goes through what is called the menopause. This is true of both men and women. It is a form of death into rebirth. Most people, especially men, resist this birthing and in the process die in a very different way. This is a kind of living death into a life of narcissism and regret.
To find meaning in life is to leave a legacy. I am not writing here about leaving money or possessions to your children or leaving resources to a cause you believe in. There is nothing right nor wrong in doing this. A legacy of meaning and purpose is a legacy that is timeless. A legacy that you leave beyond time is a legacy that only you could have dreamed off. To put it more accurately, the legacy that only you could leave, is that which you allow to be dreamed through you. In the first half of life our dreams are driven by ego and culture. In the second half of life, if you are prepared to take the road less travelled, the life that you dream off is driven from the soul. The legacy you leave is that of higher consciousness, or to put it another way, off higher love making. Consciousness is never born and never dies. It is the non-stuff of the timeless. It is what allows you to be aware of life. Its expansion, and the expansion of Love, are not separate.
The legacy that you leave from finding meaning in life in the second half of life will be a paradox. You get what your heart truly desires when you learn to give yourself utterly away. You don’t give yourself away as some kind of martyrdom. You give yourself away by coming into alignment with soul purpose which is the only true way to find meaning and purpose in life. This giving yourself away is a living paradox. It is also a loving paradox. The more that you give yourself to this dreamed off legacy the more you expand into higher love making. You bring into your life a higher love or more to the point you allow a higher love to be lived through you. Your legacy for the second half of your life is wonderfully invited in the rock anthem by Steve Winwood entitled “Bring me a higher Love.”
Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is a wasted time
Look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine– From Higher Love by Steve Winwood.
Might I suggest you listen to this song. Turn it up loud and dance. This is a way to embody the longing to meaning and purpose through the active. The body understands this longing for higher love making. It is after all the embodiment of Love in form. It is the unique manifestation of the in formed action of Love. For those of you who love drumming there is also the great opening.
I follow my dreams as a daily spiritual practice. These are the dreams that appear nightly. Recently I had what I consider a very important dream. In this dream I am gathered around a round table upon which there are plans to build a house of soul nourishment. The round table symbolises for me a kind of knightly endeavour. The dreamwork that I do is a true knightly endeavour that gathers those disparate parts of myself around a centre. This holy centre is represented by the round table. This is the nightly task (knightly task) of paying attention to the dreams that are gifted to me as symbols of meaning and purpose. What this house of nourishment will be will be revealed as a consequence of paying fidelity, or having faith in the process.
This process, is I believe, an eternal process. It is the eternal process of Love’s becoming. You are never apart from that becoming. You are here as a unique representative in form of the eternal movement of Love in form. Is that not a glorious opportunity? It is the revelation of this knowing that can be the potential blessing for the second half of your life and the opportunity of finding meaning in life for the rest of your life and beyond.
In the second half of life, which is becoming longer and longer, you have the paradoxical opportunity to die into Love rather than just die to the form of the body. I invite you to use the power of intention to allow yourself to have dreamed through the dream that only you can have dreamed through you. In that way you become your own religion. This is what the poet Rumi calls the religion of Love. In the religion of Love that reveals the essence of who and why you are you will have no regrets when the time comes to die to this form called the body.
Make it your intention to pay attention to your dream life. Dream huge but don’t dream simply from the ego. That is the energy of the first part of life and soul purpose is larger than any sense of ego purpose. Follow your dreams. Follow the invitation from the symbolic soul language that arises from within you each night. This is the one language that I encourage everyone to become fluent in. It is a language of a magical land. It is not simply a language of words but of images that speak to you in a unique and purpose filled way.
In the second half of life your focus is on the inner. If you do not turn inward then your life will become routine and dry because you are not drinking from the living well. However, don’t say that there is no water because if you are resistant to living from the holy well of your being. However, don’t be too hard on yourself if you do experience intense resistance. Birthing of Loves purpose through you isn’t less painful than physical birthing into form. The skills you learned in the first half of life do not suit the second half of your life. Turn within and go to the well of being.
The Fountain
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched-but not because
she grudged the water,only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,up and out through the rock.
~ Denise Levertov ~
The inner contains the infinite rather than the finite. It contains the timeless rather than time. It contains the deathless rather than death. To know this and to leave a legacy of having known this never goes away. It is the flowering of a knowing of higher love making. It is not a product of time and thus death but the creation of that which is timeless and eternal. We humans don’t need more things. We need more soul that is radiating in form. Let this be the kind of legacy you leave to this world of form and time so that in your unique way you bring Heaven to Earth and time comes to an end. This is not what most people misunderstand as the end of the world but the beginning of the living from the birthless deathless experience of eternal life. This is the way to live a life of meaning and purpose that you could only have dreamed off but it is not enough to simply dream.
The dreams have to be made active and manifest. Let me finish by encouraging you to pay attention to your dreams and live your dreamed off life for the highest good of all. Then the second half of your life will be more than pleasure seeking. It will give you what you could never have dreamed off which is the knowing that you really are Love in form and also Love beyond form. In the second half of your life you can know, and are intended to know, that you are a living embodiment of Love’s purpose that lives forever. What could ever give you more meaning than to become what you are intended by Love to be?
Let it be so.
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