Life is on Purpose
Life is On Purpose
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment".
Eckhart Tolle
As I sat and talked with a remarkable young woman who had recently lost her child it would have been the height of insensitivity to refer to Eckhart Tolle quote above. Until, that is, she expressed a knowing that her experience had purpose.
As we gently explored the possibilities surrounding the idea of purpose it was clear that to attempt to establish some sort of perspective we had to move above the objective finite view of life as explained by modern material science. Through that 'Dawkins' lens life has little purpose beyond survival. However, in such a delicate space deeper spiritual 'truths' such as 'we are infinite beings' and 'we are all one', come across as trite consumables which make little sense in the face of our pain.
To begin to make sense of our experiences it is worth revisiting the first line of Tolle's quote. "Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness." The implication being that if life does have a purpose then it is to facilitate the evolution of our consciousness.
Great. But what does that really mean?
To reach a place where life actually makes sense requires that we first acknowledge our true or essential nature. In other words acknowledge what is real and constant in our experience. To do this we need to wander into the land where the mind quickly loses its orientation but lets give it a go.
We are not our bodies, we are not our thoughts, we are not our feelings, neither are we our perceptions of our external world. These are all transitory, ever-changing and finite overlays on a far more profound reality. These experiences, which form the basis of our objective reality, are not who we are. They are in fact the experiences of who we really are or, more accurately, what we really are. The only experiential constant in our lives is the awareness which experiences our objective reality. We are not the experience but the experiencer. We are the awareness which is present in every moment.
Any investigation into or search for that awareness soon reveals that it has no objective qualities. It has no taste, no smell, no mass, no location. It cannot be touched, seen or heard. It cannot be measured. Neither can we escape it's presence, for it is that presence itself which makes us aware. Where-ever we are, it is. It is, literally and experientially, limitless.
If our awareness is limitless, (which is where the "we are infinite beings" comes from), then there cannot be two awarenesses as that would imply a boundary or an edge between the two. This means that when we relate in anyway to another it is simply the one awareness experiencing itself from another attention point. Awareness talking to itself. Awareness becoming aware of itself through experience. (That is the "we are all one" piece).
When realised or felt, the intimacy of this shared one awareness brings to light our true nature. This is beautifully described in this quote from Adyashanti
“True love is a non-personal miracle. It is the nature of reality itself. It is the natural and spontaneous expression of the undivided divine self.”
The purpose of life as described by Tolle is to evolve our consciousness above the illusory personalised self to achieve realisation of the true love of which Adya speaks. And life, which is the natural and spontaneous expression of the undivided divine self, will do anything to assist us in realising the true nature of reality. This is our purpose and all that we experience in life, the joy, the heartbreak, the grief, the laughter are all attempts to move us closer to that realisation.
Awakening to that realisation is not some distant goal or reward.
It is available in every moment.
In fact IT IS every moment.
We have all felt and recognised IT in moments of bliss or unconditional love. It is equally present, though harder to acknowledge, in our pain (and I must thank that beautiful grieving mother for demonstrating that). It is always present. It is most obvious in those moments when the felt connection that is true love penetrates thought and feelings to allow awareness to recognise itself once more.
Our purpose is to realise that love. We do that by living. Our lives are continually adapting to give us the experiences most likely to take us back to our true nature.
To realise the love that we are.
However it is treating us, we can be sure that Life is On Purpose, rather than a series of random accidents which will take a child's life for no apparent reason, or breaks a heart for fun. To resist life and what it presents is to fight against reality. And to fight against reality is to fight against love and as we all know love always wins in the end.
The closer you get to realising that true love the less life will have to redirect you to toward your ultimate purpose and the easier life will flow.
Be the love that you are,
Bill