This life's breath
Author :
Tharini
Blog :.
Date: 6/1/2012 12:30:00 PM
A few years ago, I took up Many Lives Many Masters by Brian Weiss. The novelty and wonder was there for a few chapters, but beyond that I found the whole thing clinical and repetitive and never finished the book. Now I wonder at the state of mind I was in to ever have done that. For it was an amazing journey this time around, and with so much of learning. Though perhaps, there is this one thing that I am consciously taking away from it.
To my understanding, we come into this world, already pre-programmed with the purpose we would like to achieve in it. This one main goal that become's this life's breath. If that lesson has been learnt, this life has served its purpose and the soul can move on and progress. If not, it carries over into the next life and becomes an additional burden that you carry, with more experiences needed to assimilate that truth. And the soul usually reflects on this post the fact, in a mental review of events and incidents of that life.
But I believe we have the capacity, while in flesh, to ruminate on what this one purpose might be. And to find it. Because it is the one challenge that will constantly keep coming your way. It will present itself in various forms, and keep circling your orbit, until you find the means to make awareness with it, meet the challenge and triumph over it. Making it a true lesson learnt, and a true life lived.
From that point of view, it is very interesting to think of what my one life goal might be. There are days I wonder what the point of this whole existence is. But to have it broken down into this one simple thing that is my personal road marker and finish line.....it is very empowering. For a while, the quest of that one true purpose, becomes a goal in itself. And then once you find it, it releases you from many bonds which hold you hostage till that point. Because now, you finally know. There is some freedom to be experienced in that.
But the truest joy, is translating that knowledge into your own active struggle to conquer. Knowing has to be followed by direct action. Direct action will bring immediate experience, where it stops being a theory. It never was in the first place.
I thought I would have to sit and meditate to clear my head of cobwebs, before I could understand what my soul had decided for me in this life. But it came as a flash. How can it not, when every single day is a testimony to my deep struggle? I know I had set myself up to learn true discipline in this life. Where you make up your mind to do / not do something, and you follow through on that intention with an iron will, not to be swayed or molded by every breeze of sense gratification. I know that this is it. And I have seen some people, who have already molded their lives to this ideal. They might struggle with other things, but this, they have down pat.
But contrary to what I believed earlier, knowing it, doesn't make it easier to do. The same struggle persists, and its like living with two people inside my head : one who loves a sense of order and a desire to tame all the extraneous urges. And the other, who wants to break all possible chains of command and be set free of every expectation and claim. Following through on one will give me deep joy, that I know. But modelling the other is what comes to me naturally and on a basal level. At some point, the two must converge and find peace. It is just not that time yet!