Why are you here? Do you have a purpose? Or is your life simply random—chance collision of particles and light; the perfect, yet improbable, conditions for the emergence of life, a pure coincidence? The reigning belief among materialists is that this scenario is precisely how life emerged—right place, right time—the materialist notion of a miracle.
Some scholars, however, particularly in evolutionary biology, believe there exists a teleology within nature, a purposeful action, a reason for doing things. Birds orient toward Earth’s magnetic field via magnetoreceptors, allowing them to find their way home; molecules of life form to better dissipate energy and thus increase entropy, and the human mind does not perceive reality as it truly is, but in ways which allow it to survive.
Many have spoken of a purpose to human life, a dharma as the yogis call it, and every person, it is believed, has their own individual dharma. Acting within one’s dharma would be the highest undertaking one could choose, as mission would dictate one’s actions. Great teachers throughout history have seen this as the answer to life—a way to rise above one’s challenges and seeming obstacles. Simply follow your dharma and you can never fail. Many people, however, are not completely aware of their life’s purpose. I believe that uncovering your life’s purpose is the greatest blessing you can receive. I have dedicated my life’s work to helping people uncover and cultivate their purpose.
Following the path of one’s dharma is not without hardship though, an experience common to all human beings. In fact, hardship, trauma, and devastation are so ubiquitous that some of the world’s greatest teachers have addressed these with sayings, stories, and even their own lives. The simple fact is that every one of us must walk through our own personal tragedies, and we must do it alone—nobody can walk for us.
Why must we all have this experience of turmoil? Is there a purpose or is it also random?
Some would say that we have a guiding light directing us at all times, and that we have the ability to increase our connection to this source of information, or perhaps better to say that we can increase the transmission of information, as the connection is always there, only the rate and intensity of the broadcast varying. We can increase the transmission of that guiding light by using the tool of meditation.
The source of this guiding light has been called the Higher Mind, and its transmissions are received by the Lower Mind. I will spend significant time in later articles to describe what is meant by Higher Mind. Lower Mind is simply the somatic element of the mental system—the brain and spinal cord, the neurology. The sensori-emotional Lower Mind when highly charged can convolute the transmissions of Higher Mind, and so by minimizing these convolutions (through meditation and other equilibrating practices), the individual (or monad) begins to make its way toward divinity—a state of complete unity (Godliness).
To do this requires a shift from Lower Minded perceiving to Higher Minded knowing, a certainty which must be cultivated. The shift is mental, and thus perceptual, so it is of the mind—taking the individual from a perception of separateness to a knowingness of unity. The human mind’s greatest illusion is of separation in space and time, another concept we will investigate in another post.
Another ubiquitous human experience is the rising like a phoenix from the ashes and anguish of our traumas. It is no surprise that some of the most powerful stories told are of rising, like great spirits, up to the heavens of salvation. We do rise, only to fall again, yet rise higher and higher every time we pull ourselves up, approximating the oneness of all things, in timeless, spaceless elevation.
