Chapter 10

Resurrecting Dreams and Living Your Life Purposefully

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do, than by the things you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

Soul Purpose

When you are young, you think you will live forever. You think that you will always have the time and opportunities to do whatever you want to do. Then life or work gets in the way, and suddenly, the landscape has changed. So many women panic in their mid-thirties, as they discover they have career success but no children. Even if you think you don’t want children, the impact of the biological imperative to reproduce has to be experienced to be believed. It’s like the menopause – you wouldn’t believe that the dropping of three itty bitty hormone levels could cause such chaos in your life.

So whether it is travel or a study course you always wanted to do, begin now. The things our souls want us to do may have no apparent purpose but I guarantee there IS a purpose. It may be someone we are to meet, who will open our eyes to a new perspective or truth. Or maybe there is someone WE are to help. These soul longings never go away because they are vital. They are woven into our bones. We ourselves decided the things we wanted to experience in this incarnation before we came into this life. That is why they are so important. They are not frivolous. From the higher perspective of being in spirit between lives, in consultation with our guides, we agreed that this is what we wanted. And then we come into these bodies, forget our soul agreements, and spend most of our lives denying or ignoring what we ache for inside.

Quite often, when we are children, we know what we want to do with our lives but the adults tell us no, that wouldn’t be possible, or there are no jobs in that area, or no money in it, and we put away our “childish” dreams. But our childish dreams are usually the key to our life purpose.

From an early age, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I loved animals and also wanted to work with them or help them in some way. I remember looking around at my family when I was seven and thinking, this would make a great story. My young self knew I wanted to be a writer. I loved writing English essays, and laboured over them with love. But of course, for final school exams, time is of the essence. My teacher had encouraged me but had warned that I wouldn’t have time to write such great essays or original analyses of the books on the course in the final exam. He was right. My co-students who memorised the standard answers from exam study notes and regurgitated them did far better than I did. I didn’t really care about the rest of the subjects, but I was crushed about my English exam results. The mark I had hoped for and worked hard for did not materialise. I felt I had failed, even though I had passed. That was because I mistakenly equated school exam results with being a writer. It took me over twenty years to recover my confidence and start writing again. When I look back at that wasted time, I shake my head now in disbelief and with a wry smile. I detoured through becoming a general and paediatric nurse and clinical hypnotherapist. And I learned a lot by doing those things.

Yet, here I am now, writing a book, showing up at the page. Better late than never. And I found, once I started practising, words and stories and poems flowed out of me. And at my age, it’s okay to be original. No exams now. There is no-one to tell me now that exams are more important than actual literature, writing or life.

When my best friend and soul mate (soulmates are often friends and not always partners, by the way) was eleven, she knew children who finished primary education without being able to spell or do basic maths. She knew she wanted to help them. She detoured through a degree in French and History and selling washing machines before becoming an adult literacy tutor in her forties.

My seventy-six year old friend bemoans that she doesn’t have a degree in psychology. She felt she couldn’t start it now because she can no longer drive herself to college. What about the Open University, I asked? I never thought of that, she said. Her body may be a bit frail in places but her mind is fine and her heart is huge. She will still be eighty in four years, so I hope she goes for it. It is only ourselves that hold us back from at least attempting our dreams. Even if it doesn’t pan out, at least we can give it a try and die having tried, all used up and with no regrets.

Being and Doing

I used to think that a life purpose was something I had to do, some job. As a volunteer in Dog’s Aid Animal Sanctuary I have often sat with two cats on my knee, surrounded by more cats. One day as I was giving them healing while feeling their fur and hearing them purring, I realised I had been wrong. Our life purpose is not about doing, it’s about being. Whatever we choose to do is just the framework, the structure to allow us to be our infinite selves. I am most myself when I am surrounded by animals, especially cats. This is me. This is my True Self. My Divine Self. There’s nothing more I have to do other than sit with cats and enjoy them. That’s enough.

Our egos want to pay the bills and know where the money is coming from; our souls don’t care – they just want to dance and be joyful. Or sit with cats and be joyful. Ego living is worry and strife. Soul living is letting go, enjoying what is and getting out of our own way.

I was in my own way most of my life. I always knew that meditation would be a life changer for me, which is why my ego resisted it so hard for so long. My ego was right to be afraid, very afraid! Now when I become aware of the voice of my ego, I imagine my angels or guides leading a tired child off for a nap. Since starting to meditate daily, I have come on in leaps and bounds. I understand now, at a visceral level, what I only understood intellectually before. Sometimes I slip into ego mode and become fearful. When that happens, as soon as I become aware of it, I do something different. I sit with the fear in meditation, or do some energy healing on myself. I might have a massage to bring me back into my body in the here and now, or read a book to remind me of what I already know: soul living is easier and more enjoyable. Once I relax and let go, the flow starts again and all is well. I become more hopeful and optimistic and I’m back on track. My aim is to spend more time being happy, contented and joyful and less time being stressed and fearful. And if I manage that eighty percent of the time, that’s good enough. I don’t have to be perfect. Good enough will do.

Another gift of meditation is to increase self-discipline and self-mastery, so that we become more able to allow ourselves to do what we need to do. To sit and write a book, paragraph by paragraph or make a wood cabinet – whatever our souls are calling us to do. It doesn’t matter what we do. It matters how we feel about what we do. Sometimes I do an animal healing session, and I see the animal go from being tense, stressed or anxious to relaxing completely and maybe going asleep as the heat in my hands releases the stress from their system. It is such a pleasure and a privilege for me to do the work, that to get paid for it by a private client is the icing on the cake. It gives me a sense of doing at least part of what I came here to do. It fills me up.

Investigating What We Want

Sometimes when we hear of people doing amazing things it inspires us. At other times it may overwhelm us, leading us to think, oh, what’s the use, I could never do that. The good news is that not only do we NOT have to do what others do, but indeed, even if we try, it won’t work for us.

There’s a story about a woman who quietly started making sandwiches for her local homeless shelter. She delivered them on her lunch break. Word got out and her colleagues did a money collection and gave it to her to help her make more sandwiches. She took the money and went away and thought about it. The next day she went into work and left the money in the staffroom. She put a note on the noticeboard: “Thanks but make your own damn sandwiches.” The point is that we have to do our OWN investigation to find out what is the right thing for us to do; no-one else can do this task for us.

We have to use our own unique gifts, talents and callings to create our own form of service to the world. I have studied a lot about how to discover your life purpose and this is what I now believe: it is much simpler than you think. Our life purpose is to become aware of our gifts and then use them, whatever they may be.

In a nutshell:

Just find what you love to do. Then do it.

Simple does not necessarily mean easy, but for our souls to expand, we need to do it anyway, hard or easy. Sure, you may have to experiment with many different variations to hit on what works for you. It may take you fifty years or more. Additionally, what works for you now will not be the same in five or ten years’ time, because you will not be the same either.

Service

Human consciousness can only evolve through individual effort.

Sandra Corcoran, Shaman

There is a need to serve. This might sound onerous, but in fact, when we find the thing we came here to do, we can be happy and also serve a greater purpose. Allowing ourselves to be happy raises our vibration and that in itself helps the world. The old idea of this life as a “vale of tears” to be stoically borne until we go into the next life is defunct. In fact, the more we are true to ourselves and commit ourselves to whatever our life purpose is, the more light we bring into the world. We need not worry that we will be too happy, because loss, grief and death are all part of life and we will still have to deal with them. However, there is nothing to be gained from wallowing in misery either. Research has shown that those who volunteer altruistically (with the intention of helping others as opposed to making themselves feel better) are likely to feel more socially connected, have lower stress levels and lower blood pressure.

As Jack Kornfield says, “It’s not that we have to get into the flow of the river, we ARE the river.” It really helps to set your intention and then follow where you are lead. Just do the best you can, where you are, with what you’ve got, whether it is picking up other peoples’ litter or employing ten people. That’s all. Your heart will do the rest and your soul will continually strive to wake you up to truth. The truth is that you are an infinite being with infinite possibilities. Our potential to be ourselves and to be great is within each of us, waiting for us to invite it into being. Within the framework of our passions, and our soul’s plan for us, we can achieve exactly what we need to be more whole and complete.

Exercise: Discovering What Is Important

Have your journal and a pen to hand.

Switch off the phone and make yourself comfortable. Take a deep breath in and as you breathe out, allow your eyes to close. Focus your attention on your breathing. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in deep relaxation. As you breathe out, you are beginning to let go. Soften the eyes, the chest, and the belly. Let the shoulders drop as if you are leaving down your burdens. Imagine there is a Divine light of protection around you now and at all times. Allow yourself to become quiet and still inside. Imagine that you are lying on your deathbed. You look back over your life and smile at the good things and good people you remember, the highlights. You may become sad at some memories, which is to be expected. Now you gently become aware of some regrets about things you did not do or try. There was something that you would LOVE to have tried out or done or become if you had the chance again. Allow yourself to become aware of what it is. It may come to you as a word, a symbol or an awareness. Allow yourself time to explore it. You find it easy to remember when you open your eyes and you write it down straight away.

Now look at what you have written in your journal. What action can you take to begin to allow this into your life in a way that is meaningful and valid for you?

What are your gifts? Make an honest list of them and in doing so acknowledge what you have to offer the world. What do you love doing? What is the worst thing that could happen if you tried something and it didn’t work out? At least you would have the pride in yourself that you gave it a try. Of course, to complete a goal, we have to get back up, dust ourselves off, and go for Plan B. And keep going until Plan Z, if necessary, until we are done. It may bring you down a different road to the one you originally imagined. That’s okay. It’s part of the fun. “Resistance is futile,” as The Borg used to say on Star Trek, The Next Generation. I changed it to “Resistance is futile, but perseverance is vital.” A world of adventure opens up to us when we leave the safe harbour of what we have always done, and embark on a thrilling voyage towards our dreams – whatever they may be. Honour them. Godspeed.