Preparing for Your Life’s Work

I’ve discussed finding our lives’ respective purposes and what-not in many other posts, but for the interests of this blog post, I wanted to share a little bit in regards to how we naturally prepare for the work that we are here to do. On one level, we are all very ingenious and creative people who naturally can use past experiences and talents to create something in this moment. It will always be a unique creation as we are ourselves are always a unique creation in any giving moment as we are also constantly changing. So the work that we do in one moment will be different from the next, and that is part of living a fluid, dynamic, and natural life.

While that may sound like you may be constantly changing jobs, the point really is that you can change and do whatever you want. Many people won’t have one set purpose to fulfill in this lifetime. Some will have several. Some will have a couple simple things to check off the list, and some will have no purpose, as defined by the ego. In this space of purposelessness, these individuals’ only work and purpose in this lifetime will be in being because being is its own purpose.

With that said, those of you who have awakened and are watching many interesting and new experiences arise and pass, in your lives, this blog post is for you.

The Work Finds You

Putting aside the unconscious ego’s incessant need to define itself and make itself feel important, we start to notice that the work we are here to do kinda comes and finds you. Of course, you will still have to do your part. Most of life is very co-creative, but the more and more you tune into yourself, you’ll start to see patterns and common issues in your life. As you clear away karma, you will also notice some threads that seem to be drawing you somewhere. This is where your intuition is key because you have to listen to that inner pull. Life is so vast and expansive that you could follow all kinds of paths in any different direction, and many of you will. That’s not a bad thing. But as I said, for those of you who have a clear calling within, certain things, events, and relationships will draw you down a certain path, and through learning from those situations, the work you are here to do starts to find you.

Blind Clarity and the Unknown

At times, you may still feel very blind even as you listen to your inner knowing, but in that way, we are always blind to the future. Sometimes, you are walking down a path and then you do a sharp right-hand turn and see a whole new city block that you never knew existed. The spiritual path can be like that. So sometimes you are sitting in an airport listening to someone pour their heart out to you, and then the next thing you know you’ve got a free ticket to Hawaii and are meeting some critical community catalysts or spiritual teachers to your own growth. Life is just that amazingly crazy.

It’s not that many of you aren’t clear about what to do either. Some of you already know that you are healers, community builders, leaders, teachers, diplomats, farmers, and so forth. You can feel it within, but the journey to those roles may not take the paths you expect. It’s important to stay fluid as you go because the journey is preparing you for the roles that you will take on. I listen to so many people worry about finding their purpose, but for most of us, the path preparing us for any particular thing–if there is one–is already right beneath your feet.

The Extraordinary Ordinary

Often the most important stuff that we have to offer is the most ordinary to us. For instance, this writing really isn’t very extraordinary to me. It’s just what I have to say. There were times when it was more amazing, but as the ego-self in me that has rated everything subsides, my writing simply is as it is. It simply is what I have to offer. And I love doing it.

But at the same time, I know that my words touch many people. I am not blind to this level of extra-ordinariness to it. It resonates with truth. It rings with clarity. But it is just me speaking as me though. Consequently, I encourage you as you move through a shift and follow the path before you to keep paying attention to the natural talents you have. Keep trusting yourself and what you have to give even if it doesn’t seem particularly important or amazing to you. What may seem ordinary to you may be extraordinary to someone else.

Spiritual Transformation and Your Extraordinary Ordinariness

Learning Life’s Lessons

There is a different flavor to the lessons that prepare to do your work than the ones that are simply you letting go of karma. It can be a subtle difference, and some of those lessons are synonymous. For those of you in the midst of the fire ball of early part of awakening, it probably seems impossible to parse out anything. However, looking back, there are more than a few relationships that showed up in my life around awakening and thereafter that clearly were preparing me to be a spiritual teacher. They were teaching me how to hold space, let go of judgement, allow someone to be in pain, love without expectation of receiving love in return, speak truth when it was wanted, sit in silence when not even spoken truth would be accepted, and many more lessons. All of these lessons were preparing me to do the work I now do, and I’m sure they’ve been preparing me for other aspects of this spiritual teaching that I have not yet begun. In this way, I can see how I was clearly being prepared.

Certainly, in the years before my awakening, there were certain elements of being prepared for this work, but they were much more static and submerged under unconscious behaviors. There wasn’t this sense of movement in the way that I felt after awakening. However, many of the traits I’ve always had such as a love of writing and being good at listening were slowly being cultivated. With that said, the writing I did before awakening does not compare to the clarity of the writing that came after. It truly was night and day for me.

Letting Go of Defining Yourself By Your Work

For many of you, you have to learn to do your work without becoming defined by it. This can be tricky in a society that likes to define everyone and everything, and it is one of the ways the unconscious ego likes to hide itself under new clothes. One of the aspects of what I offer as a spiritual teacher is as a resource for other spiritual teachers and healers to help them release more ego and come to their work in integrity. Otherwise, the work can be quickly corrupted by desires to help others, become rich, become famous, and many other ego issues that will co-opt your life’s work to self-aggrandize or validate in some way. Awakening by itself is enough, but usually, we don’t accept complete and total self-realization into us. So a spiritual awakening for most people is more often the very beginning of the spiritual path and not usually the time to move into a space of service except usually to ourselves.

In doing our inner work, we then naturally come to the work we want to do. That inner work naturally calls in those external life lessons to prepare us. It is so wonderfully simple at times that it just makes your heart want to burst. Yet, if there is something you are called to do–a program, healing modality, retreat, or something else–then it should be relatively clear if you need to do it, albeit fear likes to hang around and obscure major life changes. Trust yourself. That’s the only way to go, and in awakening, you probably are seeing things much more clearly than ever before.

What Is Purpose and Why Do People Want It?

Not Rushing the Preparation

There’s truly no rush to get anywhere, and where is there to go anyway? Come into this moment. Again and again, the ego will try to tease you with its games and get you caught up in its web of unconscious thoughts. Just notice when you are getting lost. Take a breath. Relax. There’s nothing to rush. If it is time for action, you will take it. There’s no need to over-think it. Mostly, there’s a need to have faith in the awakened shift. If you are not in this shift, then you need to take a lot more time out for spirituality to make sure that you are stoking the fires. It’s too easy to give up otherwise and decide that your life is good enough as it is. Until there is a fundamental shift within, there’s a tendency to stay in the old cycles and the old patterns. This is why I often talk about creating the crucible to start to intensify things. In so doing, something may spark. Until then, just keep following your heart and building space for spirituality in your life.

How to Prepare for Awakening