This pattern is also our purpose. We come to the world with and for a purpose – our life task or individual path. This purpose has inner and outer aspects – to develop wholeness within ourselves and our relationships and to manifest that wholeness as a difference in the world. We have to work to change ourselves and to change our world; we are responsible for the evolution of humanity and for the creation of a better world. Our purpose fits with some vast overall unfolding of the universe of which we are a tiny but essential part.
To further our purpose, we come into the world with particular talents (abilities in potential form) and we have particular experiences and learnings that bring forth these talents. We grow into the our purpose over time. Everything we are or experience is potentially useful – suffering and challenges often help our talents come to light. Our purpose is a seed that quietly demands that we help it flourish and grow. God supports us only beyond the limits of our abilities and talents. Like a good parent, He/She/It does for us only what we cannot do for ourselves.
Our responsibility is to do what we must to develop ourselves, our understanding, awareness and intention so that we can shoulder more of the creation, have a greater capacity to make a difference. The more we are able to do, the less Gad has to do directly. We have to become adults in our spirituality and ability to take responsibility for ourselves and the world.
We need to work with our talents and nature – connect to and understand our abilities and disabilities. These exist at many levels, the most important is the work to actualize ourselves and our purpose/destiny/life tasks. To do this, we must do the creative work of envisioning, intending and taking action. We must look at ourselves squarely – no place for illusions of either inflation or inadequacy.
Envisioning
Out of the greater purpose of our life we have to create a vision of how this can become manifest in the world. For this we mus invite imagination to form the images, feelings and sensations that exist beyond our consciousness, beneath our awareness in the deeper realms of our being. We go to the wellsprings of creative inspiration, our dreams and formless feelings. We begin by groping in the dark to find those images just beyond our reach. We are inviting purpose to take form, to show us a corner of its pattern so that we can bring it into our lives fully.
True vision cannot be controlled or created through our thinking and conscious mind. It has to arise, through attention and respect from somewhere deep within us. We listen, invite and create a space for something unexpected and new to arise; we do not force or cajole or become impatient. Vision approaches first as a sense of something missing, an unsettling lack of something that we cannot put our finger on.
To invite vision, we:
- Pay attention to what is incomplete – the missing aspects of our lives and selves
- Listen attentively to what we do not want to do, what we never thought would be relevant and important
- Notice the shape of our dreams and imaginings, the direction of our discomfort
- Feel for the patterns that are unfinished, rough around the edges, in need of refinement. We have a deeply engrained need for pattern, closure, completion. We need to develop this sense in relation to our lives and self.
Intention
From envisioning, we begin to feel what needs to happen, what is required to be brought forth so the vision can become manifest. Intention is the energetic holding of the vision with an inner conviction that invites/cajoles/moves the vision from the realms of possibility into the realms of actuality. Intention is the bridge over which vision must travel to become real in the world.
Intention is not will power or willfulness; it does not try to force vision into a preset goal or outcome. It allows it unfold and flow over time into the shape that is needs to take. There must be a give and take, a dialectic with the requirements of the physical universe so that vision can have a life of its own, existing separate from the envisioner.
Without intention that is consistent and firm, nothing can happen. Intention creates a space in the world for something to come about. It focuses our awareness and attention so that we notice and make use of possibilities.
Action
Intention requires action to actualize. Action is the work of our heart and mind to bring something into being. Our heart holds the passion, the wishes and the feeling that makes us keep working, while our minds do the planning, the organizing and the procedures that allow something to be constructed and completed. Action is the effective means to bring the vision through intention to fruition.
Taking action requires a sense of energy and timeliness. Things can only manifest in time and space when they are ready and all requirements are complete. As we complete the action, when our vision becomes manifest we experience a sense of “rightness” that tells us that we are on the right path to fulfilling our purpose.
Each level other than pure purposes has its shadow side that diverts, distracts and confuses:
- The shadow of vision is prejudice -- expecting a particular pre-judged personally wished-for outcome.
- The shadow of intention is confused aimlessness -- the inability to be clear and whole in where we are going.
- The shadow of action is passivity -- the expectation that we will be looked after, that life happens without effort.
