Sense of Destiny
“When
your life awakens and you begin to sense the destiny that brought you here, you
endeavor to live a life that is generous and worthy of the blessing and
invitation that is always calling you.”
John
O’Donohue (Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong)
There are a few big
questions that come up over the course of a human lifetime. They are asked
early and late; when we are young and when we are old. What now? Why am I here?
What’s my purpose?
We get diverted; attracted
to worldly things—money, status, positions of power—and think, erroneously, that that is our purpose. I imagine folks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos mistakenly
believe they were sent here to make money and invent things. I could be wrong.
And they may be right. There are all kinds of ways to move humanity forward,
and just as many ways to hold us in place, or even to move us backward.
But
when we ask the big questions within—that is, within our souls—we find that our
purpose has nothing to do with cash-flow, or mega-mansions, or rocket ships to Mars.
It has to do with lessons. Specifically, the lesson(s) our soul is here to
learn. Things like trust, awareness, what has value and what does not, how to relate
to others in a humane and loving way. Destiny is a product of the soul. We are
told that we have one lifetime to learn it, but I happen to believe that if we miss
the mark, we get another stab at life on the blue planet.
In fact, the word that is translated
as “sin” in the Bible actually means “missing the mark.” Like the jumps on an
equestrian’s route, the world holds many hurdles for us to overcome—shiny objects
that distract us and shiny people who either lead us forward in our evolution,
or in the opposite direction. If we get distracted and miss the mark, we either
start over or try again. That’s the point at which those big questions arise once
more. “What now?” “Why am I here?” We know deep inside that there is a reason
we are here, but we seem to lose track of it.
John O’Donohue couched it
in these terms: “…we have forgotten that we are but temporary sojourners on
the surface of a strange planet spinning slowly in the infinite night of the
cosmos.” Our purpose is not making money or living in a mansion. Our
purpose is to live kindly, lovingly, and with authentic soul in all our
relationships. That’s our destiny.
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