I have talked to a lot of people (and shared my own experiences) about this question, “What is the purpose of life?” or more specifically, “What is the purpose of YOUR life?”
Unfortunately, I am thinking of people at this moment who are contemplating it while in the midst of an existential crisis. Yep. It’s a real thing… and I would be lying if I said it doesn’t happen to me from time to time. 
Especially in spiritual circles. People grow and have spiritual awakenings and find their former surroundings different, or not in sync with their new reality. Relationships change and understandings about how our world operated before seem obsolete.
It’s a real pickle sometimes.
We were taught how the world works and how to get along in it. Then, when suddenly we experience any kind of big change all bets are off.
This can be really disconcerting. It is also a doorway into the potential of your True Self.
Truth (or whatever name you give to it) is unlimited. But our life has material form… not that it’s limited Absolutely, but it is created in response to how we design it. The reality is we use something like 4% of our actual power in doing that and the rest runs on autopilot without us even knowing it.
What could be possible if you enlisted 10, 20 or even 50% of your actual power consciously? I used to LOVE to talk about this with friends growing up.
Life has two purposes.
- Your Self-Realization/Enlightenment (everyone is doing this regardless if they are “conscious”, the only determinant of speed is an applied energy of conscious choice)
- Your individual Life Purpose – There you have it. This is not something Hollywood made up, and we all have one. It is unique to you as an individual based on your specific gifts and skills. Your ability to cultivate it and align it in a way that brings you all the goodies life has to offer is related to (not determined by) and exponentially supported by #1.
I will leave #1 out of it for a moment and talk about life, cause that’s where most of our troubles start to show up and throw us off the tracks spinning into a cataclysmic spiral of self-defeat. Seriously, let’s be dramatic about it… life can get pretty rough sometimes and there is no useful purpose in denying it. If you are one of the minorities who has had smooth sailing, please do comment on this post because you are my hero and I love to know more about what that is like! (I am not being even the least bit sarcastic)
Last week I wrote about how our culture is not set up to support serious spiritual seekers. Our culture is also not set up to support the aims of life for all humans either.
I hate being the bearer of bad news, but it is what it is.
Fortunately, there are more and more outlying groups and individuals who are in the world with an understanding of this phenomenon and creating movements to expand awareness on how to live a different way, a “new” way. That’s so awesome, I applaud them! Hooray! Help for humanity is growing every day.
For me personally, I am more old school and scientific at heart (Imagining myself in a dusty library surrounded by books in wire-rimmed glasses wearing tweed), so I am grateful to have an amazing teacher who has given me the spiritual science that employs the principles many people are building these movements in relationship to.
So in my own effort to join the cheer squad for awakening humanity, I like to share what I know to those of you in the thick of it or who are looking for another way in.
This is an excerpt from Durga Ma’s book, The Yoga of Wealth
Ancient spiritual teachings mention four fundamental aims of life: (1) dharma, the knowledge and application of divine law, (2) prosperity and abundance, (3) enjoyment and pleasure, and (4) freedom, liberation from limitations of any kind, including rebirth.
These four aims constitute a sequence – when you master the art of living, you can attain and maintain wealth; with wealth, you can enjoy life and find some happiness; when you’ve had enough of all that, you become naturally drawn to seek freedom from the snares associated with trying to obtain ad maintain wealth and temporal happiness.
What I am pointing to is the first aim, dharma, the knowledge and application of divine law. Ours (whatever we have constructed as our own belief system) is missing some seriously important information.
This is often where people start getting confused and triggered around the 
misconceptions that overlap spirituality and religion, philosophy and science because the quantifiable tangent is challenging for the mind to grasp. Until you put the “laws” into action and experience the outcome.
Are you wondering what is divine law?
Great! I can’t wait to share it, but you will have to wait to read it until next week. This has to sink in first in order to really get the most out of it. But here is another short excerpt from The Yoga of Wealth to hold you over…
Another way of looking at the four aims of life expresses the direction in which life itself is aimed. The literal definition of the word God in Sanskrit, brahman, is “growth, evolution, increase, and expansion.” As an expression (that’s you) of the Divine, life itself is divine, and as such, has these same characteristics. Life will advance, and so will we. This is inevitable.
Life expresses its divinity as and through each of us to the degree that we live in alignment with the Divine, attain and maintain wealth, experience happiness and enjoyment, and find freedom. Not only are we most content when we do not resist the current of Life toward these aims, but we perform the highest service to the world through their fulfillment. This advancing movement in the relative realm of this world is a natural characteristic of the Divine; our endeavor to live in harmony with It is the highest service to all living beings. The payoff is our own prosperity, happiness and freedom.
Stay tuned for the principles that govern our alignment with Truth/Divine!
With love,
Anandi
Spiritual Voyagers 
Hi A…u wrote: We were taught how the world works and how to get along in it. Then, when suddenly we experience any kind of big change all bets are off.
the problem is, we weren’t taught how the world works, and there was NO teaching on how to navigate that mess that we call “world”, so that many did not find their way to learning how to get along in it……..we had to stumble along and it was hit and miss….so not much real FOCUS on actualizing things for ourselves…we were fractured…..so all those pieces kept us distracted from honing in on our destiny, unless our destiny was to learn how to put humpty dumpty back together again…which really only can happen IF we have enough experience BEYOND that separated state, so that we can bring THAT wholeness into our experiencing the divided fragmented state……..SO as I see it, we were disconnected mostly from ourselves first, then the “other”…..the grown ups didn’t know how to help us LIVE, because they didn’t know……clara
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Hello Clara,
What a wonderfully put comment, thank you for contributing! You make a great point… we were taught how the world works without the understanding of how it actually operates. A simple mistake from lack of understanding that has had grave consequences in modern society.
This has been one of the most enriching parts of my spiritual education, dharma. The universal laws that actually determine how the forces of nature move in and create the world.
Without this knowledge we are a bit like humpty dumpty! It is a hit or miss game and largely where the misinformed ideas about many things in spirituality come from, nevermind life!
Certainly it is our original separpation from the realization of ourselves that becomes the systemic expression of life and the world where our confusion arises. Which is why my passion lies in walking back toward the originial situation as a being who is realizing this Truth and expressing it as my life through the choices I make. Not for the faint of heart, are we?!!
Warmly,
Anandi
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so IF we have enough experience BEYOND that separated fragmented state, we can bring THAT wholeness into our experiencing the divided fractured states we find ourselves perceiving through, and in that way, we can HEAL those split off parts as the Light of the wholeness rakes the pieces back into center……for me this is WHY we go into the expanded state….to bring that love/light/vibration BACK INTO our everyday busyness.
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Absolutely! I like to call this Expressed Spirituality, after a talk I listened to from Adyashanti. It states the obvious, but also points to a more matured degree of spirituality. It is one thing to realize something or to have an experience, it is another thing all together to allow that experience to inform and begin to reorganize the orientation of life.
We live in a world that almost exculsively directs its attention outside of ourselves, our bodies. This reality does little to relieve our internal core wounds, but serves more to reflect and magnifiy them back to us.
So by going into meditation and approaching the Truth of our being we are acting in ultimate rebellion to the illusion, going to the source for answers versus the reflection. Returning again to our body and our world with clearer eyes, minds and hearts.
Then we add knowledge and study to reinorce and clarify our expereince and we are in business!! The business of changing the world 🙂
Warmly,
Anandi
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