The age old question “What is the purpose of life?” has been the topic of many a worthy treatise yet many proferred answers go only part of the way in answering it.
Some of the usual answers to that question include happiness, love, peace, joy, wisdom, growth and learning. While these may be by-products of the purpose of life they are only part of the answer.
If we accept that we contain within us the spark of the divine then our purpose must include a spiritual element as well as mental and physical elements – the triune of spirit, mind and body. Unfortunately for us we appear to have lost our spirit connection which is the light within us and spend our lives expressing and experiencing only the mental and physical elements of existence.
From a divine perspective (if there is even such a thing) our lives give us the opportunity to express and experience more of our true essence in the duality of physical form. Yet while our inner light still shines we have covered that up with the debris of life much like the Golden Buddha the true nature of which had been covered for 200 years in layers of mud and grime.
We can no longer recognise ourselves as divine beings having a human existence and consequently we have become lost and wander aimlessly in a world without meaning. In order to find ourselves again and to start chipping away at the layers of grime we must embrace our journey here to rediscover who we really are. A good starting point is to understand that we are in fact on a journey and our lives are made up of many mini journeys similar to the “Heroic Journeys” found in mythological stories.
The “Hero’s Journey” forms the basis of all dramatic stories which begin with a call to adventure to free the kingdom (our ordinary lives). This call is analogous to the call we get to make changes in our everyday lives usually when we have become trapped and ground down by the so-called “tyranny and oppression” we experience when we are not living on purpose and being true to ourselves. In our case the tyranny and oppression is created by the evil EGO king who has imprisoned the princess (our inner light and beauty) in the tower (our selves).
The journey is long and arduous and full of challenges and danger. The so-called monsters we encounter along the way are representative of the dark places within our own psyches and the treasure or magic elixir guarded by these monsters is in reality the divine light that we have ourselves chosen to imprison in the tower for fear that if exposed would make us appear different and open us up to ridicule. Our fear is not that we are not good enough but that we are in fact too good and if we allow our light to shine too brightly we will standout from the crowd, become the focus of unwanted attention and make others feel inferior. This makes us feel unsafe so we bury the treaure deep within.
As we battle our monsters we rediscover within us our true heart power which enables us to slay the monsters one by one and to reclaim our freedom to be who we truly are and to shine our light. We return home to our everyday lives with the knowledge and wisdom that our freedom can never be fought for but arises naturally as we surrender to love. We realise that we are in the final analysis soley responsible for the choices we make in our own lives and that we can only change ourselves.
The purpose of our lives is to be the very best we can be from moment to moment and in doing that we brighten the world around us and incidentally find our own acceptance, happiness and peace.