So, What's Your Story?
I'm 58 years old, currently identifying as male in this life, and for most of my life I've questioned my purpose. Based on what I observed around me in my family and community, each person had a purpose or a job to do. This perspective was imprinted upon me and for decades to follow, I've measured my worthiness against this framework.
In looking back at my very early years (I would say younger than 10 years old), I do have memories being confused at what appeared to be the utter complexity of life. There were all of these rules that had to be followed in order to be successful, or what it meant to fail, or what I need to do to be good enough to be loved or to save my very soul.
I now see that I spent a lot of my energy monitoring my thoughts and behaviors against all of these rules. This was the beginning of a core belief that I was not enough most of the time. From this a story developed that I came to believe as truth, was that I was not really important in the grand scheme of things. These core beliefs, coupled with the confusion around being shown that the world was complicated and wrought with judgement, ushered in more than four decades of suffering needlessly.
When I reflect back to my younger years and throughout my adult life, I can clearly see moments when life felt truly clear and utterly simple. Walking with my dog out in the farm fields or pastures, listening to the insects chirping and feeling the gentle breeze or sun on my face. In each of these moments I felt light, with a still mind and relaxed body. My movements were easy and none of the rules seemed to exist.
I've lived in these moments without conscious thought. I have slipped into these places quite by accident as though I'm dreaming. I say dreaming because the moment I'm brought back out, I can recall dismissing the feeling as somewhat irrational and unrealistic. I would shrug it off and remind myself that life is serious, and I need to get my shit together, or at least try to.
I can now see that I have had several moments of "leveling up" or "awakenings" along my journey. Even though I knew they were significant moments, there was a strong part of me that would continue to shrug off the feeling as irrational or unrealistic. I saw those moments as pipedreams and that nothing substantial or relevant could ever come from them.
Heck, it's stupid to even consider that truly being myself or following the deep urges I had for creativity would support me in a way that would pay the bills or put food on the table. I mean, none of my visions of how I wanted my life to be, matched up in any normal way with what the world around me deemed as possible. If I did anything else, I would be lazy or irresponsible or worse yet, prove that my core beliefs were in fact true.
The funny thing about my journey is that my infinite soul, my infinite existence has never abandoned me. It has never given up on bringing circumstances and opportunities into my life for the SOUL purpose of healing my wounds and guiding me back to RE-MEMBER-ing who I truly am. To remind me that I am a member of the infinite Source that IS everything.
I could tell story after story of the suffering I've endured and at first blush, you may feel sympathy or even empathy for me; but this is really unnecessary. What I see now and what has brought more peace in my life, is that the suffering was really a gift. It was a gift because its purpose was to show me what needed to be healed and to understand that the story I've been telling myself was rooted in a lie.
The small number of core stories I've created were fabricated from my very young mind trying to make sense of the circumstances of what I was experiencing and feeling. I've come to understand that this is in fact a common affliction of most humans. Since we are designed in a duality with ego, we MUST make meaning from things we experience. It's part of the package deal we agreed to when we decided to incarnate into a new life.
When I first awakened to this truth of ego and duality and their relationship to suffering, I thought, "Well this is pretty shitty!" I mean why would I do this to myself? What kind of Being would ever want to suffer as much as I have or have inflicted upon others?
Well, as I expected all along, it's really not complicated at all, and all the rules I thought I needed to follow really didn't reduce my suffering at all. If fact, the complicated rules coupled my overarching ignorance of the Truth was really at the core of the problem.
This kind of ignorance is shown every day on the news as people all over the world suffer so much. If you look at the suffering and their patterns, they all point back to feeling separate from the Whole, to have a belief that we are alone with a large dose of fear that there isn't enough. This fear of lack is pervasive and drives much of the suffering we have in the world. We don't want to admit that we (as a collective human race) do IN FACT have much more than we need, we just don't believe it. We are afraid that if we share our abundance, we won't have enough for ourselves to survive.
If you are open to my advice, look at the stories you repeatedly tell yourself about who you are. Look at the circumstances of your life and see if you can recognize patterns in not only what happens but the individual characters in the story as well. Do they seem familiar? Does the story repeat itself with slight variations in the story line or characters? If you spend some time with it, I think you might start to see it. You will start to see how the suffering you experience has a theme, and because you believe your own stories to be true, you have likely felt victimized by someone or something. When did the feeling you are having first start? This is what needs to be healed. I recommend reading the book "Radical Forgiveness" by Colin Tipping to understand where I'm going with this.
I'm 58 years old, currently identifying as male in this life, and now I have no need to question my purpose. In fact, I don't need to DO anything to complete some requirement that will give me a status of feeling purposeful. I've come to discover that it's not about achieving a goal, but rather to experience the complete fullness of life itself, without attachment to the outcomes (good or "bad").
It's by witnessing the experience, all while knowing that I am just experiencing it and it DOES NOT DEFINE me in any way, I can find true joy in my life. I am RE-MEMBERing Who and What I truly am and in that, I can see the beauty of how the Divine works from a place of Love, Compassion, and Healing.
Believe it or Not, this is A story. An overarching narrative that is just my perspective. However, I have a Knowing that there are a few of you out there that will recognize this story to be similar to yours. Is your story serving you?
Dwight Raatz, Author, Personal Coach & Konsilisto
02/23/2023
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