“Achieving Your Life’s Purpose”

         Dr. Daniel Amen is a popular psychiatrist who writes and lectures about how to have a healthy brain. I’ve watched him a number of times on public television and I have learned a lot from him. One of the suggestions he gives in developing good mental health is to know your motivation. He goes on to say that once you establish your motivation you are to remind yourself of it every day. When I heard this idea, I began to consider my motivation. I began to think about my reason for getting out of bed every day, my reason for living. It was odd to think about, to really ponder my purpose for life; but it didn’t take long before I discovered that purpose. It is to live with an open heart. To make myself available to the present moment, to the person in front of me, to the beauty all around me. It is to refuse to close myself to anything, anybody; to know all beings deserve to be loved.

         I was quite pleased with myself when I declared my purpose, a little on the self-righteous side, in fact; but it didn’t take long before I realized it’s much easier to declare one’s purpose than to fully integrate it into everyday living.

         After a few months of beating myself up when I kept finding my heart close when I tried time and time again to force it open, I found this essay by Jeff Foster. I share it with you today in case you are struggling with not measuring up to what you hope for yourself too.

         From “How To Open Your Heart,” Foster writes, “Do not try to open your heart. That would be a subtle movement of aggression toward your immediate embodied experience. Never tell a closed heart to open; it will shut more tightly to protect itself, feeling your resistance and disapproval. A heart unfurls only when conditions are right; your demand for openness invites closure. This is the supreme intelligence of the heart. Instead bow to the heart in its current state. If it’s closed, sanctify the closure. Make it safe; safe even to feel unsafe. Trust that when the heart is ready, and not a moment before, it will open, like a flower in the warmth of the sun. There is no rush for the heart. Trust the opening and the closing, too, the expansion and contraction; this is the heart’s way of breathing: safe, unsafe, safe, unsafe; the beautiful fragility of being human, and all held in the most perfect love.”

         No matter what purpose you define for yourself, be gentle when you can’t measure any success or when you think you should be further along your spiritual path than you are. Let yourself be held in the most perfect love. In fact, open your heart to yourself. You’re doing fine.

You are the light of the world.

Yours,

Lynne