Why am I here?

If we are to do the necessary practice of shifting energy on a large scale, the first place we want to start is with ourselves, and getting clear of the psychic crap we pick up every day, as well as the crap we’ve been carrying with us as karma, trauma, or just habits.

The next step, which actually involves lots of pieces, is to be clear on where you’re going in the highest sense. Your spiritual purpose, or your role in the process of human spiritual evolution. The “why am I here.”

This is an answer we begin to come to by looking at our past—more particularly our families—with curiosity instead of judgment. We start with the premise that we chose our families—that this was not a cosmic accident. (Actually, we’re starting the whole thing with the premise that there are no cosmic accidents.) Think about your parents, about the kind of people they were. You can bring siblings into the equation, too, although that gets a bit complicated, because you’re working with the thought that they too chose your family for a purpose. Hmmm ... might be interesting to know what your siblings thought of your parents in this scenario, too—do they see the same things you do? But I digress.

When I look at my parents, I realize that over the past several years my understanding of their part in my spiritual placement (if you will) has changed somewhat, and gotten a bit more nuanced. That’s okay—you start where you are and as your understanding grows, I think you get simply more information to push you along. So…Redfield, in the Celestine Prophecy, suggests four paradigms of power that we all engage in: interrogation, intimidation, aloofness / withdrawal, and “poor me” or victim. All of these are used as ways to manipulate relationships to draw as much energy / power to ourselves as possible. He suggests the we develop these power paradigms by observing our parents and reacting to their power paradigms, and that this serves also as a base for us to grow from.

The danger in this, though, is in letting ourselves get trapped in the simplicity of this four-part power model. I see myself, for example, reacting differently to different people when I get caught in a power play. Still, it’s a useful tool for learning to observe power manipulation and for walking away from it. Of course, it's also important to focus on the part where you learn to walk away, instead of using it as an excuse!

A huge part of what we learn – or can learn – from our parents comes from observing—again, with curiosity, not judgment—who/how they are in the world in terms of providing sort of a base from which we gain tools to create our paths. For some people, this may be easy: my dad was a doctor, I’m a doctor, etc. But for this new goal of conscious spiritual evolution, or conscious sanity, I think it’s important to go beyond that. And for those of us whose parental lessons may not be so obvious in the sense that following their mundane path isn’t what we’re aiming for. In my case, at one point in my life or another, both my parents were teachers. I don’t think that how they approached teaching is necessarily a model from which I should draw—although I could be wrong. In fact, it took me years to understand that what I think is the biggest synthesis for me is how they each approached/approach spirituality and spiritual exploration. From my mother, I get a huge helping of curiosity, and willingness to explore new things. My mother is one of those people who, when her attention is caught, is just as likely to dive headlong into the pool as she is to check the temperature with her toe in the shallow end. My dad was much more cynical (possibly because the idealism was crushed at a young age, but I’m not trying to defend or explain him, just observe). He frequently would make statements that would leave you wondering why he wasn’t an atheist—and by the time I was a young adult, he and my mom were pretty much at opposite ends of spectrum when it came to trying “new,” although I still describe him as a perpetual seeker.

So from Mom, curiosity and willingness to explore. From Dad, a desire to explain, debunk, and ground in logic and experience, rather than taking what I see at face value. And probably, I really shouldn’t forget the teacher thing—there’s definitely a need to discover (from both of them), but for the sake of sharing.

So for you…what do you see in your parents’ lives, in their way of being in the world, that was important to you as you engage in this process?