You Know Your Life Is On Purpose When You Can Witness Your
Inherited Purpose
"If you are able to stay alert and present at that time (that
the pain-body awakens) and watch whatever you feel within,
rather than be taken over by it, it affords an opportunity for
the most powerful spiritual practice, and a rapid transmutation
of all past pain becomes possible." Eckhart Tolle -- The Power
of Now
As I was rereading Eckhart Tolle's insightful book, The Power of
Now, this week I came across the above quote, and knew I had to
share it with this community of purposeful people. For me, it's
really at the crux of the work that transforms people's lives.
It's also why in the Life On Purpose Process, one of the major
steps that precedes clarifying your life purpose is to unmask or
uncover your Inherited Purpose, which I believe is analogous to
the 'pain-body' that Tolle is referring to.
Otherwise, it's simply too hard to really get to the essence of
who you are and why you came to planet earth - i.e. your life
purpose. But, as Tolle also points out, this process of
witnessing the pain-body/Inherited Purpose is often a major
challenge.
Tolle goes on to write: "This is not to deny that you may
encounter intense inner resistance to disidentifying from your
pain. This will be the case particularly if you have lived
closely identified with your emotional pain-body for most of
your life and the whole or a large part of your sense of self is
invested in it. What this means is that you have made an unhappy
self out of your pain-body and believe that this mind-made
fiction is who you are. In this case, unconscious fear of losing
your identity will create strong resistance to any
disidentification."
Take a moment and consider this. Who do you know that you would
say has misidentified themselves as their pain, or who has
unconsciously created an image of who they consider themselves
to be that's based in fear, lack and struggle? I know as I look
around the room the one person that I see who has done that is
ME, and as far as I can tell in the over 16 years of working as
a coach, so has everyone else. Now, granted some have invested
more effort into creating this case of 'mistaken identity' than
others, but we all have done it. It seems inherent in the nature
of being human. But as Tolle points out in "The Power of Now"
and I'm here to emphasize, none of us are stuck with that old,
fear-based identity. And Tolle points to one very simple and
effective step towards freedom from the 'mind-made' Inherited
Purpose. Whenever you find yourself in some kind of emotional
pain, step aside. Step into the witness position and observe the
pain. Don't try to avoid it, nor overcome it for 'what you
resist will only persist' but step aside and watch it, and in
the process you'll begin to realize that while you have a mind
and that mind at times will spin off thoughts which will lead
your body to react with a painful emotion, you are not that mind
nor that body.
And in that moment of realizing you have a mind and body, you
will free yourself from being had by the mind and body. And
that's a major step towards living your life on purpose.