Few of us will leave this lifetime without experiencing problems and difficulties. And when they happen, most of us have wondered: Why me? Did you ever think that maybe you set it up that way, that you saw those challenges as opportunities to grow and expand your consciousness?
So, if that is the case…
The idea of having set up our life experiences for a purpose puts one’s life in a whole new context. It brings new meaning to life events because we are seeing them as part of a bigger picture.
Probably the most valuable outcome is that seeing the bigger picture gets us out of victim mode. You know, when we tell our “poor me” stories about how our spouse continually ignores us, our adult children take us for granted and we feel like their servant, or our boss always disregards our brilliant suggestions that would make a genuine improvement in the workplace.
In so many cases, the human tendency is to tell those stories from the point of the aggrieved party—Look what was done to me. These days, theres a lot of that going on in collective stories as well as in our individual ones.
But there are different ways to interpret events, and we can choose the attitude we convey when we tell our stories.
Tell the story from a bigger perspective…
Instead of seeing my life from inside it, I prefer the bigger view. It’s much more empowering to realize that the unfolding of my life was not a random bunch of events tossed together as if they were balls in a lottery drum.
You can do the same thing, approaching it as a thought experiment. You don’t have to believe that you actually did plan your life in advance. You can just play with the idea.
- What if it were true?
- Why would I have picked these particular challenges?
- How did i imagine the experience would benefit me in the long run?
These guidelines might help:
- Before starting: It may help to set aside your current beliefs and attitudes on the topic. You can tuck them safely away in an imaginary box or suitcase until your exploration is complete. (This is a thought experiment so you can set this up as you like.)
- Ask the question: If it’s true that I created this life to give me certain experiences, how would that explain __insert aspect you’d like to explore________?
- Be curious and explore: There’s more than one way to explore a question. Experiment to find what works best for you.
Ask the question to open up the field, and then go about your daily activities. You may find that something relevant pops into your head when you’re not thinking about it. Or you might wake up one morning with an insight. This may happen the next day or a week from now. Working like this tends to unfold in its own time. Your job is to be sincerely curious and open to receive insights when they appear in your field.
Contemplate from the perspective of your inner world. Sit or lie quietly, eyes closed, breathing softly. Drop deep into your belly. This connects you with the wiser aspects of your consciousness, the ones that can help your brain make sense of things from a deeper, broader, more insightful perspective.
Choose what fits for you: When you’ve explored to your satisfaction, you’ll have a rich pool of new insights to consider along with everything you had tucked away in the box or suitcase. With all of that, you are then in a position to choose what fits for you, what makes the most sense… for the time being, at least.
Life continues to unfold…
At some point, you’ll discover there’s yet a broader perspective that explains even more and fits better with the expanded consciousness that continues to arise as your life unfolds.
And that’s Life…
Doing as Life does.
_________________________
Bibliography
As many of you know, this is one of my favourite stories. It’s relevant to the telling of our own stories…
The moral of the story: The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad, because you never know what will be the consequences of a misfortune… or you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
