The key to making decisions is not so much about what to do, but about who I am. We have gotten brainwashed into believing that the purpose of our life has to do with the role we play and how much money or acclaim we can get from it. So, if I’m a mother, the purpose of my life becomes taking care of my children. If I’m a doctor, the purpose of my life is to treat. The purpose of my life, if I’m a gardener, is to tend to plants. The purpose of my life, if I’m a cook, is to cook. But these are just the roles we play, and they have nothing to do with the purpose of our life.
We get so caught up in thinking that the biggest decision in our lives is to figure out the purpose of our life. We think that once we can figure out what to do, we’ll know who we are. If I choose to cook, it means I am a cook. If I choose to practise law, I am a lawyer, if I choose medicine I am a doctor. So then naturally, this becomes a major decision because it’s not just what to do, but it’s who I will be. The fear of making the wrong career decision becomes a life-death situation about my entire life.
The truth is, the only wrong decision you can make is to not awaken, to not look within, to not shift focus from the outer world to the inner world, to not live from the heart. When I say from the heart, of course I don’t mean your impulses and your desires and your instincts, but I mean to not live really from love. That’s the purpose of our life.
We get so caught up in thinking that the biggest decision in our lives is to figure out the purpose of our life.
We think that once we can figure out what to do, we’ll know who we are. If I choose to cook, it means I am a cook. If I choose to practise law, I am a lawyer, if I choose medicine I am a doctor. So then naturally, this becomes a major decision because it’s not just what to do, but it’s who I will be. The fear of making the wrong career decision becomes a life-death situation about my entire life.
The truth is, the only wrong decision you can make is to not awaken, to not look within, to not shift focus from the outer world to the inner world, to not live from the heart. When I say from the heart, of course I don’t mean your impulses and your desires and your instincts, but I mean to not live really from love. That’s the purpose of our life.
In any career, you’ve got at most a few decades for it. It’s barely half your life. We have all this life prior to our career, all this life post-retirement. Who am I then, once I retire.
This is a very tricky and sticky way to try to think about your purpose, and it’s what gives us the sense of desperation in making our decisions, because it’s not just about this city or that city or this job or that job, it’s about my life and purpose. The minute that you can actually recognise that the purpose of life is to know who you are, not in the role you play but who you are as soul, who you are as spirit, who you are as essence, who you are as love, who you are as Divine, then decisions become much easier. Then we realise that the role is just what we are doing for a certain number of hours a day for a certain number of years, and hopefully it’s something that benefits society, that creates a positive impact, but it’s not who I am. So the incredible pressure is off.
I’m not trying to make light of our careers or jobs. Anything that you’re going to do for many decades is something that certainly deserves thought and attention. But we need to understand that these are decisions we’re making about roles that we want to play, and not the purpose of our life. We get to choose what role to play, but none of it has anything to do with our purpose. Our purpose is waking up and living deeply as who we are, as divinity, as consciousness, as love.
Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati