EXPERIENCE
I am frequently asked by students and clients “what is the purpose of life”, my answer in a word – EXPERIENCE. Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan in a Bowl of Saki expresses this more eloquently, “life is an opportunity given to satisfy the hunger and thirst of the soul”.
Often this answer is followed by a barrage of questions, some that cannot be answered except by the mystics and masters who have transcended the limitations of material existence. But what are the rest of us to do as we seek to make sense of the struggle, disappointment and seeming insanity of everyday life?
One view holds that we recognize the illusory nature of life in the ‘earth school’, viewing our lives and life around us as a theatrical play – Lila in the Hindu tradition. I must admit that I intellectually grasp this approach but find it extremely difficult to detach from the drama when it is unfolding close to me and what I – my ego personality –defines as important. Having said that, I know that therein lies the peace and tranquility that I hunger for. And so, like many, I am caught between my soul’s longing for serenity and bliss and my ego’s interests and worldly preoccupations and pursuits.
A more elaborative answer to the question of the purpose of life is that we choose to incarnate to learn specific lessons, to heal old wounds, to balance karma and/ or to serve others in addition to experiencing the magnificence of the physical world.
This view takes one closer to understanding the cycle of reincarnation – souls returning time and time again having gotten caught-up in the cycle of rebirth — learning and mastering lessons, creating karma that will need future balancing, being impacted by experience that requires future healing; each of us getting caught up in the cycle of birth and rebirth in much the same way as one gets caught up in the force of the ocean’s undertow.
Many of us would like to believe that through our many incarnations we have always taken the proverbial ‘high road’, said another way, that we have chosen light over dark, good over evil. The truth is that the soul’s progression through eternity is neither quick, easy nor in one direction. It is filled with countless choices some of which lead us toward the experience of absolute, unconditional love that is the world of Spirit and others that lead us away from that bliss.
And so the journey is long – filled with choice after choice, experience after experience. The accumulation of experience prompts growth that fuels our own spiritual evolution and contributes to the collective evolution of humanity and that will contribute to the realization of ‘heaven on earth’ someday. On a bad day it may be difficult to hold this broad view of our collective movement to ascension. But hopefully on a good day when your life experience allows you to wallow in peace and tranquility, you will remember that your journey through eternity is an “opportunity given to satisfy the hunger and thirst of the soul”.
Given that, the challenge for each of us is to come to understand the desires of the ego personality and the intentions of the soul. Reconciling the differences between the two is the path to the peace, tranquility and unconditional love that we yearn. . .
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