Choices

The Purpose of Life

––––––––

From the Masters:  Life is an orderly, yet seemingly random, progression of experiences and relationships based on choices. It is a cycle of experimentation and learning, and its only purpose is to help you learn and grow along the human path. Growth is continuous and should never cease.

ONE OF THE most frequent questions people ask, is Why are we here? At some point in our lives, we all want to know what our purpose in life is.

According to the Masters, our goals are to learn, to grow, and to experience human life. As Pierre de Chardin said, You are not a human being having a spiritual experience; you are a spiritual being having a human experience.

We don’t need to learn to be spiritual. We’re already spiritual—it’s how we started out and it’s how we’ll eventually end up. What we need is practice at being human.

I’ll admit it; I’m as guilty as anyone. Instead of enjoying the life of physicality, I struggle against it, trying hard to be a spiritual being rather than a physical being. I would rather spend hours meditating, studying on the Astral plane, or interpreting dreams than actually living my life. Yet, the whole purpose of physical life is to experience this world and all it encompasses.

Now for some, that might mean cliff diving in Mexico, eating snails in France, or running with the bulls in Spain. After all, what you do in life is up to you and it can be as crazy or as mundane as you wish it to be.

Most of us, though, pursue rather quiet lives filled with normal, day-to-day tasks, such as chasing a paycheck, raising a family, and participating in those dramas that we call life. Yet, no matter what activities we pursue, we’re all learning and experiencing.

It doesn’t matter if you spend your life traveling the world, only taking jobs when you need to; or you spend your life pursuing a specific career, thereby foregoing family, travel, and other ‘non-essentials’ in pursuit of the ultimate corporate position. Whatever path each of us follows provides us with insights and understanding.

Every interaction we have with others, with nature, with ourselves, is a chance to experience some aspect of life. The interaction can be something as small and as simple as a snowflake landing on your hand and causing you to smile, to something more complex such as the morning meeting you have with your employer and all the potential reactions and outcomes that stem from that meeting.

It doesn’t matter if the pattern of your life is simple or complex; it’s still an important piece of the whole. A single grain of sand may seem small and insignificant, but without it and all the other grains of sand, there is no beach. The same is true of each of us. While our own lives may seem small and of little consequence, we all contribute to the reality that is life—and that makes each of us very important indeed.

It's a School, Not Utopia

––––––––

From the Masters:  "Reaching a state of perfection is not a desired goal, for perfection suggests a state of being that is static and unchanging. Consciousness must grow or it becomes no longer aware. So the entire purpose of all is to learn, experience, and create.

Even as essence, you are not some perfect being—and neither are we. We are all in a state of becoming—always. This is why you exist as you are on this plane—to grow, to learn, to create, to become even more than you are, even more than we all are. It is why we all exist on all planes.

I HAVE A friend who occasionally gets disgusted with the day-to-day stresses, and the news filled with violence. That’s when she starts telling me about how she wants to find a place where the people act more like grown-ups than little kids.

A utopia, that’s what she keeps saying she wants. A place where people don’t kill each other because their politics or religions differ; a place where everyone has potable water, nutritious food, proper housing, and decent clothing; a place where people are nice to each other just because they want to be. She wants a place where everyone lives happily ever after, with no strife, no stress, and no worries.

I also abhor violence and wish that we could all live in a world where everything is clean, beautiful, and peaceful; where there’s no illness, no war, and no discord (sort of a Disneyworld on steroids). But I also know that while it’s a great fantasy, it’s not really the point of our being here on Earth.

Everyone is here because they want to learn; they want to experience all the things that physical life can be. Earth is like a giant school, filled with students at every level of enlightenment. Some are well into the lessons on agape (a spiritual and selfless love) and acceptance, while others are still lost amid lessons filled with fear.

With such a wide learning gap, it means there’s going to be discord—it’s inevitable; but that’s okay. Without discord, there’s no change, and without change, there’s no growth.

In this vast school of ours, you have grammar school kids mixed with middle school children, mixed with high school and college kids. You’ll also encounter some student teachers along the way, and maybe even one or two parents.

The youngest kids aren’t really much trouble. They pretty much keep to themselves, exploring the surroundings, and getting used to the whole concept of being in a Physical world and figuring out what is expected of them.

Then there are the toddlers. They squabble, fight, bicker, and act like your typical child. It’s all mine, mine, mine and no, no, no, and teaching them to share and to resolve issues without hitting or biting becomes a full-time responsibility for some of the older students. Some of your best soldiers and worst political leaders are toddlers.

The middle school students have replaced the overt bad behaviors of the little kids with more subtle, manipulative behaviors. They’ve figured out how to subvert the rules, manipulate the players of whatever game they’re participating in, and find and use the loopholes in the rules. They know how to get their own way, even if it takes years. It’s like walking into a house where the lamp is broken, the plants are knocked over, and the kids are running about screaming and yelling. While you’re focused on that and what to do about it, you don’t even realize that someone has taken all the money you had hidden in the cookie jar. (Kind of sounds like most of the politicians and financial schemers in the world, doesn't it?)

The high schoolers are enamored of the stuff they can get on the Physical plane—beauty, power, money, fame—these become their goals, and they will try overt tactics and subversive maneuvers to attain them. It’s mostly the high schoolers who are scrambling to become super models, big league ball players, and corporate moguls.

The college students are aimed at finding some peace (and quiet). They work at monitoring the playground, breaking up the squabbles, reinforcing the rules, and just trying to keep everyone happy (including themselves). But don’t think that they’re all perfect; after all, they are human, too. So, even they squabble, argue, and bicker. Sometimes, they even totally forget that they’re supposed to be watching the younger kids and setting a good example for them.

The student teachers are those who make appearances every 1000 years or so. They leave behind their words of wisdom, deeds of love and altruism, and the hope that we can all reach their level. People such as Yeshua, Buddha, Gandhi, or Mohammad have all left their mark on our little school, Earth.

The most important thing we need to remember, though, is that we’re all human, and humans learn best by trial and error. Therefore, as long as we’re using the world as our playground and learning center, it will never be a utopia, because you can’t learn in a world that’s already perfect.

Learning by Observing

While you can't learn much in a world that is a perfect utopia, you can learn through the observation of others. Although many people are doers (people who enjoy going out and getting involved in and taking an active part in life), there are those who prefer to be observers.

Observers prefer to watch life, often only getting involved in life at certain times or at certain levels. For instance, observers may partake of the more day-to-day activities of work and interacting with family and friends, but overall, they prefer to do their living vicariously—via books, movies, television, or through people-watching.

I’m one of those who loves to spend time observing people. I can spend hours sitting in the center of a shopping mall or a park just watching the people as they parade past. Simply observing those brief snippets of interactions between and among the various people who pass by provides me with insights I might not get otherwise.

It’s one of the ways I learn about relationships and human interactions. No two people will act or react in quite the same way to the same situation. So, unless you can see all the major events of a person’s current life as well as any previous lives that might be affecting them, you’ll never be able to easily understand why someone acted or reacted as they did.

Think about how often you’ve heard or seen some news item about a seemingly senseless and random crime and wondered, Why? Why did that person do that? Why did the victim not try to defend themselves? What was the attacker or victim thinking?

But if we could see all the mitigating factors contributing to the event, we might find out that the crime wasn’t so random or senseless. Maybe there was an imbalance that was resolved by the crime, or maybe the crime was an agreed-upon interaction (a lesson) that the perpetrator and victim were sharing.

However, even if we can’t see all the contributing elements in an event, we can still learn from our observations.

From the Masters:  "This is how we learn (all of us), because you can spend many lifetimes experiencing every type of drama or you can experience some [dramas] and observe others and learn that way. Both ways are fine. It is your choice.

If you would study another’s dramas while seeking the underlying reasons for their responses, does it help you to confront your own lessons and your own dramas (past and current). These, then, become your lessons.

Awakening to Awareness

––––––––

From the Masters:  "This information is not new to you; you have simply forgotten it while you participate in the dramas and experiences of the Physical world.

For those who are not yet at the point where they need or want this information, the awareness is overlooked and the information ignored, because it would help them not in their lives. For others who are ready, we are here.

IN THE MASTERS’ philosophy, it doesn’t matter what we believe—when we’re ready, we’ll see the information and recognize it for what it is. This is because each of us accepts as much or as little knowledge and enlightenment as we’re capable of based on the amount of insight we have gained in our travels through this world—not only in this current lifetime but also the many other lifetimes we have spent here.

Eventually, awareness comes to each of us, but not always in the same way or at the same time. Enlightenment can occur slowly, or it can happen quickly; but once it kicks in, it’s difficult not to recognize it.

For me, awakening to the reality of our world was like a faucet. At first, it was a trickle with small reminders showing up in books, movies, television shows, and even some of the songs I heard on the radio.

All through my childhood these small reminders continued to appear. Each one was another glimpse of how much more there was to life that was just outside our physical senses.

In my teens and through my early adulthood, this faucet of information ran more steadily. Now I was actually spending time on the Astral plane, perceiving departing souls, and learning how to use the power of focused thought.

Once I had my near-death experience (NDE), though, the faucet was on full and would no longer shut off.

It was as if I had been asleep in a darkened room, and the window shades had been raised just a little more each year, until suddenly the room was flooded with light. Closing the shades and blocking out that wondrous light is no more an option to me than is holding my breath for a thousand years. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to, because the information available to me now is just too precious and beautiful.

Five Basic Principles of Life

The memory of the ideals that form the basic tenets and principles of all life came as part of that flood of awareness. These five principles, which are at work even when we don’t realize it, are what make our seemingly random lives truly orderly. They are:

Truth

Choice

Balance

Unification

Eternal Life

The Masters see these five principles as being the major influencers to life―all life on every plane existence. So, to understand the Masters’ advice regarding life and relationships, you need to understand these basic philosophical concepts. 

Truth

––––––––

From the Masters:  Truth is not a set of rules, nor is it a formula. Truth is choice. Always is it true that what you experience is true only for you and is based solely on your choices. Everyone will experience the same event differently, but their experience of that event is true for them; none are ‘wrong,’ because all are individuals and so experience individual truth.

––––––––

ONE OF THE principles to the Masters’ philosophy is the various levels of truth; this includes the pandimensional and universal laws.

They explain truth as having many layers or levels; some truths are immutable, while other truths can vary depending on who is manifesting the truth. Truth on a pandimensional level is immutable, while truth on a planetary level is more of a consensus of everyone on that planet. At the same time, each country and each society has its own truths, which change every time the national or societal structure changes.

Finally, there are the truths for each individual on each planet, and those are extremely specific to the individual and they rarely affect more than that individual. For instance, the statement: Sam is nearsighted is true for Sam; but it’s not true for the entire population of the planet; therefore, it’s a personal truth only for Sam.

The statement: Trees use photosynthesis to create nourishment is a world or planetary truth, because it is only true (as far as we know) on Earth. Other worlds in the Physical plane may not even have trees, or, if they do, then the trees may use some other method to create nourishment for themselves.

Emotional energy becomes manifest as part of your surroundings on the Astral plane is a planal truth. That’s because it is applicable throughout the entire Astral plane and not just one portion of it.

Truths that span all worlds, planes, realities, and dimensions are pandimensional truths. Pandimensional truths form the foundation of everything we understand.