How To Find Your Life Purpose Through Your Life Challenges

Learning the life lessons through experiences in the physical world has been the big part of our souls’ purpose for millenniums of years.  While some souls are graduating from this learning process recently, I know there are many souls who are still working on this level, and I want to help.   (Photo by FreeWine)

How our souls choose to learn our life lessons

When a soul is ready to incarnate, it determines a set of life lessons, and then choose the appropriate birth setting for the best learning opportunities.  Let’s say the soul wants to learn Abundance.  Now which of the following two settings do you think would provide the best learning opportunities?

1. To be born to a wealthy family and just accept the abundance there
2. To be born to a poor family and build his or her abundance, from rugs to riches

Yes, #2 is more challenging but rewarding.  So the courageous soul takes up the challenge.

The trouble is that we forget it when we come to this side of the world.  So now you don’t understand why you were born to poverty while plenty of others are born to reasonably wealthy families.  As you work your way working full time and taking evening classes, and every time you see other kids buying nice stuffs while you worry about paying the rent this month, you wonder, “Why?  Why is life so hard on me?”

The truth is you are right on track.

Let me give you another example of learning Love or Compassion.  For the same reason with Abundance, the soul may prefer to be born to a loveless family so they know firsthand what it is like not to have Love and Compassion.  So that they can grow up to be the Love to the world.

I don’t think we ever choose to learn something negative like Poverty.  We are evolving toward Light.

The pitfall of this “learning by contrast” process

Quite obviously, there is a problem about this learning by contrast process.  Because we are so shortsighted in this physical world and because we don’t clearly remember the life lessons we ourselves chose prior to birth, we may grow bitter and give up the learning altogether.

This is very sad.  Learning the life lessons is one of the purpose of life.  (Life is also about just experiencing this beautiful physical world and expressing our wonderful energy.)  There is no point in sulking and wasting our time.

The awareness of one’s own life lessons is probably one of the best gift of my Akashic Record Reading.  But you can also find your own life lessons through your life challenges.

5 steps to find your life lesson(s)

You need: a few pieces of paper and a few colored pens, a box of tissues, and some quiet time for yourself.

1. On a piece of paper, write down the major challenges in your life. List as many as you want.  Some examples may include (but by no ways limited to):
   • Were you born to an abusive parent?
   • Did your parent die when you were young?
   • Were you born with physical limitations?
   • Were you born to an average middle class family but somehow had trouble connecting to others?
   • Did you repeatedly have trouble with authoritative figures?
   • Did you become a parent at very early age?
   • Did you want children but somehow could not have one?
   • Have you been in abusive relationships?
   • Have you been unhappy with your career?
2. When you are done with step 1, review your list. Now go deeper.  For each challenges, find the quality you have been seeking in each negative situation and write it down in a different color. Connect to your own feeling rather than just jotting down typical answers. This is about YOU.  And try to come up with one or up to three words for each challenge.

   For example, if you were born to an abusive family, did you want Love? Acceptance?  Or maybe it prompted you to seek Autonomy?  Did it lead you to Compassion with people, animals, to nature?  Or maybe in your special case, it helped you to develop a sense of humor with Lightheartedness?

3. Now review again.  Does a few word appear repeatedly?  Do you see a certain “quality”, a theme that runs through all or most of your challenges? On a second sheet of paper, write down what you think is the main theme, or the life lessons you have been working on.
4. Examine the first list of your challenges with this new awareness of your life theme, or life lessons. Do you see how each “negative” situations contribute to the learning of your life lessons?  Take your time. This is a critical step that can change the way you see your whole life.
5. If you notice a new theme or life lessons emerge from your worksheet, write it down on the second sheet of paper. Repeat step 4 and 5 until you get the “Aha!  This is it.  This is what my life is about!”

Pay attention to your emotional cues

The bigger the emotional hang-ups are, the more likely it is tied to your life lesson.  Is there someone in your life that you feel you can’t forgive?  Forgiveness or the quality that person lacked so much may be one of your life lessons.  Is there something you accused “God” for?  Trust or Openness may be your life lesson as well as the quality that improves that something.

180 degree change in how you see life

When you take the time – and more importantly, the courage – to do this exercise to find your life lessons, something magical happens.   Things that bothered you so much stop having the emotional grip on you. You stop going down the roller coaster that is so familiar to you.

Because now you see what you thought to be a horrible drawback in your life is not that at all.  They were learning opportunities!  And you see it so clearly, not like someone telling you “Well, what did you learn from it?” (Don’t we hate that question.)

People may keep saying unkind words.  They may point out you are disabled or been to jail or single or whatever.  That may annoy you but heck, you know the truth.  (Annoying is annoying.  A mosquito is annoying.  They don’t send you off the emotional shoot.)  You know those people are only talking about their own fear.

Learning the life lessons through positive learning experiences

Further, with the awareness of what your life lessons are, you can attract more positive learning experiences.  You don’t have to go through poverty to realize abundance.  If that is the case, you have to go bankrupt every few years to learn the life lesson of Abundance.  No.  You can learn abundance in a more expansive way.  In this example, how about expanding abundance beyond the monetary sense?  How about doing charity?

By becoming fully aware of your life lessons, you attract more positive learning experiences, which speeds up your learning process.  As a group, we humans are finishing up this “learning by contrast” process and becoming more about being.  So do work on your lessons and graduate the school of life!

Living Your Life Purpose

Do you know your life purpose? Are you living your life purpose? How are you making progress in fulfilling your life purpose?

So many of us are waking up to realize we do have purpose in our life, that life is not some random accident but we came here for certain reasons. But many are also frustrated because, as much as we sense we have life purpose, we cannot figure out what it is.

I know the frustration of not knowing the purpose of my life

I certainly know that frustration – I lived in it for years. In my early years, I thought I could find my purpose in higher education. I studied hard and was admitted to one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. Boy, it disappointed me. There was also a time in my life when I thought I could find my purpose in a relationship. Nope. And I did my share of corporate life in America.

Since I left my corporate job last year and put my full attention in my spiritual development, I now feel I have a better perspective on this issue of life purpose. I have the sense of direction that I am making a progress in my life purpose, and this gives me calming satisfaction.

In fact, this was the very reason I started this blog. I want to help you live your purpose. (And if that involves starting a business – which is not necessarily the case but sometimes is, I want to help you in that effort, too) Yet I realize I haven’t written a core post on what life purpose is, so here it is.

General and individual life purpose

In the most generalized level, we all come to live in the physical life form for one common purpose: to experience life in this physical world and to learn and grow through the experience. Steve Pavlina puts it this way in his recent interview with Hunter Nuttall:

“. . . So if consciousness is the only potential common element to this life and the afterlife, then we get the greatest possible long-term gains by developing our consciousness in this life. And what’s really fascinating is that by focusing on the development of your consciousness now, you’ll enjoy an incredible life while you’re here. You’ll lose your fear of death because you’ll know you’re doing the very best you can to prepare for it. And once you lose your fear of death, you’ll live much more fully in the here and now.

For starters you’ll be less timid about taking risks such as quitting your job to start a new business. After all, if you accept that you’re going to die, how you can be afraid of minor stumbling blocks like going broke? Those things are just part of the expansion of your consciousness.

Consciousness develops through expansion, through exposure to new experiences . . . We’re here to have the greatest growth experience – the greatest adventure – any conscious being could ever wish for. . . You’re here to develop yourself as a conscious being.”

So true. I would like to add to this, that there is a reason why each of us are unique. In addition to the big general purpose, each of us have more specific purpose, or set of purposes. Knowing the big purpose is helpful, but I think it’s also helpful to get more personal.

Expression of your uniqueness is one of your life purpose

Have you ever stopped and thought why each of us are different? Our uniqueness is a gift for for ourselves and to the whole world.

Large part of our unique strengths (and challenges) come from our soul origins. Each of our soul (what Steve calls consciousness) has origins. Is this surprising to you? If our soul can survive the death of this lifetime, it has survived many previous lifetimes. Go all the way back when it first incarnated in the physical body on Earth. Where was it before?

For many people, life is meant to be simply lived. There is nothing wrong about this – these people are the salt of the Earth. Their souls know only this Earth, and in the early stage of development.

If you are reading Steve Pavlina or this blog, however, you are probably not one of them. Deep down, you know you have higher aspiration and more specific purpose for your life (or for your many lives). Your soul originated in other sources to make certain contributions to this Earth.

Soul group and life purpose

The origin of the soul (sometimes called soul family) defines your soul level gifts. And you wanted to incarnate on this Earth so that you could make your contribution with your gifts. This is your group level life purpose.

When you express your wonderful soul gifts, when you offer your gifts to improve this Earth, you are fulfilling your life purpose. You are also growing spiritually yourself.

For example, some of my Akashic Record Reading clients’ souls come from outer space (the exact location is not identified at this time) and have firsthand expertise in the blueprints of this Earth and our souls – they really know how things were originally planned to work. Some know this into technical details. Because there have been many corruptions in the blueprint codes, they came to work on the restoration of the blueprints. They are working on the soul level to correct the negativity with their great technical abilities.

On the physical level, they may be working as engineers or program managers. Or economic analysts or medical researchers or even philosophers. These are all different ways they utilize their soul gifts, their analytical and well-organized thinking capabilities, and they are restoring the original blueprints. (I haven’t read his Akashic Records, so I’m not 100% sure, but I think Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61), belongs to this group. See how meticulously he works on the technical accuracy and perfection.)

Another example is Dr. Eric Pearl of the Reconnection. He is considered to be a Pleiadian. (In this case, we know the location of his home.) Pleiadians are here to bring changes (and entertain us along the way).

Souls also take trainings, like taking college majors, that further define their gifts and purposes. I’ll write about this into details later in another post – this itself is a huge topic.

If you are interested in learning more about various soul groups (soul families), there is a book called Soul Mastery: Accessing the Gifts of Your Soul. It doesn’t include several soul groups somehow, and it doesn’t explain the critical steps to identify and straighten up the energetic issues prior to reading the Akashic Records (sometimes, the “book” may have the wrong cover, etc.), but it’s an interesting read.

Life purpose and life lessons

Each individual soul chooses a set of life lessons prior to incarnation. Dr. Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters explains this important issue. So working on the life lessons you yourself chose before incarnation is part of the life purpose. This is your life purpose that is specific to this lifetime.

By the way, this is another thing I check in my Akashic Record Reading, and it is such a joy when the client says something like, “I knew this! This XXXXX has meant so much in my life! So I’ve been learning this all my life.”

Then there are some additional purposes, such as healing the energetic wounds you still suffer from previous lives. Along the way, we intend to fulfill some soul agreements we made with other souls.

Your life purpose is NOT a must-do list given by someone else

I hope you are not getting overwhelmed. It is essential to realize that living your life purpose is more about being than doing. I know it looks like we have to do so many things. But our soul’s expansion does not correlate to the quantity of experiences. We can learn so much and make huge progress in our life lesson from one experience. And expressing your soul gifts is more about offering that special energetic quality through your existence than doing something with it.

Your life purpose is definitely NOT an order from heaven that says, “You must do this, or else.” (True divinity doesn’t use this kind of fear tactics.) You, your soul, chose your own life purpose. Let me summarize:

• You chose your origination and training, and you came here to offer your special energetic qualities.
• You chose to come to life each time you incarnated to experience this physical world and to grow and evolve.
• You chose your own life lessons for this lifetime.

Look, aren’t you a beautiful soul? So ambitious and so generous. You chose all these with joyous expectations – otherwise, you didn’t have to incarnate.

How do you feel about life purpose? Do you have a sense of direction that you are living your life purpose? (Photo by Kjell)

Review: Many Lives, Many Masters

Through a few synchronicities, I found myself picking up a copy of Dr. Brian Weiss’ classic Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives. In fact, mine is a Japanese translation – it is worldwide famous classic.

Scientist meets reincarnation

Dr. Brian Weiss was the head of the psychiatry department at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach when, in 1980, he met a patient who would change his life. He is also the graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School. Because of his background, he was only interested in things that can be proven scientifically. Not the type who would subscribe to New Age stuffs, you know.

He used conventional psychiatric therapy on this patient for 18 months and saw no real progress. Then he tried hypnotherapy.

What happened was something he found hard to accept as a doctor and scientist: His patient started recalling her past lives during the hypnotherapy. She also pointed out critical facts about his personal life that she had no way to know. Further, she channeled messages from the “masters” that she could connect in the time between physical incarnations.

I am emphasizing his educational and professional background because I know so many people are skeptical about New Age stuff like reincarnation, thinking it is not scientific. While it is not scientifically proven yet, it has been observed by many sane and well-educated scientists like Dr. Weiss.

Why the New Age is not a New Age at all

Dr. Weiss also addresses the issues many people with Christian or Jewish faith have about reincarnation. He explains the historical manipulation to the Bible by Roman Emperor Constantine. According to him, there were descriptions in the Bible until then that support the idea of reincarnation.

I’m glad I read this part because I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who told me that, as a Catholic, she was taught not to believe in reincarnation. Just like churches use to teach not to believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. (What, they still do?) Until then, I thought many people are skeptical about reincarnation because it is not proven in modern science – I didn’t know there was religious restrictions.

The so-called New Age is not new at all. It is millennium old. It just has been covered up by certain authorities for a long time. We are now rediscovering what our wise ancestors knew both in the eastern and western worlds. (Reincarnation is a basic idea in Buddhism.)

Masters, angels, spirit guides

This book is not only great introduction to past life regression therapy and the idea of reincarnation, but also contains fascinating messages from the “Masters”. Some people may call them angels or spirit guides. These are truly wise messages for life.

Guided by these Masters, Dr. Weiss comes to the realization that each soul chooses the birth setting (time, place, the parents) and the life lessons for the upcoming lifetime. When it completes the lessons, it can leave. Souls need to incarnate as physical beings because there are certain lessons that can only be learned as physical beings.

The meaning of life from the soul’s perspective

This is deep. We usually think of life from the live already-born person’s perspective. Few of us stop and think why we came to be born. We are born already, and before we notice, we are caught up with what’s called life. Most of the time, we are buried in the superficial aspects of life – what to wear to work today, what’s for dinner, what to do this weekend, whether we have enough money, etc. etc.

Even when we have enough resources to realize the importance of setting goals and improving our life and ourselves, we think from the same current perspective – for example, I want to grow my business to certain level so that I can enjoy some material wealth, I want to travel more to see the world firsthand, I want to enrich my social life more, I want to eat healthy and stay fit, etc. etc.

But have we thought about the deeper meaning of life from the soul’s perspective? Why did your soul choose to incarnate this time? What lessons did your soul want to learn in this lifetime? Why did you choose your specific birth setting? How did your birth setting help you learn the lessons you intended to learn? How are you progressing in your lessons? What lessons are left to be learned in this lifetime?

The issue of life and death

Dr. Weiss says the biggest fear of humans is the fear of death, and this understanding – that souls incarnate many times – can alleviate this fear. Maybe. To me, however, I’m more afraid of failing to learn the lessons I have placed on myself before birth. Does that mean I have to live on and on or come back to go through the lessons again in my next lifetime? Like a failed student? (No way!)

I’m seriously reviewing my life progress from the soul’s perspective. This book was like a wakeup call for me. It’s not like I’ve been living lazily without goals – I consider myself to be conscious and awake. But still I feel the need to review the goals themselves from the soul’s perspective.

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