Already Know
The purpose for your life is less about what you’ll do and where you’ll go and the things you will achieve and more about who you are and who you are becoming. The plan isn’t the things that will happen to you and the things that you’ll do - Divinity is not a puppet master, and the world isn’t Gods chessboard. There is no blueprint, script, or list that dictates the happenings of your life, hour by hour, day by day, event by event. If God is a conscious entity that plans things, God hasn’t planned the tragic or the wonderful things that have happened to you. Life happens within the scope of Divine creativity. It’s not the ‘happenings’ that are planned,
You are the plan. You are what the plan is. Your essence, your perspective. The way you live and move and breath and see and hear. The way you love and feel and talk and walk.
The idea of purpose gets in the way of you finding your Deep Knowing, your Inner Wisdom. That space within you where God and Spirit and you are one; where you’re connected to yourself, to the Divine, to the earth, and to the life force within every other living thing. And I’ll tell you why: the concept of purpose puts your focus outside of yourself, your body, your autonomy, and the things that are happening in you. The concept of purpose, especially within more fundamental spaces, has you working and earning and striving for approval and belonging. E.g. I need to achieve my purpose so that I can be acceptable. Until, of course, a new mission is handed to you, and then your acceptance once again depends on fulfilling the next purpose, and the next purpose, and the purpose after that one. Always chasing that elusive sense of being safe, held, and worthy.
One day, Jesus was with his friends, and a whole lot of other people, down by a river. Quite a scene was unfolding, and as it did, the heavens opened, a dove appeared, and with it, a voice echoed from the edges of eternity and said:
“This is my beloved, in whom is my delight.”*
This scene was one of the first we hear about Jesus in the gospel books. It was when his cousin and rogue Rabbi John, baptised him in the Jordan River. It was before Jesus had done anything significant or saviour worthy.
The great I Am bestowed its benevolence, love, approval, and delight in Jesus before Jesus had done a single thing to earn it.
This is how you can know that within you is the wisdom and the grace that you need to make the next right considered action. Because Divinity says the same thing by its very nature to you before you achieve or earn or strive or work for your belonging:
This is my beloved, in whom is my delight.
You are beloved, and the thing that got this whole thing started and keeps it going is delighted in you before you even have a chance to say that you’ve earned it.
It’s already in you.
And we can say that God knows everything that is happening to you in the sense that God is intimately involved in your life, within everything as it happens, wound up in your body, and heart, and spirit. God knows, because, in a way, everything that happens to you, is also happening to God in you. So, go inward. Pack your lunch, put on your shoes, and make the journey into the spaces within you where wisdom, your Deep Knowing, lives. You don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to achieve it. All you have to do is accept it and sink down deep.
Journal Prompt: Think (or write) about a moment where you felt loved, accepted, safe, significant. Consider whether these feelings were attached to an outcome; whether they were the result of something you achieved. Keep digging up memories until you find one where you felt beloved for simply being. Write that feeling into your memory and body in such a way that you can come back to it when you begin to work for your place, rather than live from that place of acceptance that you’re already in.
Liz xo
* Matthew 3:17.