The Mission and the Reason

The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting. I've had plenty of moments of clarity and insight into why I am how I am and I've done so much work over the last 5 years to become who I truly I am, but that is a perpetual journey and it won't be done until I'm ready to leave. I've found wisdom in plenty of places from Alan Watts to Ram Dass to religious texts to Buddhism to all of the people I've met and all of the things I do. While listening to a Ram Dass lecture last night, something he said really struck me and I had to consider and spend some time evaluating this in myself.

What is the work I am here to do? I've broken down and let go of so many of the contrived notions I had over recent years from the idea of rescuing people from themselves to self-martyrdom to learning how to let go of my assumptions and expectations that I put on others and more recently evaluating the expectations that I put on myself. One thing that has never been clear to me though is the final-boss of all questions: Why? Do we need a reason? Let's take a look at that.

If we take all of the lessons I've learned thus far and what I've gained from them, it seems clear they're leading me on a journey of learning how to love. Not the fairytale, romance novel, rom-com movie kind of love that we manufacturer and sell to each other for escapism, but to truly love. Love without any expectations or assumptions or attachments, not love in service of the other, not love out of some carnal desire or need to procreate, but to just love. Simple as that. Not from a place of needing or wanting anything that I can't find within myself, not because everything is rainbows and butterflies and the universe is a magical place where nothing bad happens. To choose love over fear in spite of everything.

I've been reflecting recently on why something still felt off. Discovering that I've been closing myself off from people to avoid attachment was a pretty big wakeup call. Isn't that just another form of fear? What am I fearing there? That I'll hurt them? That they'll hurt me? That I won't be enough? It seems silly in retrospect, but none of those things really concern me. So why have I been doing this? I suppose the answer is that I still had work to do and never being one for half measures, after recognizing past lessons and being intent to not go repeating patterns, I believed that I could just turn it off and learn what I needed to before ever turning it back on again. Turns out it doesn't work that way. We have to trust ourselves to go through the lessons and learn what we need to learn and the universe sends what we need when we need it.

We can't just pick and choose to love. We either do or we don't. It is or it isn't. If we can recognize love even when we're closed off from it, then clearly we can experience love. It isn't even something we have to actively choose to do. It just is. The more we let go of our baggage and the more we open ourselves up to the experiences and lessons we're here to learn, the more we can be mindful of what's going on around us and we can recognize these lessons when they arrive.

We can then in turn proceed to learn these lessons from a more healthy place sans judgement of self or other with no need to place expectations on the self or other, no need to understand why, and no need to cling to these feelings as they just are. We don't have to do anything to make them exist. We don't have to do anything to keep them from going away. We don't have to possess them or own them. We can just appreciate what is and see where the journey takes us and there's a special kind of beauty in that. A beauty in the surrender and acceptance of it all. It's beautiful simply because it is and it's a reflection of how we view the world. If you feel love or beauty when observing something, where did those feelings come from? Inside.

So let's return to the original "why?" that I mentioned before this long ramble about the mission itself. Do we need a reason for why we do the things we do? It seems I've had one all along, but it wasn't until hearing that lecture from Ram Dass that I really took it to heart and it gave me additional perspective about what we're all here doing. We're all here to learn lessons to remember who we are. To discover our truest versions of ourselves. We all have different lessons and we may all have different things to learn, but whatever they are, they're what each of us need.

There's no reason to judge other people's lessons or our own. There's plenty of things in this world that I have a hard time abiding because they're so far removed from my own values, but we all have our own lessons to learn. I can no more judge the lesson of someone I find to be the worst kind of human than I can judge my own. I'm not here to learn that lesson. I'm here to learn how to love. It's easy to say I know how to love myself and I know how to love others and to be fair it's taken me a long time to get to a place where I could do that and getting to a place where I can openly share all of this didn't come easy. I'm going to keep learning how to do that until I leave this life. It's what I'm here to do. It's my mission.

I suppose the "why" really comes down to a choice. Do I want to learn the lessons I'm here to learn, or do I want to repeat them until I learn them? Why do I write? Why do I talk about philosophy? Why do I love? It helps to bring me closer to who I really am. We already are who we are and we always will be. The lessons are to just to help us remember. To rediscover what we already are and what we already know. Our truth. Why do all the things I do? Why care about people? Why work to be mindful and present to experience it all and share it freely? Because that's who I am and it helps me learn what I'm here to learn. Much love. Peace.

Special thanks to the people that have been very involved in helping me work through this the past couple of weeks. You know who you are and never doubt that you are loved.