One of the most common questions I am asked while reading for clients is what I like to call the “Million Dollar Question”: What is my purpose?

That is usually followed by “Why can’t I find my path?”

These are not questions for the faint of heart, either to be asked, or to ask. To ask a question means that one has placed themselves in a position to receive an answer. And we don’t always like the answers we receive. I’ve found an interesting trait in Humanity that seems to be universal, across cultures, races, genders, and creeds. The trait is a tendency to want to do the same thing, over and over again – and expect different results. Albert Einstein actually labeled this behavior as the “definition of insanity”. He’s a pretty smart guy.

Humans can’t stand change. Well, that’s not exactly true. Humans LOVE change, which is why there are fifty billion types of retail items manufactured in China. In fact, it’s not change that humans fear, but feeling out of control. When Life asks us to change a behavior, we don’t want to. We are familiar with the predictable old patterns, and we don’t want to feel the butterflies in the bottom of our tummy when faced with the “unknown” pattern we’ve yet to embark upon. No matter how dysfunctional, a Human Being will tend to stay in a rotten situation simply because at least it’s the Devil they know. Though we are the most adaptable species on the planet — we sell ourselves short due to fear, time and time again. Yet we’re the first ones to blame everyone else for why we aren’t “where we’d like to be” in our life.

Because of this fear that we Humans have subscribed to so vehemently, we also don’t like to be challenged. Our low ego can captain our ship like no one’s business, deciding that any new idea is a “threat to the realm” – even though the “realm” is miserable. The bottom line is that no matter how much we ask for help – we don’t like our “Big Fat Plan” to be messed with. It doesn’t matter how predictable the plan is, and it doesn’t even matter that the Big Fat Plan isn’t working. For Humanity, what matters is that the low ego feels like it has a CEO’s stake in our life’s direction. There’s only one problem with that: Ego can’t see anything but itself, so it’s going to make a pretty lousy scout when it’s incapable of raising it’s eyes to the horizon, as it’s too fascinated by watching it’s own shoes.

The fact is, the Universe tries to act as our scout everyday, but we’re just not interested. We’re too busy listening to Captain Low Ego prattle on and on about where we are on the path – according to Ego’s shoes, of course. “Hey, you’re by a weed now! Look at that rock! Wow, that’s a grasshopper!”

Ego has no idea how to chart a course. It’s too busy sounding off just to hear itself talk while reminding itself that it’s in charge and in the room.

“Are you following me? Did you see how I stepped over that stick on the path? Hey, look, an agate!”

Yep. When charting a new life path — that’s life changing information all right.

The Universe is not interested at all in the details of the path. The details are there for our enjoyment and our personal and individual learning curves. The Universe is interested in our direction. Yet we’re so busy following around a demented trail guide who is working hard to convince us that we don’t need direction but instead, we need them, them, them — just like some washed-up Hollywood agent trying to cling to their job – that we are unable to accept the importance of direction over details.

The “details” of one’s life path can vary widely from one moment to the next, depending on what action a person chooses to take. So when a client asks me to give them “details” about their path, their angels come back to me with direction. When I attempt to convey the direction in which to head, in order to achieve the desired results, here comes Captain Low Ego, shoving the unsuspecting client out of the way to scream back in my face, “But I need details!”

Of course you do, Captain Low Ego. Because without the details, you can’t keep your host captive to minutia and you’ll lose them to their greatest purpose.

“But you don’t understand! How am I going to know where I’m going without the DETAILS?”

Well, Captain Low Ego, I hate to be the bummer, here – but this isn’t about you. It isn’t about how you feel, or how you’re affected. It’s about what’s best for the person.

“But I AM the person!”

No, you’re not. You’ve just convinced them to drink the Kool-Aid because you’re walking point on the path, and you won’t shut up about your stupid shoes, so they’ve just given up arguing with you.

“You’re not very spiritual.”

I’m very spiritual. I’m just not an enabler, and I’m not here to make you feel better. I’m here for the person. So please step aside, and allow us to have a conversation.  

…thus is the dynamic of breaking through Ego when working with certain clients in order to deliver to them the amazing information regarding their direction, which is the first step in helping them change their life. Ego does not want us to make changes because then we will have results, and no need for all the bravado that Ego passes off as “knowledge”.  When we come out of relationship with Low Ego, and go into relationship with Faith, we no longer crave “details”, because the details are then handled by our incredibly competent personal secretary – The Universe. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have a host of Angels, Guides, and even the Spirit of God handling everything that’s out of my control.

Ironically, many people balk at this idea. Welcome to people.

The direction that we are to travel holds the key to unlocking many details on the journey. But we must embark upon the direction first. The details come later. They are secondary in the pecking order of importance, and seeing as that Human Beings are distracted by all things shiny – too many details means too many lost Humans along the roadside. And that’s just messy clean-up in aisle nine for Angels and Guides everywhere.

Our Angels are here to make sure that we are steered in the most optimum direction for our success, not only in this lifetime, but our success in other people’s lessons, timelines, and journeys. (Though this is a mind-boggler for most – our own lives aren’t actually all about us.) The job of an Angel, in respect to Humanity, is a cross-breed of herding cats and Traffic Cop, but across dimensions, probabilities, and space-time. Work in the Angelic realm is much more like watching Touch than Touched By and Angel. We are all part of an inter-connected webbing that is affected no matter which side is pulled. What we perceive as “nothing happening” in our own life is often a pause the Universe has created so that something else in the webbing can occur – sort of like a red traffic light allowing the side street traffic to flow with the green light. If there were no traffic lights, all we’d have is accidents.

Yet we Humans resent red lights, even when they are for our own safety.

We must come out of the limited viewpoint of Low Ego – that of only staring at our shoes as we walk along the path – and raise our chin to look upon the horizon, facing our direction. Once surveying all that is in front of us, we are able to see the busy streets, the usefulness of the traffic lights, and the efficient flow of all things as directed by the Universe. We begin to understand that we are a moving cell in a larger body, and we begin to see the value of the health of the larger body and our part in this health. We begin to comprehend that not only is our path important to us, but it is important to those that we’ve yet to meet. And more than anything, we realize how ineffectual our Big Fat Plan actually is once there are so many other billions of moving pieces in the machine.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t have goals or plans. It’s to say that we should not treat these goals and plans like the anointed hand of God, when in fact, they are our best translation of only a very limited portion of the game board. We must be open to The Universe’s influence in our Big Fat Plan, because though we can see fairly well straight in front of us – Universe can see around all the corners. Sometimes a halt in one’s forward progression is the Universe applying the breaks before our train runs head-on into another who has managed to travel straight toward us, on our same track.

Creator is the air traffic control of all things. If we were to take over the tower at LAX as a passenger on the plane simply because we wished to land sooner, we would be responsible for the deaths of thousands of people on flights that we were unaware were even arriving. We must accept that in life, no matter how competent and fabulous and strong and calculated that we perceive ourselves to be – we are a passenger on a larger vessel, traveling at a velocity that is lethal for those to operate who simply do not have the skill.

Though we are majestic creations in the eyes of the Parent Creator who made us – we are not God. And we are never going to be, no matter how many times we watch The Secret.

The only thing that we truly have control over in this dimension is how we choose to act: Which opportunities we do or don’t choose to act upon, which feelings we choose to accept or not to accept, which lessons we choose to participate with or to let go. All things Free Will are fair game. Yet all things flow, and pace, and timing – are the Universe’s jurisdiction. As my dear friend and colleague, Healer Terri Williams, would say: “The ‘what’ is up to you. The ‘how’ and ‘when’s’ are up to the Universe.”

So how do we chart our course, make our mark, find our highest potential, and find our purpose and path, when so much of this incarnation is out of our control? Well it’s simple — we accept the fact that our highest design, purpose and path have nothing to do with control at all, but with sinking into the greater flow while doing what we love. Think fishing while on a floating raft. We’re not in control of the current, yet the raft is moving as we are casting along the banks. We are busy with the act of fishing — baiting our hook and tossing our lines. Yet we are not in control of where the fish may lie beneath the water, or how quickly the current is moving us along. While we are on the raft, in the sun, we are excited at the thought of the potential in every cast of the pole. We are not feeling “cheated” by the river as it “controls” our direction. We are not feeling “undermined” by the invisibility of the fish in the water. None of that is even a factor, as our PURPOSE – “to fish” — is executed with utter joy brought on by nothing more than the act of fishing itself.

So should we approach our life and the pursuits that we feel are in our highest design. Many people start a small business because they have a passion for the product or service, so they sell flowers, or knitting supplies, or pizza. Yet once they get into the “brass tacks” of the business end, the joy of why they got into the pursuit in the first place is eclipsed by the “reality” of owning a business.

At least, that‘s what we tell ourselves.

The reality is that our Low Ego takes over and runs off our Soul’s joy by inserting it’s own demands. We are suddenly no longer happy that we opened a knitting business whose goal was to provide the best hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns. We now must be the best knitting business in town, it the county, in the world. We must make a million dollars knitting, and we must be known as the greatest textile artist to ever have lived. We become obsessed with numbers in the ledgers rather than the smiles on our customer’s faces. We count the cars in the parking lot and worry that more people are traveling to a large commercial retail chain, and we begin to covet those customer numbers. We look at the price tags on our precious hand made imported yarn and we’re sure that we’re being undermined by the dollar or two more each costs. So, we stop ordering the hand-spun yarns from Ireland, hand-dyed from herbs and flowers, and we begin ordering polyester threads from Indonesia at a dime on the dollar, to offer the same slashed prices as the retail chain in our hopes to up our customer numbers. Soon, we can’t afford to make the rent, because we can’t sell enough cheaper product at the cheaper price – because we don’t have the traffic of the large retail chain, all because we can’t afford the advertising. We close our doors as our knitting business goes bankrupt. We shake our fist at the heavens and curse God. Now that we have blown through our life savings, we sit crestfallen that the Universe has forsaken us. We tell ourselves that Life has spit in our face, when all we’ve done is “try”. We convince ourselves “that’s what we get” for sticking our neck out there, in this economy.

What a punch of self-pitying garbage.

How about holding ourselves accountable for our choices? The truth is, had we not fallen into Low Ego, and simply stuck with what gave us joy – providing the best hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns in town – we’d still have a steady and grateful clientele, we’d be able to pay the rent, and we’d be able to continue to do what gives us joy. It was our covetous greed, not God, that broke the bank.

Sometimes our Big Fat Plan appears to go backwards. We spend years improving ourselves and our situation, only to have “everything” ripped from us in one economic blow. But again, we must remember that with Life Path Direction, the shortest distance between two points is not nearly as important as the most accurate distance between two points, and the latter is often a longer path. Quality, not speed, is the name of the game when dealing with fulfilling one’s  “destiny”, or more accurately, one’s purpose. Humanity craves relevance. We must feel as though we make a difference. Past our own Low Ego, we are subconsciously aware that we are not “singular” beings who just need to cover our one bottom line. We know, deep down, that our greatest feeling of relevance comes from affecting the whole body.

For as much as we crave singular notoriety, we shut down completely if we are isolated from the whole.  We are at our best when we are in acts of service to another. However, getting someone to set aside the time to really be able to execute the act of service is a different story, considering managing one’s own life can be rather time consuming. Connecting people with the fulfillment that comes through executing acts of service can be so complicated that the Universe itself will step forward and insert it’s own traffic light, to create a flow that will force us down a path that will result in our discovering parts of ourselves we normally wouldn’t even know existed.

For as much as we see ourselves as the master of our own destiny – Humanity craves direction. And we often require direction when the focus is not meant to be on us. After all, we are trained that we must “look out for number 1”. At least according to the 1970’s.

Sometimes, we’re asked to shine brightly for those who need to be shown hope, and in order to do that, we must take a few steps backward to a place in our life that we’ve already worked through. It doesn’t mean that Universe is punishing us, or that we haven’t moved forward. It means we’ve moved forward so much, we can then serve as an incredible example to others of what’s possible.

It’s a fearful trick of our good ol’ fashioned human pride that twists up the Universe’s attempt at putting us into play as an amazing transformative tool for others. In 2004, when my nationally famous band ran its course after an 8 year run, and no more labels were interested in carrying us, and all the marquis with our name in lights went out, and all the tours with Joan Jett and Ann and Nancy Wilson stopped — I went invisible to the music community. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and so I had to get a day job. I treated this notion like a dirty word that represented failure. I hadn’t had a day job in years, and I felt like I was not only going backwards, but I felt like a complete loser. And, as one can imagine, I was pretty pouty about it. I was furious that I had worked so hard for 15 years, just to have it all fall apart. Here I was, back to square one, pounding the pavement looking for work after an amazing career in professional entertainment. I had no idea how “God could let that happen”. I applied for this job or for that, yet not only was my attitude not where it should have been, but no one was hiring “ex-rockstars”.

I was so resentful and angry at the Universe that I couldn’t stand it. I had to spend all my time looking for work just as I had done as a youth growing up in Montana. Seeing as that there are only so many hours in the day, I had to give up my music, my producing, my acting, everything that gave me joy — everything that I had built my entire life upon — in order to dedicate the time necessary to finding employment. I had to reach deep into my treasure trove of job skills and dust off aptitudes I felt had nothing to do with who I was, and the deeper I reached, the more angry I became. I had to find something that I could apply for that would be forgiving toward my unusual “job” history.  Finally, after being dismissed by employer after employer, I was hired by someone. Begrudgingly, I showed up to my first day of work –

– as a Psychic reader at a Metaphysical bookstore in Burbank, CA.

Now, eight years later, I can’t imagine living my life without including this beautiful spiritual piece of myself. Yet I would have never allowed any of these gifts to come into the world because I was too busy only living up to a mere portion of my potential according to my Big Fat Plan — that I swore was my entire identity.  At the time, you could never have told me that by having a day job, I would be connected with my higher purpose. I would have been too busy wallowing in self pity while shaking my fist at God for forsaking my knitting business.

Universe knows a thing or two about a thing or two, especially when it comes to our happiness, our design, our direction, and who we are truly meant to be so that we may feel relevant and full of purpose while enriching The Whole. Sometimes the most improbable backward-facing road holds our greatest forward-moving fulfillment. I gave up music and acting and worked as a Psychic in this shop from 2004-2006. And while there, I was directed right back into acting as I was cast on an NBC TV show and had a screenplay optioned — all from clients who came into the store. By steering me into Spiritual Advisement, Universe didn’t punish me by putting a stop to my career. Creator didn’t place me in that job to send me backwards on my life path. Universe had me there to grow me, to show me the fullness of who I really was. In an act of service — helping others connect to the desires of their heart while assisting others to read their roadmaps so that they may better determine their own most fulfilling direction — Universe connected me to my most fulfilling direction.

In 2006 I was cast as a lead in a film, in 2007 I started my own spiritual practice, and in 2008 — I got another record deal that I still have to this day. I didn’t go backwards. I simply needed to take a different path so that I would be placed in the right direction. I emerged forward so much more ignited and inspired than I ever thought possible. I moved on more well rounded and connected to myself, applying ALL of my gifts and talents rather than only the ones visible by my Low Ego.

So when a person asks the Universe “What is my purpose” and “How do I find my path”, one must be prepared for the Universe to employ a couple of approaches:

1)      Switch the tracks, place us on a new course void of details, and send us in a direction with which we are completely unfamiliar.

2)      Require us to become comfortable with the idea that we have no control over the current of the river, but only the fishing pole in our hand.

3)      Send us backward, so that we may move forward.

Or –

4)      All of the above.

Our Path and our Purpose are awaiting our participation. All we must do is be on time to our own send-off. I’d recommend this cocktail to kick off the journey:

1 Ounce Faith
1 Ounce Courage
Jigger of Humor
Dash of Destiny
Cranbery Juice
Twist of Lime

Shake vigorously and serve over stone cold constitution.

A)Funny

B) Considerate (A and B are mutually exclusive

C) Deceptively hardworking

D) An overall good guy

E)An eye for narrative

F) Nerdsandwich

and

G) A small, but high quality amount of work in my portfolio

So…ya know….hit me up.

The first one, from Ray LaMontagne – is from last year’s God Willin’ and The Creek Don’t Rise, his fifth album. The track “Beg Steal or Borrow” is a rolling country song that has special significance as I can’t hear it without thinking of my son and the inevitable trials and challenges he’ll have to face as he grows into an adult. It’s a heartbreakingly beautiful song with a delectable use of the pedal steel guitar and melodies so strong it burns into your head. Think Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and you’re good to go:

Scotland’s Teenage Fanclub’s first album was released in 1990 and since then have issued nine albums with the most recent “Shadows” launching last year in 2010. I’ve always been aware of them but for some inexplicable reason, never really listened to their music. “I Need Direction” is off of Howdy! and hit only 48 on the UK Singles Chart and never got traction on the US charts. It’s a piece of pure pop perfection with a 60′s sensibility and verses conjuring The Byrds or The Mama and the Papas.

~~~

This little magnolia tree is in our front yard by the north cow pasture.

It has the prettiest blooms, don’t you think?

~~~~~

My day was pretty stinky.  And, I’m feeling down about it.

We don’t have any running water in the house, and might not for a while.  But, that is just a little hassle.  I think the real bummer is a spiritual thing.  I was disappointed in my Bible study.  I thought things would really clear up today, and instead they got much more muddled.  Makes me tired to think of it.  I want to ditch the whole study and say that it just doesn’t matter.  But, I wouldn’t know what to do next anyway.

So there.  That’s my stinker of a day.

March 20  – Help from Everywhere

Your foolish little activities are valueless in themselves. Seemingly trivial or of seemingly great moment, all deeds are alike if directed by Me. Just cease to function except through Me.

I am your Lord, just obey Me as you would expect a faithful willing secretary to carry out your directions. Just have no choice but Mine, no will but Mine.

I am dependent on no one agency when I am your supply. Through many channels My help and material flow can come.

“I delight to do thy will, O my God.” – Psalm 40:8