The Soul’s Purpose – March 22 2019

The Soul’s Purpose – March 22 2019

“I want to make up my mind whether God is or God is not. I want to find out why evil exists. I want to know whether I have an immortal soul or whether when I die it is the end.”
“But Larry,” she smiled, “people have been asking those questions for thousands of years. If they could be answered, surely they’d have been answered by now.”
“But on the other hand you might say that if men have been asking them for thousands of years, it proves that they can’t help asking them and have to go on asking them. Besides, it’s not true that no one has found the answers. There are more answers than questions, and lots of people have found answers that were perfectly satisfactory for them.”
“How long do you think all this is going to take you?”
“I wouldn’t know. Five years. Ten years.”
“And after that? What are you going to do with all this wisdom?”
“If I ever acquire wisdom I suppose I shall be wise enough to know what to do with it.”
W. Somerset Maugham, from The Razor’s Edge
 
If I am here in a body, it’s for a purpose. What is that purpose? What a great question to ask. Of oneself. Of the universe. Of each moment.
 
Today I will live in the question, without insisting on coming up with an answer. I will ask of each moment what it would have of me and I will do my best to give myself utterly to it. I will go into my day with the assumption that I am meant to be here, that I have something of value to offer to the world; and that by living in each moment, the question alive within me, I will be shown the what, the where and the how of it all.
Tintype Triptych, with Shiva Nataraj, Downtown Photo Collective, Los Angeles