Purpose - Exploration

“You ask us to help you identify your purpose. We ask you to first look within yourself. What do you love? What are you passionate about? What calls to you? What do you enjoy? What do you want to experience and create?

As you make choices that reflect who you truly are, you will begin to recognize your purpose.” — The Akashic Records

One question people frequently ask the Akashic Records is, “What is my purpose?”

We want to know why we are here and what we are meant to do with our lives. And often, we approach the question believing there is one answer somewhere that we simply haven't figured out yet.

What if the pressure we feel around finding our purpose isn't because we haven't found it yet, but because we've been taught to think about purpose in a way that isn't true?

The Records have given me a different way to think about purpose. Whenever we ask them a direct question like, “What is my purpose?” they don't simply give us an answer. Instead, they help us find the answer for ourselves by asking questions that turn our attention back to who we are.

When I work with clients who are asking about purpose, I am frequently guided to ask: What are you passionate about? What do you want to do? What are you curious about? What do you enjoy?

Those questions may sound simple, yet think about how often we dismiss the answers. We may know that we love to write, teach, travel, garden, create, work with animals, learn about a particular subject, or help people in a certain way, but we don't necessarily consider those things significant when we are thinking about our purpose. We are looking for something bigger—an answer that somehow announces: This is what you are here to do.

We make purpose more intimidating by believing it has to be something extraordinary. Not everyone is here to cure cancer, invent something that changes the world, or influence thousands of people. Our purpose does not have to be grand to be meaningful. It may be expressed in the way we teach, create, support, encourage, lead, care for others, or bring something uniquely ours into the world. The number of people we affect does not determine the significance of our purpose.

And I think we sometimes underestimate the importance of wanting something simply because we want it. We look for the practical reason, the productive reason, or even the spiritual reason. We wonder whether something is important enough to pursue or whether it could possibly have anything to do with our purpose. The Records remind us that what we want, what we love, and what makes us curious are all telling us something about who we are.

This doesn't mean that everything we enjoy is destined to become our life's work. That isn't the point. The point is that these things tell us something about ourselves. And when we continue following what interests us, excites us, and feels meaningful to us, we have experiences that lead to other experiences.

We meet people. We discover abilities. We become interested in something we didn't even know existed a year earlier. One choice opens the possibility for another.

That is how we can begin to recognize our purpose.

We may also be making purpose more difficult by assuming that once we identify it, it will remain the same for the rest of our lives. The Records remind us that we are not the same people throughout our lives. We grow and change. We discover new interests and develop new gifts. We have experiences that change what matters to us. Something that was deeply meaningful during one period of our life may eventually feel complete, while something entirely unexpected begins calling us forward.

When we look backward, we can often see how one experience led to another in ways we never could have predicted. Something we did because we were curious introduced us to someone who changed our direction. An interest became a skill. Something we initially did simply because we enjoyed it eventually became an important part of our lives.

The Records also remind us that purpose is not necessarily a job or a role. One way we can begin to understand who we are is by looking for the threads that have run through our lives. What keeps showing up, even when the circumstances change?

Teaching, for example, may be one of those threads. We may teach in a classroom, mentor someone at work, raise children, lead a team, write a book, or simply find that we are always the person helping others understand something in a new way. The expression changes, but the thread remains.

When we begin to recognize these threads, we learn something important about who we are. We may discover that growth, creativity, freedom, service, leadership, connection, or learning has appeared again and again in different parts of our lives. We didn't necessarily recognize these things as significant while we were living them. Looking back, however, we can begin to see patterns, and those patterns can help us understand what we naturally bring to the experiences we choose.

The Records have also shown me that our purpose can be connected to the experiences we have lived through. Quite often, something we have experienced becomes something we are later able to help someone else understand or move through. Who better to support someone facing an experience than someone who has already walked through it?

Our experiences give us stories, lessons, and insights that we can share with others. We understand what the experience feels like from the middle of it. We know the questions we asked, the fears we faced, what helped us, what didn't, and what we wish we had known at the time. That experience can become wisdom we are able to offer someone else.

And sometimes the greatest gift we can offer another person is hope: I made it through this. You can, too.

This is one of the reasons our stories matter. We may eventually feel called to write about an experience, teach from it, speak about it, or simply use what we learned to help another person.

Our story—what we have gone through—does not define us. But it can become part of what we have to give.

And sometimes, when we look back at our lives, we begin to see that experiences we once wondered about have prepared us for something we could not have anticipated at the time. Our passions, our gifts, the threads that have followed us throughout our lives, and even some of the experiences we have lived through can begin to come together. We start to see more clearly who we are—and how we might use who we are to contribute to the lives of others.

As we understand more about who we are, we can begin making choices that reflect that understanding. We choose what matters to us, what feels meaningful, and what allows us to express who we truly are. This is alignment. The more our choices reflect who we are, the more aligned our lives become. And it is within that alignment that our purpose becomes easier to recognize.

Perhaps that is why asking the Records about our purpose leads us back to ourselves. They are not asking us to search harder for an answer. They are helping us understand ourselves more clearly so we can create lives that reflect who we truly are.

As we do, we no longer have to search for our purpose. We begin to recognize it in the life we are creating.

Purpose isn't something we find. It's something we recognize as it unfolds through the life we create.

What if your purpose isn't something you still need to find, but something your life is already showing you?

Journaling prompts

• What threads have continued to show up throughout my life, even as my circumstances, roles, and interests have changed?

• What have I been drawn to simply because I enjoy it—and what might that be telling me about who I am?

• What experiences in my life have given me stories, lessons, or wisdom that could help someone else?

• Where am I already making choices that reflect who I truly am—and where could I create greater alignment?

• If I stopped believing that I needed to “find” my purpose, what might I begin to recognize about the life I am already creating?

Affirmation

I trust that understanding who I am will lead me to a clearer understanding of my purpose.

From My Journey

After I learned to connect with the Akashic Records, I was certain I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with animals.

I was all in.

I took Reiki I and Reiki II so I could take Animal Reiki I and II. I even studied canine massage. Everything I was learning was preparing me for the work I wanted to do.

The last piece was learning how to open the Akashic Records of other people, places, and things so I could open the Records of animals. Before I could begin charging for readings, the Records told me I needed to complete 30 practice sessions. I completed those sessions working with people, not animals, and something happened that I hadn't anticipated: I discovered how much I loved it.

Until I actually began working with people in their Records, I couldn't have known how much I would enjoy it. If someone had asked me before those 30 sessions what I was passionate about, working with people in the Records would not have been my answer. I hadn't experienced it yet.

Sometimes we discover what we're passionate about by doing something we've never done before.

I thought I was preparing to work with animals. What I couldn't have known was that following that path would lead me to discover something I loved even more.

That is why I often tell people that the years I spent preparing to work with animals were not a mistake or a detour. They were the path that led me somewhere I couldn't have anticipated.

And nothing I learned along the way was wasted. Reiki, in particular, taught me so much about how energy works, and I use that understanding in my work with the Records. I also found close friends, teachers, and collaborators I continue to learn from and grow with today.  Had I not followed my desire to work with animals, I might never have met them.

And I love that I still can—and do—open the Records of animals when I get the opportunity. They simply aren't the primary focus of my work.

I followed something I wanted to do and was passionate about, and it led me to something I love even more. Sometimes we can't know where an interest will lead us. We simply have to be willing to follow it far enough to find out.