While some people may grow up with a strong conviction of who they want to be and what they want to do early in their lives, discovering one’s life purpose is more likely a proactive process of continued self-inquiry, experimentation and self-discovery.
The best way to find out your own life destiny is not to ask someone who you should be or what you can do, but to listen to your own inner voice. Meditation offers an excellent and simple way to turn up the volume of that voice by allowing your frenetic thoughts to settle down.
In this series of posts, I will be discussing how you can use different methods of meditation to help uncover, not discover, your life purpose by investigating various aspects of your life. I believe most of us, at some point in time, know what we want to do in our lives. But somehow we got lost along the way as demands from within and without pile on us each day. Meditation is simply a means to help us remember who we are so that we can get back on track, realize our fullest potential and live the life of our dreams.
Although it is possible to complete the steps outlined in these few posts within a couple of days, with each day dedicated to one meditation, I do not recommend that you rush the process. You are more likely to require a few sittings for each meditation in order to gain familiarity as well as clarity.
Remember, meditation is not a quick fix, but if you persist, you will get to taste the sweetness of its fruits for the rest of this lifetime.
1. Heeding the Wisdom of Your Body
How do you know whether or not you are living your life purpose? You’ll be surprised that on the one hand, you may think you are living the life of your dreams, but on the other hand, your body is telling you a different story altogether. Because the truth is, your body never lies.
When something is wrong, either at the physical, mental or spiritual level, it can manifest as physical discomforts to get our attention. It can be a recurring headache, a throbbing pain in the stomach that don’t go away or even a tumor that grows out of control.
But due to our hectic lifestyle, we often pass over subtle signals sent by our body until they are too intense to be ignored. But as we know, arresting diseases at their early stages often makes treatment easier and cheaper than discovering them at the advanced phases.
So for the first step, we will learn to tune in to our body and pick up any subtle discomfort, pain, numbness, or stagnant energy that may have gone unnoticed during our everyday activities. This is the same body scan meditation I have previously described in 3 Things You Must Do Before Leaping Out of Bed so I won’t be repeating here. If you are unfamiliar with the body scan meditation, do spend a few moments to learn this quick and effective method to get in touch with your own body before continuing. To get the most out of it, I recommend integrating body scan as part of your morning routine before you get out of bed each day.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
But for our purpose, a body scan is not enough because we want to get to the root of the discomforts that have manifested in our body. We want to know why our body is behaving in a certain way.
To answer this question, ask yourself the next few questions (do not skip them!) after you have identified areas in your body that require more attention:
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Have I been neglecting my body by not giving it enough rest, nutritious food, adequate fluid and physical activity?
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Have I been overindulging my body by giving it too much rest, food or sex?
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What will happen if I leave my body as it is now? Is this what I want?
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What does my body need in order for it to work at its best?
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What changes do I have to make in order to give what my body needs?
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Am I ready to make these changes?
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If I am not ready, can I work these changes into my life over the next one to two years?
Some of the questions may require you to meditate on them, especially those that you can’t answer with a thinking mind. For example, you know what are the changes you need to make in order to bring about positive changes for your body, but you feel uncertain about your level of commitment and to what extent you should go to implement these changes.
At this point, you can use something called Reflective Meditation to allow the questions to soak into your deeper consciousness and let the voice of your higher self do the answering.
Reflective Meditation
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Reflective meditation is easy to do. First, sit comfortably and begin by taking a few slow and increasingly deep inhalation and exhalation to relax and calm yourself down. If you have trouble relaxing, you can pick up tips on how to relax here.
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When you are fully relaxed, bring to mind a question that you would like to gain a deeper insight or wisdom on. Say the question to yourself slowly and silently for three times. Focus your attention on the question lightly without trying to hold it too tightly in your mind. You know you are grasping too tightly when your muscles start to tighten up and your breathing becomes labored and unnatural.
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Reflect on the question and explore its meaning, significance, relationships and applications to your life as deeply as you can. Flip it over, turn it upside down, dissect it and have fun with it in as many ways as you can as if it’s a tangible three-dimensional object.
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When insights surface in your mind, observe them without judgment. Hold them in your mind and feel them completely with a non-thinking mind. Let your insights reveal themselves to you like an auto-play movie.
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If you find yourself losing focus, just gently bring your attention back to your question and repeat Step 2.
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At the end of your session, take down the insights that you have gained during the meditation. If most of your time have been spent bringing yourself back to the question time and again, don’t lose heart. Over time, you will gain stronger concentration and will begin to focus more on the answers.
In the second installment of this series, we will continue our search for life purpose using emotions as our guide.
Uncover Your Life Purpose with Meditation — Part 2 »
Uncover Your Life Purpose with Meditation — Part 3 »
Enhance your meditation experience and learn more useful techniques from our Meditation Resources »
Very good article.
I like the way you’re offering a step by step approach for people to explore more of themselves. Meditation is a beautiful way to do this. I think it’s important for people to rely upon themselves and notice the answers they have inside.
Thanks for this. Stumbled
Jens
Thank you, Jens. Glad to hear that the article resonates with you.
‘The body never lies’, how true. I love this series, thanks for the great strategies!
Thank you, Debbie. I’m glad you find the series useful!