The Surprising Truth About Your Life Purpose and “A Course in Miracles”
A spiritual framework for happiness and peace
Who has not wondered about what their purpose in life is?
This existential question (and the crisis that confronts so many of us, particularly in mid-life) keeps us awake at night and can feel paralyzing.
We grapple with questions such as:
“What am I supposed to do?”
“What is my meaning?”
“Does my life have a purpose?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is this all about?”
“Is my life meaningless?”
Such questions can lead us to daunting and depressing conclusions. If we succumb to the fallacy that we have no purpose, we may fall into a void of insignificance and despair.
In contrast, we can also approach such questions as catalysts for action, transformation, and reflection. In essence, working towards and maintaining a sense of purpose is what distinguishes us from other forms of sentient life.
Some of us may adopt the perspective that one’s purpose relates to a job or employment. For those, a career becomes a central defining characteristic to be fully invested in as the culmination or fulfillment of the true self in the enactment of a professional role.
However, others assume the perspective that a particular relationship and the role enacted in that relationship serves as one’s purpose. For those, this may be attributed to being a parent or caretaker. For others, it may be the role of a spouse.
Still, many others believe that their life's purpose may very well center on the base and the material. For such individuals, power, money, influence, and domination may surface as the motivating factors for their existence and work in the world.
Each of these may bring some sense of satisfaction, a temporary pleasure or joy, and a drive to engage and act in one’s life. However, from A Course of Miracles perspective, one’s purpose and meaning in life transcends status, a particular relationship, or a career or job.
One’s life purpose is aligned with one’s being, and as articulated in the Course, one’s being is fundamentally oneness with God.
What we do, where we go, and who we share our lives with can uphold our divine purpose, but they in and of themselves are not our purpose.
Specific Workbook lessons most clearly attend to and suggest what our purpose in this world is.
Workbook lesson #62 states,
Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.
Workbook lesson #121 states,
Forgiveness is my key to happiness.
Workbook lesson #122 states,
Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Each of these three lessons forefront forgiveness as core to our purpose (i.e., our function) and our happiness. Our life purpose is our happiness. Our life purpose is forgiveness.
Thus,
forgiveness=our purpose=our happiness
We are called to forgive to experience joy and oneness in what we do and how we live our lives. Most certainly, as discussed in prior posts on this Substack (check them out here and here) and in the border literature on A Course in Miracles, forgiveness serves as a fundamental pillar and guiding concept in this spiritual framework.
Forgiveness is not a blanket absolution of others as a demonstration of one’s spiritual superiority or power to administer an undeserved grace.
Forgiveness is a willingness to look beyond any person, situation, or circumstance to acknowledge the God that resides within, the unalterable, unshakable, and immutable connection between God and oneself, and the capacity to think, feel, breathe, and live unencumbered and unaffected by anyone or anything outside oneself.
We are called to love as God loves us. We are called to forgive as we are forgiven.
The Course suggests that God does not see our errors (e.g., sins or loveless actions/words) because these are illusions. They cannot break our eternal bond with God in which our reality manifests.
This is not to say that here in our humanity, we do not experience the effects of errors (our own and each other’s). It suggests that we are called not to allow these errors to affect our state of mind and how we elect to experience a day, a week, a year, or the eras of our lives.
We can look to the model provided by Jesus in the gospels. Perhaps the most salient is that of His death. As we near the start of Lent, we can reflect on how Jesus never demonstrated lovelessness to anyone on the road to Calvary. He did not curse, hate, or denigrate the Romans who beat Him, who fashioned a crown of thorns upon His head, who nailed His hands and feet to a cross, or who pierced His side.
Jesus did not condemn the people who spat at Him, who hurled stones and insults as He carried the cross. Indeed, Jesus’ frame of mind was connected and at one with God the Father. He did not succumb, nor did He allow the errors of others to dictate how He elected to view them and the world itself.
Evidence of this can be surmised in the following among His final words,
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Luke 23:34.
Up to His final moments, Jesus engaged in a lived experience of forgiveness.
If Jesus could forgive those in the most extreme of examples in His journey to Calvary, we too can forgive those who cause us harm and frustration in our lives. We can forgive ourselves.
In doing so, we enact our purpose and our function. We lean into happiness. We begin to recognize we are not at the effects of this world.
As I have stressed repeatedly throughout this Substack, this does not mean we are doormats for the words and actions of others. It means that we love ourselves enough to honor ourselves by acting in loving ways to ourselves (such as by removing ourselves from harmful or loveless situations) and engaging in an ethic of harmlessness, non-violence (click here), and forgiveness.
Please comment and let me know your thoughts on this Substack. I’d love to know what topics you find of interest and what you might want to read more about in the future.
Prior Posts of Interest:
Gratitude and “A Course in Miracles”
Spiritualizing the U.S. Presidential Election
Top 5 Reasons for Starting the Workbook of “A Course in Miracles”
Don’t Fall for this Misconception about “A Course in Miracles”
Thanks for reading, everyone.
Another home run:
"Forgiveness is a willingness to look beyond any person, situation, or circumstance to acknowledge the God that resides within, the unalterable, unshakable, and immutable connection between God and oneself, and the capacity to think, feel, breathe, and live unencumbered and unaffected by anyone or anything outside oneself."
So many people are reticent to forgive because it sticks in their craw as letting the other person off the hook, making their behavior right, when it has nothing to do with whatever behavior the ego was doing.
There is an amazing grace that comes and flows from us through forgiveness. I've been struggling with my purpose, and this helps me to keep on track a bit. Thank you.