SUNDAY'S LONG READ...
I’d like to share with you what I am hearing from a large number of people these days.

What is the point of life?

If it is to produce some particular physical outcome, they say, we could be trying to make a point that’s becoming impossible to make. They observe that if the point of life is to “achieve” certain economic goals, conditions on our planet are beginning to make it very difficult to achieve them. If the point of life is to “enjoy” certain physical and emotional experiences, conditions on our planet are beginning to make it very difficult to find them, much less enjoy them. If the point of life is merely to “survive,” conditions on our planet are beginning to make it very difficult to do even that.

Where can we run to get away from the fires? Where can we turn to get away from the heat? Where can we rush to get away from the floods and the tornadoes and the hurricanes? Where can we escape from the viruses that sicken and kill? Where can we find safety from the injustice and violence of people who rampage as they act out their anger, their fear, or their desperation?

As I think about what I am hearing from more and more people, I find myself wondering. Wasn’t it always like this? Hasn’t life on Earth been a trial and a travail from the very beginning? But I have to admit, even in my own lifetime things looked and felt hugely better in many ways than they do now. There were problems and challenges, yes, but at least there seemed to be opportunity. Hope. Some chance for a good life.

All of this has made me wonder…is it possible that some good is going to come from all of this? Is the fact that our entire world is facing this moment of intense difficulty at so many levels an opportunity for us to accept the challenge to find a new way to be human?

If you know my personal history, you may remember that I lived 12 months of my life as a Street Person. And not when I was a young man, but when I was pushing 50, and should have been, by then, in far better shape in every area of my life. But as I look back on it now, I realize that I learned more in that one single year of trudging down the sidewalk asking people if they could help a person down on his luck --- I acquired more insight into human nature and more awareness of who I really am at the core of my being --- than I could possibly have done in any other life situation or circumstance.

It was the College of the Sidewalk. It was what my father would have called “a liberal education.” I don’t recommend it, mind you, but I certainly am grateful for it. If I had acquired even a small sense of “entitlement” as a result of my golden childhood, or had developed even a tiny bit of complacency about the flow of life’s goodness to me, all of that was quickly washed away.

In its place came a new appreciation of just how rough this experience called Life can be—as well as a new understanding, a new awareness, a new expression, a new experience of who I really am, of what life is really about, and of why we are all here in physical form.

I learned that my time upon the Earth had nothing to do with what I was accumulating in life. It was not about personal success or achievement or power or wealth. In fact, I learned that life had nothing to do with anything that I thought life was about.

This produced two interesting effects: First, it pulled the rug right out from under me, leaving me wobbly and working to keep my balance. Then, it created a platform upon which I could stand far more steadily than I could on the carpet of my misunderstandings. I knew that I would never have to worry again about falling, because this platform would never be pulled out from under me. It was the platform of my True Identity, of my Real Purpose, of my Oneness with Life and with God.

I’m surely not the first person to have encountered an experience that I thought, as I was encountering it, was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me - - - only to find, months or years later, that it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

When this occurred in my experience, it changed everything for me. I personally encountered the fascinating proposition that it was possible that all things that happen in life are for our highest benefit, even if we are not clear about what that benefit is.

It was while exploring this idea that I first looked at the larger possibility that I was, in fact, embarked on a Journey of the Soul having nothing to do with my Body and Mind, except insofar as the latter were tools, devices, vehicles with which to undertake that journey, and to achieve what the Soul had set out to achieve along the way.

My conversations with God convinced me that I was an eternal being on an eternal journey, engaging in a process that might loosely be called “evolution.” That is, the process of becoming.

And becoming what? Becoming the next grandest expression of who I really was: an Individuation of Divinity.

Could that be what’s happening right now with the whole human race? Might that be a way to consider the tide of events which have swept across the planet these past 30 months. Might it be a spiritually helpful way of negotiating the moment --- and maybe even transforming it?

What if we didn’t meet this moment with fear or upset or anger? What if we met it with purpose and promise, determining not to try to “make the best of it,” but to commit to “be” the best that we can be in the face of it, thus to individually and collectively turn the energy around in a way that can transform our global experience?

Is this the moment of humanity’s rebirthing? If it is --- just hypothetically, if it is --- is there anything…anything at all…that we might each do to help it along? That’s what I am inviting us to consider this day.