What’s Your Life Purpose?

No doubt you’ve wondered about your purpose in life: Why are you here? What are you supposed to accomplish during your time on earth? How can you fulfill your mission?

In my first post, “Welcome to My New Blog about the Afterlife,” I wrote that we come to earth to bring love to this troubled planet from our true “home” (the place we go to between physical incarnations). We all have the same, universal goal of dispelling fear and suffering through the power of love. However, our souls may seek embodiment for individual reasons too.

Life on a Hard Planet

Sometimes we take human forms in order to be with people we love who are living on earth. Other times, we may incarnate to rectify or complete a situation rooted in another lifetime. Many spiritual teachers refer to earth as a “school” where we come to learn. In his book Many Lives, Many Masters, Brian L. Weiss, MD, reports that there are “different levels of learning, and we must learn some of them in the flesh. We must feel the pain. When you’re a spirit you feel no pain.” In Conversations with God, however, Neal Donald Walsh proposes that we choose earth lives, not to learn, but “To remember, and re-create, Who You Are.” He writes “life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation.”

Many sources describe earth as a “hard” planet, a difficult place to live. The dense energy of earth and the limitations of the physical body pose challenges for the incarnating soul. When we enter human forms, we lose some awareness of the immense love and light we knew in the spirit world and become immersed in the fear that prevails on earth. Apparently, this amnesia is necessary, so we can meet the challenges facing us and grow through struggle. No pain, no gain.

Soul Roles

After my beloved life partner, Ron Conroy, left his physical body in 2013, I began studying the spirit realm, life between lives, and reincarnation in depth. I read lots of books, talked to mediums and psychics, did past-life regressions, and visited other worlds through shamanic journeying. During the course of my explorations, I noticed that souls seemed to fall into certain categories, according to their natures, their purposes, and the roles they play on earth (and elsewhere). I identified several classifications or types of souls: leaders, protectors, teachers, healers, warriors, artists, inventors, explorers, and caretakers, though I’m sure I’ve missed some. If you trace your “lineage” through a series of lifetimes, you’ll probably see a thread of continuity running through most of your lives. The details of the lives themselves will be different, but an underlying theme remains consistent.

For example, in one of my lifetimes about 3,000 years ago, I worked as a slave in the library at Alexandria, Egypt, where I was exposed to knowledge and written words. In a later incarnation as a nun in a convent, I served as a scribe copying manuscripts. This time around, I’ve devoted myself to writing and sharing information. It seems that my soul’s role is that of the teacher and that I’m carrying on today with what I began long ago. However, I’ve also had healer lifetimes: as a wise woman/midwife in a small Scottish village about 1,000 years ago and as a nurse’s aide in a veterans’ hospital after WWI. In this incarnation, I practice Reiki and other forms of energetic healing, and often write about holistic healing. As you revisit your own past lives, you may find that you, too, integrate more than one path in fulfilling your destiny.

Your role may not fit under a narrowly defined heading, or your soul may interpret its purpose more broadly than we humans do. Athletes, for instance, are often warrior souls. Environmentalists may be caretakers, protectors, or healer souls who focus on aiding the earth. My former husband is a healer soul, but he doesn’t work as a health professional. Instead he renovates––“heals”––antique houses.

How can you determine your soul’s purpose? Meditation, hypnotherapy, and past-life regression may help you gain insights. A simple way to discover your path is to pay attention to what gives you joy. When are you the happiest? When do you lose track of time and immerse yourself totally in what you’re doing? Follow that thread and you could find it leads to your true purpose, in this life and beyond.