Function in life

I've had a couple days of computer problems, but we should be back in business.

So let's ask some questions. What's your function in life? What are life functions anyway, especially in the grand scheme of things?

Eckhart Tolle has a good explanation for these questions. Essentially, you have two kinds of functions: ones that stem from whatever you are doing outwardly, and the other kind, which there is only one, i.e. to realize your Oneness with Being. Being aware of your connection to all that there is is your primary function, and it is common to all human beings. On the other hand, outward functions vary from person to person, and even from moment to moment.

For example, right now, you are reading this post. At this point in time, that is your outward function. Nothing else exists right now except you, the screen, and any noises or other activities going on in the background. When you get up to walk away from the computer, or you click to the next website, that walking or clicking now becomes your outward purpose.

Perhaps in your mind right now you are protesting what I just wrote? Listen in on the protests if they are there. What do they say?

"Clearly I have another function. I am a _______." (Insert your own answer there.)

"Surely looking at this screen is not my entire purpose. I have all these things that I've done and all these things I have to do next week."

"There is no way that MY purpose is that insignificant. I am going to be a somebody. I am going to get somewhere, and reading a screen is a means to that end, but it is not the purpose itself."

Are any of your own protests similar? The reason for this is that the ego desires to be separate from the whole. It believes that by being separate it can preserve itself. Giving in to the Present and allowing itself to be dissolved into existence equates with death for it. All of those pitfalls I posed above deal either with asserting separateness or escaping the Present by attaching to the past or future. Every one of these things inhibits awareness of Consciousness.

One day, years ago, I was walking by myself on Busch Campus at Rutgers University. Most people who know me have heard that I suffer a minor case of agoraphobia, i.e. fear of open spaces, the opposite of claustrophobia. Thus, walking in some areas on Busch Campus is a bit hard for me because they are open fields, but one day I decided to push myself and I took a stroll across a wide open field of grass heading away from the stadium.

As the usual panic started to grip me, I stepped back from it and observed. That didn't end the panic at all, but I was at least not associating with the panic. I was disidentifying from it and watching it like it was on a TV screen happening to someone else. As the fear and terror engulfed me even further, and the usual feelings of falling and dizziness swept by, I started to become even more aware of the silence and calmness behind all of the panic. Suddenly, I wasn't "me" anymore. In the middle of the field, I think I stopped walking. As I did that, I looked down at a single blade of grass in the wide open grassy expanse, and I realized that the blade of grass and I were one. I became the blade of grass.... small, insignificant.

Then the experience went further. Suddenly, I realized that that blade of grass was consciously connected to all of the blades of grass in the field. I expanded with that realization to include the whole field. I wasn't just one blade of grass anymore. I was all of them. Millions of them. There was a peace like none other when this feeling happened.

Then another realization came. That first blade of grass that I melded with seemed to point something out to me, wordlessly. It basically said, "How limiting is that? To think that you're just one blade of grass? When you could be ALL blades of grass in the field, or even the world?" I realized that this was a metaphor for me, as a human. How limiting is it to think that you are just this one individual? It all seemed comical in that instant, that I should cling to being a tiny blade of grass. I pictured a blade of grass waving around in the wind saying, "I am going to BE somebody! I am great! I have a bigger purpose!" I think I roared with laughter at that, and then the experience ended. For a few minutes after that, I was no longer scared of the open space and I was able to walk out of there fearlessly.

When you are conscious in the moment and not stressing about the future or regretting the past, you are whole. When you are Present, all those things become irrelevant and for that brief second, you are fulfilling your purpose. Doing everything in the Present to the best of your ability and to the highest quality is what we are here to do. The actual content of your work is not as important as whether you are doing it with awareness or not. When I was a child, before Draja had started to train me, another spiritual teacher once told me to prepare for what's coming by washing dishes. Naturally, I turned up my nose at that. What could washing dishes possibly have to do with spirituality or spiritual growth? However, now it is obvious. If you can wash dishes while being Present and accepting it as your purpose, you will go far. Anything you do to that effect is a spiritual exercise.