Speaker:� �What am I doing here?�, in the big sense, is the foundation of all my questions today.� I don�t know if there is another question.� �I spent several weeks very depressed.� But there was a transition and now �I feel I am living more in perception than in thinking and recognizing that the thinking is, in some cases, more a way to relay the experience to someone else and I find this allows me to let go of the thinking with some ease.� I am also dealing with the authenticity of my behavior and that in itself sometimes brings up some hopelessness that I am stuck.

�We find limitation with the language about purpose, i.e., �What am I doing here?�.� You have allowed opening to what we might call �fuller perception systems�.� Elements of� polarity naturally slip into language and create a slippery slope, i.e., ��perception is more useful than thinking�, ie, one is inherently better than the other.� It is challenging to become aware of our unconscious move toward sorting life into one-&-another, rather than and-&-with. �As we always share, we see this reality as one of seeming paradox � it is paradoxical here.� And to keep that principle in the forefront, it is useful to wear all of our language lightly because we are oriented to comprehend our reality through distillation � distilling through separation and individuation.� Yet even as we are drawn to regard the Whole, we must have caution to not again polarize and see �thinking, habituation, automatic processes as elements simply to be recognized and excised.� This is the tendency � �Ah now that I have found this is limiting me, I will excise it.� I will handle it.� I will control �it and so on.

How quickly and how easily we let go of asking �What is this of the Whole?�.� So the simple aphorism is to wear it all lightly.� Wear life lightly.� What we need to pay our attention to is when we are uni-focused.� We use the word �balancing� instead of balance because balancing represents movement.� Balance sounds like an achieved state.� We see balance as an active principle.� If you were on a tightrope, you are not a fixed element. Rather you are in constant, incremental motion; responding to the movement of the rope.� So it is important to really hold present, as consciously as we can, the recognition of the All and know that we may not fully comprehend the All. Thus, in that knowing, when we find ourselves intrigued by one focus, we can bring our attention to it fully, but hold our attention, understanding and meaning lightly.�

�What am I here for?� already shows that we are not acknowledging, �Ah, I am here.�� Purpose is fulfilled.� I am here.� This is being.� Now what else can this �I� do or learn or participate in or share or many variations�this is the true consideration of purpose, grounded in our recognition that we are here and therefore are expressions of the All, of Consciousness.

Speaker:� I am drawn to inquire and drawn to just wanting to do nothing.� And whenever I am in one space, the other is sort of hollering for attention and �I don�t know how to be in the transition between the two. I can feel like I am at peace with everything but then I am drawn to what I �need� to do � not the world�s �have-to� but driven by something else, a sense of purpose.

We �feel that people �come in� to life with affinities, receptivities, capacity for attunement. Does come one�into life with purpose?� Is there a �core identity�?� Is there an inherent self? We see all this as a clay that can be activated, may not be activated, may not need to be activated.� We feel that what one thinks of as a definite destiny is extremely rare.� The Mozart, the Beethoven, is extremely rare � destiny in that a quality comes in and has to be expressed in one note, one manner, one way. And we don�t really know if those �exceptions� are actually so.� We do see that if you look at almost everyone�s life, you can see� a core quality of being, present even through many external changes.� This quality is more often an attribute, rather than a talent.� An attribute like a capacity to listen, or an ability to respond� - it is something that shows up regardless of whatever outer expressions are given to the voice of the individual.

In those who find a focus of �the spiritual life�, �we see often a quality where remembering or recognizing of the All� is more amplified, and it will show up within their whole lives whether they find a focus of their spiritual expression or not.� You can meet the classic old lady in the wood who has no spiritual language, but if you speak to her, she speaks the truth of the ages.� And what is happening is that a consciousness of this recognition - the recognition of the All - continues to evolve and grow.� Some people do not like the idea of consciousness evolving, as in, �If it is all one always, how can it evolve?�� In our articulation, �evolving� is pointing toward the growing capacity of the egoic individual to recognize the All.

Exploration is about the recognition of the nature our being, which is that we are individuations, individual expressions of the All.� Again, the idea that we are not an inherently defined ego, that we are conditioned beings are most useful tools toward staying aware.� The problem is that it is too easy to once again say, this and not that.� These conceptual tools can easily be understood to exclude ease with the inclusivity of one�s self. That there is conditioning is not the problem.� Difficulties arise when we are driven by and compelled by what has occurred to us and our conditioning.� This reality requires a degree of learning, conditioning. �It requires that you don�t have to relearn every thing, every time.

Our observation is that people do not easily allow an accepting place for conditioning.�� �It is very difficult to be accepting; to find a place to be with our wholeness.� We most often prefer to be like that which we think is good or new or improved or better or more useful. �We are not embracing of ourselves but we are moving toward embracing ourselves more wholly.� The recognition that we are conditioned is a beginning.� The recognition that we can be other than we are told, other than how our own psyche pulls us to be is a beginning.� Recognizing that much of we believe we are begins with what we are told, and what the tellers had been told and so on is an opening in the patterns for all of us.

Speaker: I didn�t chose out of nothing; I chose from something. What generated that �I have to do�; what is the source?� Why am I constantly looking?

There are systems where people try to understand how we come into life.� The Enneagram, astrology � these are systems of recognition.� Whatever the total accuracy of such systems and they do have accuracy within them, they all reflect the recognition that one comes into life with certain qualities and with certain parameters. But they are all pointers toward understanding, metaphors, a mythos [as in transcendent myth] � ways we can comprehend coming into life with qualities. These frameworks can be a useful support to recognize your patterns and to how you are one of 9 or 12 patterns that are shared by others. And again you ask, �I see the patterns but why do we come in with this?�

Here we touch the Vastness - there is simply is no one answer to why. The eternal, pervasive �catch� to the spiritual life � there is no one answer.� [Speaker:� How can that be!� Did I not chose to show up here in the first place?]� Consider it this way - the elements of �choice� when operating from the Vast are not exactly what we could call �choice� as used in our language.

You are the sea, and as you move, �you crystallize into a piece of salt.� You are of the sea, you have now crystallized of the sea and this salt crystal comes to the beach, becomes of the sand, but you are still the sea, you are the salt, you are the beach and on and on.

Our languages are simply inadequate to truly address this principle. �This element of choice is an entire other language.� Again and again, tradition can give us no accurate words; it is seen as ineffable, that which cannot be expressed.� People find this frustrating, calling it the �spiritual cop-out.�� But we see it as the truth.� The Cosmos. The Way - that which we cannot fully understand in words.�

One comes into situations and recognizes resonances � there is a vast spiritual �arena that leads us and supports our willingness [conscious and in mystery] to follow and move toward these recognitions.� We see definitiveness as the rarest of occurrences, i.e., ���I will be reborn to do this.� It is my purpose to be this.�� Some ideas of the recognition are that we express other life times, lives of a different consciousness or physicality, as if some aspect consciously chooses elements of a coalescing of energy. �What these ideas suggest can exist in a complex way, but it is always a vast co-arising of myriad elements.� It is not one and the other and it is simply not �captured as we image it.

The resonances move from all the movement of life. �Here language only approximates, makes it concrete and narrows our comprehension. Thus, we must remember to allow the core principles to be heard and let the specifics be seen more as a way to making the Vast concrete enough to understand. �[Speaker:� It sounds like what you are saying is it is that way because it is that way.]� Yes, and what is most useful is the recognition of �This is how I am.� This is what is here. And so I shall wear my ideas of this lightly.�� Simply, proceed from where you are.�

You recognize the quality in yourself of being one who seeks truth and this very quality is what you can offer to the Universe, asking ��How do you want me to move with this?� ��We comfortably personify the Universe in language, we talk to the Universe, but truly we are of it.� People forget that this reality is an experience of individuation of the Vast, so let us not create another super-ego ideal that it is not okay to think of yourself as an �I�!� If it is more clear to think of the Vastness as having some kind of conscious consideration, then we consider this reality a reflection of the Vast�s interest in the exploration of individuation.�� We, Orion, our own aspect of the Vast, have interest in individuation, so we have found this time of exploring and interchange with you.

[Speaker: I get it.� So my next question would be where does awareness or self-consciousness show up in that stream?]

Again, we don�t have an answer of why it seems to be, except the observation that it seems this is what has developed. �It seems the human way of being is to come in with Awareness, to accrete over Awareness, to come into a tight focus so the person can function in this reality and then to allow Awareness again.� It is unusual when this is not the pattern.� Hopefully the constancy of this pattern will be able to shift.� Anyone who has spent time with young children knows we are teaching them the accretions.� Because they don�t recognize the closed focus for several years, we teach them to be here in a way that brings them closed focus and makes life more concrete. It seems that this has been useful evolving.� What also seems to be beginning to perk for various reasons is the capacity that we don�t have to do it as rigidly.� So now we have many adults who try to give their children a more free experience and are recognizing their own conditioning and are trying to lighten it up.�

Awareness, in our view, is the non-individuated interconnection of all things. It is the connection, the recognition of the nature of it all, that is always present, shared by all of us. If we could see us as an energetic, it would be like a grand cosmic web linking everything.� We try with our conscious awareness to recognize this vast Awareness.� Thinking leads us to recognition by differentiating that which is undifferentiated.� So here awareness and thinking come together.��� [Speaker: it�s almost like the individuated awareness and the thinking is the next stage of evolution.]���

Yes, this can be seen in this so-called surge of spiritual development, spiritual language, as individuals trying to ease or shift their patterns or allow new patterns.� We�ve learned thinking.� We�ve learned discernment.� But we are still seeing from either/or.� So what would it be like to have the two things at once.� This is the challenge, the paradoxical.� As you said, there is that which wishes to be quiet and do nothing and that who wants to do, to take action.

The challenge is to wait and see if you can allow the recognition of where the energy is, right now, in the present. �The challenge is not to do one or the other.� ��Do I move to doing?� Do I stay?� Or something I have no idea of?�� Listen to understand the flow. The conflict comes up when you have identified on some level what you should do. �Allowing is sometimes viewed as a passive, non-responsible choice..� But we can pause. When what is happening is not totally clear to us � we can pause and ask.� We can consider that the action is not here yet.� You could be recognizing movement that is not here yet.� You sense something is actually moving toward you, but you think it is here.� Or you could be in your own, subtle spiritual super-ego attack saying �I want to sit, but I should be doing this.�� Or it could be that the rhythms are, in fact, conflicting at that moment.� We could really have both things happening at the same time � wanting to sit and maybe a reality that you should be moving.� So if we allow that it could all be at once and there is no right or wrong of the all-at-once, then the �next way� could show up.� And this might be sit for 5 more minutes and then I go or, 'You know, I don�t have to really do that..'������� [Speaker:� That�s the way I come to things - in that moment I can actually choose.� Before that it�s automatic, conditioned.]

Again, the idea is not that we are required to give up all of our conditioning. We are �automatic� in a very complex way.� Let�s not make conditioned behavior a boogey-man, a new super-ego.� Rather, let us recognize that there is conditioned behavior, some of which can be perfectly useful, and to try to ask, �Is this conditioned behavior interfering with flow?�� We forget that conditioned behavior can also facilitate the movement of flow.� Conditioning now has a very negative connotation.� In essence, we simply have learned behaviors � some of which compel us, some of which narrow our view.� These are the ones we wish to�examine.

Speaker: I get this image that it is like a faucet � of allowing and not allowing, less flow or more flow.� It seems to me that the source from which the flow can occur is an unlimited source and it�s going nowhere in particular�

We would say that the definiteness of where flow is going is really very complex.� And for us to recognize the direction can also be challenging.� We get our individuated view and sometimes it becomes clear.� The �faucet� is a great descriptor because we do tend to think of it that way � faucet. On and off. Flow, etc.� We forget it is the river.� [Speaker: And there�s no off!].� Yes, and our option, no matter what we think we�re doing, is to watch what shows up.� To be aware when it is rushing and tumbling along, when it�s calm and there are things we can do in response to the river.� But like anyone who has ever been on a river knows, don�t count on it.� Don�t think you are ever controlling the boat, because you are not.� This is very disconcerting to people.� But if you hold dear that you are the river and you are in the movement and of the movement, then it is easier to allow the listening to what comes present, to asking �What can I do to facilitate a movement here?� and also allow that the answer may be �Nothing at all.���� [Speaker:� Well then�that is a very broad question, isn�t it?]�

�What can I do to facilitate a movement here?� is a broad, open question but it will show up in the specific each time.� And as�you become attuned to being in life this way,� you will begin to recognize when you push the river. The hunch you turn down that later shows you that there was something you were sensing.� We are not going to make all the correct interpretations. We are going to misinterpret realities.� We can only interpret from what is available.� Again, the little catch-phrase �wear it lightly� comes into play.� It isn�t that we have to go around in a world of doubt. It is that we simply go around in a world of consideration - �where we know �I can understand what I can understand.� And we leave open the interest in and possibility of knowing more.� What is most useful to focus on is the core principle �that you are of the All, that there is this Flow, that you may not be able or even have a certain finite capacity in the moment to discern.�

To a degree the flow is interpretable, but we have to have ease with wonder; ��ease not knowing; ease with mystery.� Every spiritual tradition comes down to this expression because it is so.� We cannot conceptualize it.� You can sense it.� You can recognize it.� Recognize is a perfect word because it is recognition.� It is just not mind, language and images � it is �Ah!�� That is what opens people � the recognition of the All.� Our lives often take us to places where we simply do not know.� We �hit our wall� and then we have to, as they say in so many traditions, surrender.� Surrender is not capitulation � it is giving up the confined realm of our concepts.

[Speaker: I�ve gotten a lot of freedom out of this conversation and I really like the sand and beach image because that really gave me the sense that� there is nothing to do.� There is no purpose to look for, it�s here!.]

Our vastest spiritual questions, like, �What is my purpose?� often link to our most personal experience.� Your question on purpose is linked to what you experienced as a young child as the danger of being different.� And we feel somewhere you learned that usefulness was safe-passage.� �If I�m different but useful and help, I�ll be all right.���Your present feeling compelled by doing is�related�to the earlier��I will be useful in my difference�. And this usefulness�is the �coin� of your acceptance. Thus purpose is merged with usefulness and usefulness with doing. �

We feel children hold and live in the recognition of the All until language becomes dominant; and this is why our conditioning is so compelling and stays so present within us. Picture young children completely experiencing the All and bearing the contractions, the constrictions, of typical enculturation, regardless of specific trauma. They keenly know the lie of it.� They know �I don�t really have to eat peas to live.�� As adults we can explore not taking life personally, we can explore giving up our understandings, our encapsulated stories of our life. �These are more radical concepts than people understand because for the child these contractions are personal. �For the child who is experiencing life with distinct connection to the transpersonal, the All, the conditionings are experienced as totally directed at them individually and personally.

Unless a child literally see another child have the same experience, they have no frame to know that others share their experience, for most young children are in isolation within their world and there is no transpersonal world being reflected back to them. When you take children with problems, such as abuse, and place them in a therapeutic setting, one thing that occurs is the total shock as they realize what happened to me happened to her, to him.� For many, this is the first time they realize their experience is not unique to them. So the contractions of socialization become deeply embedded in the psyche and thus are compelling.� It is from these crystallized wounds that we operate in the world. �And to ease these wounds, we will have to come, individually and culturally, to a spiritual perspective.�

You can heal aspects of these wounds psychosocially; you can use tools to free yourself from some conditioning, but you are making more �workable� people.� What has to eventually be brought in, as you have done in your own life, is allowing the recognition that our socialization and conditioning is a contraction of the All and that the All is present regardless of our understanding, comprehension or belief. �And it is that very awareness which flows through our pain and takes us to recognition of the truth of being and therefore can truly allow the healing of the wound.� Otherwise we have a scar that we operate through.� We get some flexibility, but we don�t really heal the core wound.� And so far this path of contraction seems to be the socialization process for humankind.�

Yet, how interesting that every culture has in myriad ways the tale of the person who �breaks out of or breaks through� � the hero or heroine who breaks the mold.� One who says, �This is the truth or that is not the truth�� And we all recognize this. �Oh yes, we don�t have to be this or we may not do that�. And so this awareness of a further way to be stays present, leading us to new evolution.

In the end, we see that purpose looks for us, asks us to be the Caretakers of Purpose.� Purpose does come and get us. When we realize that we are the caretakers of purpose, the mentors of purpose, the supporters of purpose then we can very easily allow ourselves not to just give or share our purpose, but to listen and follow our purpose as it leads us.� The danger of every sharer is to forget you are simply the caretaker.� The moment you think you know definitely what it is or �precisely how to do it or exactly what is needed � finite definitions of your purpose � you are losing your balance.� We see that people get off balance not in a real moment of conversation or interaction, but more often, the moment away from conversation � when the egoic planning is sure and in that surety forgets to listen; when we begin to justify what we want to do. �Again, the balance point is in our willingness to step back from our own agenda and ask, �What is really needed here? How can I best serve?�. Offer your willingness to be the caretaker not the leader and grace, flow shall surely lead you.������������ Orion

���������������������������������������������������������������� Excerpted & edited from a personal session with permission.� Thank you J.