Finding Your Own Truth

In a previous post ("The Impact of Past Lives on the Present") I mentioned that one of the guiding concepts of this site is to help individuals find "their truth".  There are a wide variety of ways to learn and discover truth in this world.

One way is through increased levels of personal meditation.  Let me preface this by saying I'm no master meditator, I don't spend a large amount of time, but I do try and do it several times a day.  When I began this journey, I wondered why so many people suggested meditation, I really didn't understand what it had to offer. Well, here's something that helped make it "click" for me.  This quote is from Carlos Castaneda, "Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words." Done properly, meditation turns off our internal dialogue, and helps us discover those extraordinary things, or that part of God, hidden within us.

Dreams are another way of discovering your own life's purpose.  While many of my dreams are just bizarre or about subjects not really related to spirituality, (I have great "adventure-movie" dreams), at times I've gained insight by remembering and paying attention to my dreams.

If you've looked around this site a bit, you'll realize I love to read and incorporate new ideas discovered within good books into my life.  Many times a particular quote or section of a book will provide a flash of inspiration to help solve a personal problem or reevaluate a course of action.

I also believe many things have to be learned through experience.  Despite the vast repositories of spiritual advice contained in sacred books throughout the world, despite advice gleaned from web-sites or received from friends, there are simply some things you have to figure out for yourself.  Mostly this is done through trial and error, or the "school of hard knocks".  These lessons of life are the whole reason we exist in this schoolhouse we call earth.  Many of these lessons are taught through family relationships, your personal relationships with parents, siblings and children.

Each one of us has different lessons to learn.  No one can learn your lessons for you. No one can do the work for you.  No one can make you do it, it must come from within.  Certainly, we can help each other along the way by providing insight and encouragement, but the lessons are ours to learn.  Isn't that what makes life so wonderful though? The joy of discovering new things.  New things about God, the universe, and ourselves.

Some lessons one person struggles with here on earth may be a piece of cake to someone else. We come to earth with a core of knowledge gathered from previous lives.  We don't remember it all directly, but it makes up facets of our personalities, our strengths and our weaknesses. We need compassion when dealing with others struggling with problems. Perhaps we've just been fortunate enough to have learned and incorporated that lesson in a previous life.  When it comes to our weaknesses, we need to relish the challenge of overcoming them.  We need to confront them head on, and if they knock us down, we need to get up, dust ourselves off, laugh, and confront them again.  Help will be provided to us, if we seek it, and we continue to work.  We all have the capability to grow and become more God-like by overcoming these weaknesses and learning these sometimes difficult lessons. My prayer is that we continue to do so, and by so doing, we develop a World Beyond the one we currently reside in.  A better world, a world closer to God.