What is your predominant perspective on life?

Have you ever heard these four phrases?

1. Life is happening to me.
2. Life is happening with me.
3. Life is happening for me.
4. Life is happening through me.

They attempt to describe how a human’s perspective expands as their awareness expands. Which of these is your predominant perspective right now as you move through your life?

Much of society and your nervous system will make you believe #1. Certainly when we are in difficult circumstances, feeling beaten down, nothing is working, in danger, it is easy to be in perspective that life is just happening to you like a hammer happens to a nail. It’s easy to look around the world and see billions of people at the cruel mercy of fate’s whims. Is that the most true way to look at yourself, or the world?

Maybe you have had the experience of co-creating something with life. All of a sudden you realize you are more powerful than you first seemed. You were able to have an influence, an effect, that seemed to tilt life in your favor, even briefly. That’s perspective #2. Maybe you chose to stay at that level, trying to replicate having an external effect on life. That is the level of goals and achievement.

Then along the way maybe you had a “spiritual” experience. Maybe you were on a mountain top or at a plant medicine ceremony or staring into the eyes of a baby, and you were struck with awe at the wonder of life. Seeing the miracle of being here, no matter the challenges that have happened or what we have created. That we are part of something bigger, even though we don’t fully understand what “here” or “something bigger” even is. This connection somehow feels more alive and more fulfilling than our goals. We start to feel like we are not alive by coincidence, Life wants us here or we wouldn’t exist. What a gift. We experience how small we are in the face of existence and how huge we are to be a part of it. We wonder at how our attention gets sucked into things that don’t matter and somehow we feel that everything matters. Something like that, is perspective #3.

If we get a taste of this perspective we might start to experience what most humans call wonder, joy, expansion, and love for no reason. At this point, almost all of us end up asking, how can I help this thing called life that is happening? How can I both enjoy myself fully and help others experience this wonder and joy for themselves, for the highest good of everyone?

We soon realize a problem with asking these questions. Our mind doesn’t fully know what this something bigger is or what life is really doing, so we can’t answer these questions with our mind. Our honest answer is almost always I don’t know. Some of us run from that and go back to perspective #2. Some of us keep going to see if we can get the information we believe we can access.

We learn to feel the joy and excitement in our hearts and take the risk of following it. We learn to sense our intuition and listen to it against the advice of others. We deepen our skills of perceiving in the present moment, finding a huge supply of energy and insight, realizing the present is the only place where this information comes in. We discover that we have been blocking this information with our own emotional constriction and judgements and we learn to heal that so we can be more open. Since we cannot predict this process, or where it will take us, our only choice becomes to surrender, trust, and discover what we create as we go along. Perspective #4.

This is how purpose works. This is how art works. It’s a surrender and a discovery. In this way we surprise and delight ourselves, and we see that our delights are actually helping the world.

Against all mental reasoning, we find that there is indeed a beautiful match between our deepest fulfillment, our authentic abundance, and our highest service. It turns out that our authentic joy is connected to the Whole, that others are waiting for it, and it can bring us everything we need in service of all.

Have you already experienced that? Because there is a part of you already in that perspective. All of us have access to all these levels right now. You can tap into any level at will and use it as you wish.

If you want to test that idea and see what comes through for you, I am running a free event for that.

The event is called the Flow Lab Sample Session. Flow Lab is a space we are creating dedicated to supporting each other in inviting Life to happen through us, to expand who we are being and what we are capable of creating for ourselves and in service of what Life wants next. On Thursday we are offering a taste of this