Dylan Stewart Legacy Magazine Columnist
It seems simple enough. Find your path, find a career, find a partner, settle down, have a family, make some money, and be happy. That’s the game isn’t it? That’s the purpose right? That’s why were all here isn’t it? The pursuit of happiness? The continuation of the species?
Or is there something more? Some reason that we all come here to this planet at this time in history? Are we part of something bigger? Or is this an every man for himself game?
I used to think it was simple. I used to think I was just supposed to follow the path laid out before me. My father was a writer so I should be a writer. I should have some kids. I should do something to make money, and count myself lucky if I was able to put food on the table.
But somewhere along the way I began to question all of it. Dangerous things questions… they force you to reconsider your assumptions. They force you to look deeper. They force you to check your emotions, check your heart, and check your beliefs.
As I begin to ask those questions I discovered a deeper sense of who I was. A deeper reason of why I was here. A deeper connection to something greater than me, some divine plan.
Something had brought me here. Put me into this position. Planted these questions into my mind, and challenged me to discover why I was really here.
It is so easy to take our purpose for granted, to take what our culture, our family, our friends have planted in our heads as the true reason we’re here. Make money, have a career, have a family… It’s just about your happiness.
And for most of us that’s good enough, but not me. I found happiness… That’s for sure, but I didn’t find it by following the path. I found it by stepping outside of the box, outside of the common way of thinking. I began to ask what the purpose of my purpose was? Why I wanted to be happy? And what was happiness anyways?
And I started to tap into my inner joy, my vision, my sense of self. And in that exploration I discovered a feeling that runs so deep it touches the very core of my spirit. A feeling so powerful that when I touched upon it, it was like an electric shock. It was so powerful I knew instantly that it was true, that it was real, that it was important.
I call it my Compass. My Northstar. And once I found that feeling, that connection, that gift, I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t avoid it. And it became my life quest to understand it and follow it. To find what made me feel that joy. To discover how to align myself deeper and deeper to that feeling.
And what started as a selfish quest, a way for me to find happiness and be more of myself quickly expanded. I came to realize that so many of us have gotten lost in exploring our purpose and finding our way and discovering our happiness and trying to follow the rules laid for us by our society, by our family, by our friends under the assumption that that’s the only way. Guess what? It’s not.
So I decided to share the secret, teach other people about this feeling inside of us, this magnetic true north compass that could tell you when you were on your path and when you were lost.
My purpose has become to help people find their‘s. My purpose has become to awaken people to the possibility that what you were given, and what you accepted, and what you have been following may not be yours… It may not be what makes you happy or give you why you’re really here.
So how? How do you tap into it? How do you understand it and find that feeling?
It starts by getting quiet. Turn off the noise. The electronic screens. The chattering boxes and the radios and the noise inside your own head. Get quiet, and go deep inside. So deep that all you feel is your heartbeat.
Start with that heartbeat. Feel it pulsing. Feel the blood pulsing through your whole body. Breathe. Feel that breath giving life to your very pores and cells. And then start to ask those questions.
- Why am I here?
- What do I love?
- What makes me happy?
- What makes me want to sing and dance?
And then you have to ask the other side of the questions, what makes me angry? What makes me hurt? What pulls me away? What leads me astray?
In this exploration, in this journey, you begin to understand the two sides of yourself. That which is aligned, and that which is out of harmony.
Stay quiet, stay in that space and find the difference between the two parts. One will lift you, while one will hold you back. One will lighten you, lighten your load, and expand your energy from within while the other will compress you, condense you, and pull the energy from you until you feel stuck to the very ground we walk on, like a stone.
This isn’t the end of your journey. This isn’t the end of your exploration. This is just beginning, but this is where it starts.
Once you find that alignment, and begin to understand it, you see your whole life, every interaction, every opportunity through a different lens, and you start to realize every choice and every decision you make is either bringing you closer to alignment, or farther away.
And now that you understand that, now that you know how it feels … how you can spread that wisdom and knowledge under those around you. Wake them up, shake them out of their stupor; we all need each other now.
It’s time for all of us to create the moment that is going to help us shift each other – this world, this country, our friends and family, and our enemies – into a new space where we really get to understand what our purpose is, and why it matters. You can stop accepting the dogma of our society and the assumptions of what your purpose should be.
Your purpose is bigger than you were ever told. You are bigger, more important, more powerful than you ever imagined. This world can’t change without you. Without you finding that purpose. Without you following it, and beginning to change how you see you.
Go out now, go out and go in and figure out for yourself why you are here.
It’s your time, and you’re the only one who can do it for you.