Meditation, Purpose & Emerson

What is your plot of land?

This Sunday was our final week in our month on meditation. Rev. Dr. Heather Clark talked about using meditation as a tool to connect with the very essence of who we are and to ask how to manifest our good in the world. To ask “What is trying to manifest through me?”

I can’t think of a more practical role for meditation.

I’ve always wondered if a strong life’s purpose was innate in some people or was it something developed, something nutured and encouraged to grow until it then took on a life of its own. I remember watching the movie “The Secret,” and when Neal Donal Walsch said that there is nothing declaring what you have to do or be, I felt a great sense relief. But while I desire freedom of choice there is a longing to have a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of your plot of land.

I say “plot of land” because Sunday’s talk from Rev. Dr. Heather made me think of Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” Whether our true calling is predetermined or self chosen it doesn’t matter as long as we know how to find it.

Because ultimately I know that no one is going to tell me what color my parachute is. Because ultimately I know that every answer in a multiple choice quiz is a compromise of who I am. Because ultiimately I know that it’s even more than taking your “own counsel” … it’s tapping into who you truly are for the answers that truly matter.

I’m going to share a couple paragraphs of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Answering that question of “what is my work” or “what is my purpose” is the stuff that builds lives and the satisfaction and happiness that comes when one works in harmony with their true nature and gifts. And as Rev. Dr. Heather Clark pointed to the not so subtle shift between “How do I draw abundance into my life?” as “What is it that wants to be created through me?” The second question draws you into alignment with your greatest good, your greatest expression and therefore your greatest gift.