From the spiritual perspective, the purpose of a physical life is to experience life lessons, to gather knowledge, and to distill the wisdom we seek from that acquired knowledge. This perspective encompasses the concept that we are spiritual beings having a mortal human experience. We, as spiritual beings, are eternal. We had no beginning and we have no end. We have always existed.
As eternal spiritual beings; we cannot die, we cannot be sick, we cannot become disabled, and we cannot be injured. We cannot directly experience any of those limitations. The only way for us to experience those things is to incarnate into a physical body that can, and does, experience all of those things. That way we can have the experience, gain the knowledge, and extract the wisdom that we seek. The physical body is designed to experience pleasure, pain, limitation, lack, success, and failure. As a spiritual being embedded within the physical body, we fully experience what happens to the body.
Each spiritual being selects the series of life lessons that will provide the experiences that individual seeks. The interactive universe perceives each eternal spiritual being as a co-creator, and arranges the flow of life to bring those exact experiences to us. The life lessons apply to the physical body and hold firm as long as we are incarnated in that body. Life lessons are a type of spiritual contract and the terms of that contract are enforced for the physical life of the body. When death comes, the spiritual being is separated from the physical body and the contract of life lessons terminates. We, as spiritual beings, are left with the knowledge, the feelings, and the effects of the life lessons on our consciousness.
One of the things that happens during the process of death is a life review. The traditional view is that this is where god judges us. That belief is not valid. The interactive universe does not judge us, anyone, or anything. It views us as co-creators. There is nothing to judge. We do, however, have a need for balancing our perceptions. During our lifetime we are focused on our own personal experience of life, perceived from within the consciousness of separation. As such we have only half of the story. The other half, how we impacted other people and what they experienced as a result of our attitude and actions, is the content of the life review. We get to experience our life from their point of view. The life review is not a criticism; it is simply providing the other half of our life experience to us so we can balance all of the experiences of our life.
We are given time to sort out what we have experienced in life and make sense of what we have learned. At some point in time, we select another set of life lessons and incarnate in another physical body. Through this process we gain an incredible amount of knowledge and develop the wisdom that we extract from the knowledge.
To me, the purpose of life is to grow and mature spiritually. In order to do that we incarnate in a physical body. As spiritual beings we cannot experience pain, pleasure, passion, ecstasy, frustration, depression, creativity, or lust. Ultimately, this is why the material universe has been created: so we can become a part of the material universe for a limited time and experience all of the things we can’t as purely spiritual beings.
We value what we learn based on what it cost us to acquire the knowledge. We have carried that wisdom with us into the physical world. This is also why the most desired objects in the world cost so much. We value most what costs us the most. It’s just that we have been taught that the principle applies to objects and not necessarily to knowledge and wisdom. The key to sorting out what is valuable from that which is not is a function of time and place. What I mean by that is no matter how valuable an object may be we can only possess it during our lifetime. When we die, we cannot take it with us into the Prime Dimension. The obvious exception is knowledge and wisdom. Those qualities can return with us into the Prime Dimension. That, after all, is the whole point of incarnation. Death is the final arbitrator over what is valuable and what is not. If we can take it with us, it’s valuable. Otherwise…
What constitutes a life lesson?
Some are more obvious than others. The primary form life lessons take is as part of a relationship. A life lesson is something that consumes our mind and emotions. Addiction is an obvious example. There are plenty of choices: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, food, religion, certain activities that get us hooked on an adrenaline rush. There are so many different life lessons that we can’t possibly experience them in a single lifetime, which is the point of reincarnation. Each life lesson is designed to get us to thoroughly understand one simple point. The point could be that certain things aren’t so valuable after all. This applies to almost everything. We think that just because the thing we want is different from something else that we thought was valuable doesn’t change anything. Each life lesson is focused on a particular detail or application of a general principle. Control and power over other people is a life lesson.
Life lessons, over time, give us balance. What I mean by that is if we take advantage of someone, or hurt someone, we unbalance the relationship. At some point we have to go back into that relationship and experience the other side of what we have done. That is how we re-establish balance. If we have killed someone, we rebalance that act by being in a position where we are killed by that person. That way we experience both sides of the action and it’s back in balance. In the process we hope that we also derive the knowledge and wisdom of what principle is involved. If we don’t learn the lesson, if we don’t become wiser in the process, we can repeat the individual life lesson for as many times as it takes. The goal is the knowledge, and especially the wisdom, that we extract from the experience.
Life lessons have two sides to them: the challenge, and the overcoming. Alcohol or drug addiction is the challenge; sobriety is the overcoming. The knowledge of what alcohol or drug addiction is and does to us and others around us is challenging. The knowledge and wisdom of sobriety is the reward for overcoming the challenge. Both are valuable experiences for us. The challenge is incomplete without the overcoming.
Manipulating and controlling the behavior of other people is the challenge; kindness, gentleness, and compassion are the overcoming. Treating all other people with gentleness, kindness, understanding and compassion is an extremely valuable lesson.
In the consciousness of separation other people are more like objects to be dealt with. In the consciousness of oneness we are them. They aren’t just other people, they are fellow spiritual beings, just like us and intimately connected to us. Ultimately what we do to them, we do to ourselves. Remember, it’s about balance. The interactive universe will not let a single detail go. Every single detail of our relationship must be returned to complete balance.
Fear separates; love unifies. Fear-based emotions inflict pain and injury on others; love-based emotions heal the injuries and soothe the pain. This is why the balance of our emotional core is so important. As long as we act from fear-based emotions we are hurting other people. When we make the shift from fear-based emotions to love-based emotions in our emotional core, we begin the process of healing not only of ourselves, but of others as well.
The life lessons we select for our lifetime cannot be changed, but we can convert the challenges into overcoming. That adds significant value to not only our life, but the lives of others as well. There are many people who have had very difficult challenges in life, and having overcome those challenges, go on to help and inspire others to overcome their challenges as well. This is how we bring true blessings into our life and into our world.
Life is challenging. It’s supposed to be. We are taught that it is better to have a “good” life, generally taken as having an easy life. But an easy life doesn’t happen in this world. We sometimes see a very wealthy person that has all the luxuries of life, and we think they must have an easy life. In almost every case that is not true. Wealth and power bring its own set of challenges. We have been told that adversity builds character. That may be true as far as it goes. But the true test of character is power, not adversity. With adversity, it seems as if we don’t have any choice in what happens to us. Through the strength of character we can overcome adversity. Overcoming the challenge of power is extremely difficult, mostly because power provides us with so many options. Choosing to be kind, gentle, understanding, and compassionate with everyone, while having power is the ultimate challenge. It is the most difficult life lesson there is.
Religion is also a life lesson. Religion is something that many people take very personally. Religion is designed to be addictive. Each religion has its own set of emotionally addictive components.
