Reflections

May 2007

Opening to a Vision for Life

Opening to a Vision for Life

By Rev. LeRoy E. Zemke
Pastor, Temple of the Living God

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
Abraham Lincoln

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you dreamed yourself to be.
- Patanjali

In the larger overall scheme of life, I believe it would be helpful if each of us had some kind of user’s guide or inkling of an overview, a plan or a roadmap that would enable us to discern the major life directions we are to experience, from our birth forward. Spiritual teachings across the world suggest that such a vision is written in our heart’s deepest longings and yearnings. In other words, we born with it contained in our very soul. The mystery, however, remains. How do we uncover it? If we refer to some of the ancient cultures, we find they looked to the heavens, the stars and planets for signs to reveal or auger their future. Hence astrology was born in an effort to codify these signs in a highly organized manner, an unfolding system that remains viable and useful to countless millions around the world.
While its purposefulness, accuracy or viability may be debated amongst some of the educated and intelligentsia, I believe it offers a manageable, if not comprehensible potential map of an individual person’s birth data and can reveal significant soul knowledge. Carl Jung, the world famous Swiss psychologist whose approach to the study of the human psyche (Jungian Depth Psychology) is honored around the world, is reputed to have consulted the natal charts of his clients before beginning any program of therapy.

The well known 12 signs of the heavenly zodiac offer clues about our personality (ego, outer self) makeup, our emotional strengths (and weaknesses), money (how made), property, or professional inclinations or potentialities, talents, abilities, special skills, learning opportunities, partnership, marriage, children, friendship, all kinds of travel, renewal, health, regeneration, soul patterns, karmic influences, where we will most likely face some of our deepest issues around loss, death, health, fame or relationships and how we may overcome these issues. A natal chart reflects what the soul has come to learn and accomplish in a lifetime journey. The key here is based upon the interpretive skills of the specific teacher (astrologer) to help reveal, articulate and be aligned to the person seeking clarity as well as the natal chart’s content.

Astrology is, of course, only one such system that attempts to reveal something of our inner selves to us through its detailed and intricate system.

My purpose in speaking of astrology in this writing is to address the issue of a life vision.

Across time immemorial man has ever sought to see his purpose in life in terms of a unique, personal vision. The basic idea here is that if we incarnate on earth we have a larger purpose or reason for being born. Such purpose thus rises beyond mere survival or finding a mate or spouse, raising or not raising children, becoming a contributing member of a given society, then growing old and dying.

I have lived my life, now nearly half a century focused as a teacher, counselor, author, intuitive, minister and spiritual life coach. All of these professional avenues are, indeed, part of my life vision. It is not just one area or one focus. I have been involved in a public ministry from my college years onward. Almost all of my ongoing study has been to explore the human psyche and the varied spiritual teachings of world religions that have revealed the innate spiritual essence of mankind, often referenced as our divine nature. My life theme has been to find avenues or ways to uncover our essential makeup in matters spiritual and mystical.

The driving force, for me, is to become more conscious, to hopefully awaken to the latent imprisoned splendor within. And to hopefully awaken to the latent imprisoned splendor within. And to reveal it to others as it is made known to me. I believe, at the deepest levels of our nature, we each seek to uncover who we are, to uncover our own imprisoned splendor.

The route we individually take may be through any form of business or medicine or politics. It may be through art, music, education, law, technology, sports, or any area of science. It might be through architecture, filmmaking, industry or the field of communication. All avenues of life experience, professional or not, can lead us toward our inner self.

Opening to our life vision may be a one-time event. For example, for one man or woman, early in his/her life it’s perceived that their focus will be the art of dance, not just to perform, but to discover the connection to life that the art of dance offers through the years and layers of study, training, discipline and personal effort reveals. And that becomes their task, purpose, or vision.

For each of us, to be open to a life vision means, I believe, that we must rise above purely ego needs for sex, security, survival and shelter. These four needs are valuable and important to our development as a human being. But the nature of soul vision is much more. It’s the deep, internal driving force that reveals our deepest soul’s yearning to awaken to be a fuller, richer, more complete human being. I offer a very brief example of what I perceive may be a life vision.

Suppose a person discovers early in life that the goal/vision of his/her being incarnated is to become a political figure, an elected official, perhaps a senator, a representative in Congress, maybe a governor of a state, etc. The vision may be that he/she can or will make a difference in the larger more public scheme of things legal, political and in the arena of public service called government.

As the individual matures, all the forces of their life are focused around actively participating in public service. So they volunteer to do a variety of work for a political party, hold local, county, city or state offices. Such a person may become a lawyer, or banker or accountant; they may be married or single, spiritually active in a church or faith based community or not. But the vision that impels them is to be a fully engaged, active, contributing public servant, in short, a politician.

Many of us do not know or are not aware of our inner life tasks. We do not recognize our deepest inner directives. We get caught by our own ego’s needs, and/or our view on the attitudes, lifestyles and behaviors of the country, culture or tribe in which we are raised. And we spend the bulk of our lifetime attempting to satisfy these “needs,” only to learn that, in the larger measure of our life, they matter little, if at all, in relating to our soul’s deeper work.

When we open to our own vision, I believe we find that the universe (we call it “Life”) is ever revealing itself to us. We learn through trial and error to become still, to learn to pray, or meditate. We eventually learn to let go of ideas, concepts, behaviors, attitudes and activities that do not genuinely serve our highest good. And at this point we’re on our way to finding our soul’s deeper answers, our own vision.

The great consciousness researcher Dr. David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. has stated that - (the only meaning is the meaning we attach to something.)

So if we place a spiritual interpretation on the value of a talent, skill or service we offer, it takes on the meaning we give it. Applying this to a vision, if we give deep, considered thought, time, energy and effort to the discovery process, using whatever tools are available, such as an astrological mapping, a dream’s revelatory quality (or specific piece of information), a former life memory that shows up in a unique conscious event (between yourself and another), or seeing a man or woman perform a task such as a surgeon at work, or a teacher presenting ideas to a class and realizing in that instant that we connect to that image or information, we are on the track!

Finally, when we feel we are on target, on track (inwardly), our life experiences appear to follow a pattern. We look back and see where we have been and what has unfolded up to the moment. We recognize that we have been guided all along the journey. We do not always recognize the guidance when and/or as it shows up, initially, if we are only ego based. But as ego “needs” assume a lesser emphasis in importance, our soul’s vision begins to break upon the shore of our life.

Opening to a vision is more about allowing ourself to see God’s purpose in our life. A tool such as astrology can pinpoint specific information about life issues, goals, etc. But the real work is still up to us. If a teacher (spiritual or otherwise) suggests to us that we can become a concert pianist, it remains for us to “connect” internally to that image as a life theme. We can study music, take years of lessons with the very finest musicians (piano teachers, etc.) available to us, and practice, practice, practice!! Yet, if it is not our life’s theme to genuinely develop and profoundly refine that talent, we may play well, even become successful, maybe achieve some fame, but we will not feel fulfilled at depth. The difference?

If the goal is seen as a “should” and not experienced as an awakening, it tends to leave a heavy imprint, or duty, or obligation, a promise we have made to another person or ourself, as its mark in the world. It lacks inspiration, fire, beauty and the capacity to ignite the listener or the performer in the energy of the sacred that reveals itself as a living force that brings genuine healing and transformation.

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew … Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful … and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”
Desmond Tutu
The NPR Interviews (1994)

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