Personal Legend

This Creative Thought was presented at our Center's Sunday service in October 2008.

Tonight our Spiritual Book Club is discussing THE ALCHEMIST, a book by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. The story is about an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert to fulfill his destiny, his Personal Legend, his personal calling...to claim the life of his dreams. The story could be a metaphor for our own journey to find and live our personal vision, purpose, mission.

So I thought as I was reading this...what's MY Personal Legend? Do I have a path, as the book says, charted by the mysterious magnet of destiny but obscured by distraction? I couldn't think of anything.

A speaker at a recent Wednesday Night service talked about declaring and manifesting our dreams. Someone in the audience stated her dream as winning the lottery, specifically $100 million dollars, by a certain date.

Hmmm! I thought. I can't imagine that! But I can't imagine anything right now. I felt dreamless. No Personal Legend, no personal calling, no vision, purpose, mission was coming to mind. A big blank.

Maybe this was a reflection of the grief process, I thought. My husband of 43 years is gone now...over five months ago. I'm still sitting in what I call "the silence of the great unstructured emptiness," not certain which way to go, which structure to create.

At one time I had a passion for photography; I thought I might start a business. I had one wall in my living room covered with 13x19-inch borderless prints.

One day I took them all down. Why was that? I had enjoyed making them; we enjoyed looking at them. But now Larry was gone. He had been my biggest fan! The mutual sharing was gone, and the photos lost their appeal.

I enjoy visiting my children and grandchildren. Recently I visited my son in Washington, D.. and had a lovely time. A former college roommate, an artist, came to stay with us for awhile and we toured the major art galleries.

We contacted another roommate from our college days...50 years ago! We looked at our graying hair and expanded girth and wondered aloud: "What happened?" But it was delightful. I have a new grandchild, Athena, who I'm going to visit soon. I'm certain that will be delightful, also.

Somehow, though, I was not seeing my Personal Legend emerging. I felt rudderless.

Listening to Eckhart Tolle recently on a DVD brought new perspective. He talked about evolving our consciousness beyond our Ego, beyond our obsession with form, and focusing instead on the present moment, the here and now.

He asked, "Who would you be without your story?" Really, who WOULD I be without my story? I'm so attached to my story; it's so much a part of me.

But as he spoke, I had a vision of my "story" collapsing, like photographs fluttering down and settling within the pages of my Life Story book. I actually have such a book. I created it over four years ago...71 pages of photos and text outlining my "Life and Times." It was one of the first books I created using an online publishing program.

In this vision, I am standing ALONE in the darkness without my story, which is safely stsored away in the book. I seem to be on a plain that stretches in all directions. And I am at peace, simply BEING. I make peace with the present moment...the field on which the game of life happens. I am one with Life...in the Now. I simply allow life to live through me, to see what happens, and not futz about some future Personal Legend or vision, purpose, mission. I simply allow it to emerge, in its own way, in its own time.

It's not WHAT we do, but HOW we do it that determines whether we are fulfilling our destiny according to Eckhart Tolle. Transcend the ego-based state of consciousness and awaken to consciousness of alignment with creative principle of the Universe.

As Ernest Holmes says, "Meditating on the Perfect Life is a royal road to freedom and happiness. Let us daily say, 'Perfect God within me, Perfect Life within me, which is God, come forth into expression through me as that which I am; lead me ever into the paths of perfection and cause me to see only the Good.'"

And so it is.