Showing posts with label life's purpose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life's purpose. Show all posts

Saturday, 6 October 2012

PREPARING FOR CHANGE

Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Deep Waters", handmade collage with artist's photographs,
copyright 2012
I felt that my blog was looking a bit tired and that I really needed to change the look as well as the description. I don't post very often these days, as my life has become more focused on the arts than on spiritual matters. My world view hasn't changed that much, but maybe my perspective has - rather than trying to look at life from above, I seem to be observing life from the ground up while working on a grass root's level. It's difficult to find words for this change of priorities. I guess it's really about being increasingly less theoretical and more practical about living life in a meaningful way. 

I haven't felt very spiritual, to be quite honest. I believe that once you have understood some of life's fundamental "truths" in a way that satisfies your soul, there is no turning back. So while I may feel less spiritual it could be an illusion that only means that I am more interested in the life we live here and now, in questions surrounding a true integration into society without the sacrifice of one's true self (putting the "being in the world but not the world" into practice), and what sort of work is truly useful at this time in history. I believe that one's purpose in life as well as the way in which one needs to manifest this purpose can be quite surprising and unorthodox. For instance, some people might wonder why I dwell on negative issues through my art while I personally feel that I need to talk about serious matters in a way that reaches the greatest audience. Most people need rather graphic examples of life's issues in order to start thinking about them. I want to break out of any club of mutual admiration, and reach across to new audiences if possible. My health is not good, and I struggle to find new ways of dealing with it, but also of using it as part of my communication with others. I'm also busy focusing on the kind of life I would truly like to have, as I feel that knowing and understanding bad health, poverty and other issues related to limitations and lack has had its days... Perhaps I'll talk more about this some other time. When things have been stagnated for a while, change is usually behind the door!

This blog has been running now for over four years, and I have reached a lot of people. I have every reason to be happy about the fact that so many people have come here in spite of my shortcomings in regards to advertising and interaction. My most popular post, i.e. the one dealing with a subject matter that people search for online a lot, is the one about dissolving the ego. Personally, I have stopped worrying about my ego... ok well I do worry a bit. But now that I'm in a meaningful relationship, I already have so many issues to deal with that dwelling on such basic spiritual issues seem a bit pointless. Take one thing at a time... be patient... one day it will all make sense and the mundane and the spiritual will come together in a new form. That's my feeling at this point in time.

Artwork: "Xistential", mixed media collage with artist's photograph, copyright Vivi-Mari Carpelan 2012

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Insomnia and One's Life's Purpose


There are two movies with this name "Insomnia", but try and watch the Swedish version if you can. Anyway, I am not going to talk movies. I am going to talk about how following your bliss or your life's purpose can cause you insomnia!



In a recent blog I mentioned that my life's purpose seems to be to live the life of a human being on the level of normal humanity, without really feeling that I belong here on Earth. I have a lot of intuitions about things that seem to indicate an inner knowing of a different kind of reality. Be it as it may, I am highly sensitive and have had trouble adjusting to the rather coarse spectacle of human dramas. I am totally fascinated by them; in fact it has been suggested to me that I am working towards a particular job in a future incarnation which will involve the understanding of human behaviour, the interaction between humans, and human emotional reactions to life's challenges. This totally resonates with me. I am not really terribly interested in other facts of life though I used to find it important to have a solid ground regarding the common knowledge of things.



I further believe that the power of my mind is responsible for the complete shut down of my emotional life when I was still very young, though there could obviously be a lot of other reasons as well - including esoteric ones. It took me years to open up and understand what emotions are all about. One could say they are a kind of mediary "substance" (astral energy) between the sphere of the mind and the physical realm. When it's lacking, it's very hard to relate either way. It doesn't necessarily imply that someone is a psychopat, however it could lead to serious mental disorders. I mean, the way I see myself is that I was emotionally illiterate and had to learn about emotions, not that I was only incapacitated by family dysfunctions. I had a lot of inner knowledge of right and wrong as a young person and I was never a bully. I don't think anyone suspected that I actually could not feel things the way others did but had to mimick what I was able to read from the behaviour of other people. I did manage to save myself from further damage though and so I have tried out for quite a number of years now various ways of living with a rather emotional disposition. Unfortunately, my nervous system was already so damaged that my physique is not able to support the intensity of my mind and my emotional self. Along with all the input that today's world offers us humans, it is simply too much. I get stress. I have had had insomnia for ten years now when life long stress finally tipped me over emotionally.



One thing that does stress me very much is trying to figure people out. I seem to be constantly working to accept that people are people and that they will let me down. For instance, most women would agree that men often give promises they don't keep. It's a bit of an expression. But why is this? I don't understand it and I cannot stand it. So I fret over men who have promised me the world but delivered next to nothing. Some women are of course like that too. I don't understand why people are not loyal to someone they communicate with. Shouldn't this be a priority, a disposition one should work to improve? Many people don't seem to see their own issues very well at all. This also surprises me. Well, in short, most things about humans surprise me. To make matters worse, people are not always consistent. To some extent, they are easy to predict. Then there's also the strong element of unpredictability. When can you really trust someone? Where is that line where you feel, ok, now I truly trust this person? When do we even get a chance to test this in the first place? Perhaps in my case it would have been easier if I had had sisters or brothers. I don't know. I do know that I trust my mother though. Time has shown, that despite the problems she had when I was a child and she wasn't able to take good care of me, we do have very similar views of moral issues. One could say I've inherited her views. Well, I'd say, why must the chicken always come after the egg? I think this is something rather typical among humans, more often than not things are viewed as "this is the cause of such and such". Take premonition for instance. Why not simply believe that some people actually have premonitions and not take for granted that someone is lying about having had one after something already occurred? Same thing here; maybe my mother has been influenced by me rather than vice versa, or (as I think), both. And maybe there is also a natural resonance between us that is the reason I picked her as a parent in the first place. Had I picked differently, I would have had a different set of challenges. This is what I believe, anyway.

Something started to come loose for me a while ago, and now things are happening at a rapid pace. In fact, even good stress is stressful and I still lie awake at night worrying about my belongings that my ex cannot afford sending to me and how angry I am with all his broken promises. I also worry how I'm going to pull off the amount of demands that life has now put on me in order so that my life situation could change for the better. I get very restless as the autonomous nervous system just won't slow down in the natural way that it's supposed to (this is not a figure of my imagination, it's a medical fact).

Anyway, a while ago I thought, "I really want out of this social trap and I want to earn money!". You could say that this was a choice and that the rest followed. Take for instance the radio documentary I'm starring that revealed all the injustice I've had to endure for four years, and how the help of an ombudsman will make it possible for me to actually make a little bit of money without having to worry that they will cut off my social aid. I am very angry that I have not been informed about my actual legal rights as a disabled person whose pension is so low that I have to resort to social security, and that the person I've been dealing with at the social office is not a social worker at all but a simple clerk!! No wonder I never felt a desire to confide in her, I could sense her incompetence but had no reason to believe that I was actually being fooled. About three months ago (about the same time that I got connected with the radio reporter), I felt strongly compelled to be in touch with a favourite music group of mine (I'm a shy person so this was not all that easy for me), and when I put a little mind into research on the internet it turned out that they are affiliated with an interesting firm in London looking for non-mainstream stuff to sell online. I wrote them without much hope that anything could come out of it, since I am so very used to disappointments. But they were interested! It looks like I will soon have greeting cards and gift wrap made from my artwork! Things are still unsure but in case this does work out I will no longer have to fear a smaller income that could help raise my standard of living just a little. Now you could say that all this occurred because I was willing change. I would say that my actions stemmed from "higher command", that is to say, my higher self or spirit guides or whatever you like to call the higher realms was nudging me to take certain actions and to believe in certain changes. Simply put: it was time. Whether the hen comes before the egg or vice versa is a really deep and valid question, and not some silly country way of talking that my American ex used to scorn at until he realized I was talking about something more profound than what he was used to hearing.

Artwork: "Me, Myself and I", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008