What's been your path in life?

I thought it wise to pay special attention to the Q&R for October 15 - It's my birthday and I am now 50. Assuming a life expectancy of 75, two-thirds of my life has been lived. What will I do with the time that remains? Interesting question, especially with how it intersects with "What's been my path in life?"

Somewhere back in my teens I imagined my mind to be an Etch-a-sketch and someone else's hands were on the knobs. Who I was depended on what image others made of me. My behavior was to seek approval. If I didn't like the image you created, I would hand my mind over to someone else. It's not a bad analogy actually. If I don't like your image of me, I shake myself free and turn myself over to another artist. But, always, deep down, I knew better.

I wrote in my late teens,

I am not your picture of me.
I admit I admire your style, but
I will be the artist.

But even with that, I simply transferred responsibility for me from individuals to society at large. I followed the path of success which ultimately ended in failure. Well, not failure as society would measure it, but failure in my own mind to be the kind of person I wanted to be - knowledgeable, creative and of service to others - without sacrificing my soul for approval in any form.

I made a decision in 2003 to stop being arrogant, demanding and insensitive. I told the owner of the company I managed my displeasure at the way we ran things. He asked me, "How do you expect to run this company without being arrogant, demanding and insensitive?" He was quite serious. In 2005 I quit that job, that was paying me $200K plus a year, because I was failing to be as arrogant, demanding and insensitive as the corporate culture I helped create expected of me.

It's been a long couple of years - a painful transition at best. I had no idea how much my identity as a big fish in a little pond had insinuated itself in my character and my soul. But, the journey I had begun in 2003, a journey I call the path toward Spiritual Equilibrium, had prepared me for the dismantling of my prior identity. In fact, it demanded abandoning the search for self altogether.

I laugh when I tell people, "I don't know who I am, and don't care to find out."

The question, "Who am I?" is a particularly ego-centric investigation, yes? It can not be answered without creating an illusion of what I would call "relational identity" - who we are relative to others.

So, my journey has brought me to understand my purpose as a human being, not my identity. And my purpose, it turns out, can only be discovered, one awareness at a time, where reality unfolds independent of fear.

My path in life has been to free myself of expectation, which is the breeding ground for free-will run riot. My path is without destination. In fact, I'm certain that any place I would have sought to go would have been far less satisfying than where I have been these past few years.

Is my path without purpose? Not any more. Do I know what that my purpose is? For the current moment, yes. For the next moment, no. In a way, I have arrived, and will arrive, over and over and over to where ever my purpose leads. That's pretty cool.

Blezzings to all from the most comical Ambazzador Goodsoul