Ever get that feeling? You’re staring at your reflection, going through the motions of another Tuesday, and a quiet, weird question bubbles up from nowhere: Is this really me?
It’s a feeling of being a stranger in your own life. We look at our hands, our homes, the path we’re on, and wonder how we ended up here. We didn’t choose our family, our face, or the country we were born in. It feels like we were just dropped into a story that was already well underway.
But what if that’s not the whole picture? What if, on a level we can’t quite remember, we weren’t just dropped in? What if we chose the ticket for this specific ride?
A profound spiritual teaching offers a beautiful way to look at this. It suggests that our life isn’t an accident, but an assignment, built on two core ideas: the soul’s ultimate journey and its very personal purpose.
The Cosmic Commute: Every Soul’s Journey Home
First, let’s zoom out. Way out. Think of every soul, including yours, as a single drop of water. That drop might spend some time in a cloud, fall as rain, rush through a river, or sit quietly in a lake. It will have countless unique experiences, but its ultimate, unchangeable destiny is to return to the great cosmic ocean it came from.
This is the soul’s grand journey, its gati. It’s an inevitable, gravitational pull back to the Source of everything. It doesn’t really matter if we believe in it or not; the river doesn’t need to believe in the ocean to get there.
So why the body? Why the life? The teaching uses a powerful metaphor: refining precious metal. Imagine your soul is a piece of gold, mixed with dirt and rock. One lifetime is like a pass through the fire—the heat of heartbreak, the pressure of responsibility, the scraping away of ego—and some of the impurities burn off. Another lifetime, another round of polishing.
Your life, with all its messy, beautiful, and sometimes painful moments, isn’t a punishment. It’s the very process of purification. It’s the fire that reveals the gold.
Your Personal Mission: Unpacking This Life’s Purpose
Okay, so we’re all heading back to the ocean. But what about this river? What about the specific path we’re on right now? This is your dheya—your immediate purpose.
And here’s the most empowering part: there is no one-size-fits-all instruction manual for life.
The purpose of your life is not some pre-written script you have to blindly follow. Instead, the text suggests something far more radical: The purpose of your life is to discover your purpose.
Your mission is to uncover your own truth, not just copy-paste someone else’s. And your body, your unique mind, and your exact life circumstances? They are the custom-built tools you need for your personal archaeological dig.
This is why comparing our path to someone else’s is so pointless. As the teacher wisely points out, if you put Einstein in Buddha’s place meditating under a tree, and put Buddha in Einstein’s lab with complex equations, both of these incredible souls would likely fail. It’s not because one path is better than the other, but because their purpose was different. Einstein’s revelations about the universe were his form of enlightenment. Buddha’s journey inward was his.
Your soul didn’t choose this body to become a poor imitation of someone else. It chose this body to be unapologetically, brilliantly you.
Finding the Breadcrumbs: How to Actually Listen to Your Soul
This is all beautiful, but how do we do it? How do we “discover” our purpose when we’re busy paying bills and figuring out what’s for dinner?
You start by looking for the breadcrumbs your soul has already left for you.
Think about it:
- What did you love to do as a kid, before anyone told you it wasn’t practical?
- What subject could you read about for hours without getting bored?
- What problem in the world makes you angry in a way that feels personal?
- What activities make you completely lose track of time?
These aren’t just hobbies or quirks. They are clues. They are signposts pointing you toward your dheya. Your purpose isn’t necessarily a grand, world-changing career. It might be the way you create a safe and loving home, the way you bring order to chaos in your work, the way you make people laugh, or the way you connect with nature.
It’s the unique frequency that only you can broadcast.
You Are Not an Accident
So, the next time you look in the mirror and feel that sense of strangeness, take a deep breath. The face looking back at you, the life you are living—it is not a random cage. It’s a vehicle. It’s the perfect car your soul picked out for the exact road trip it needed to take.
You have the right engine, the right tires, and just enough fuel to get you where you need to go next. The grand, beautiful adventure is simply to get in the driver’s seat and start paying attention to the signs.
You are exactly where you need to be
