Living Beyond Limits

Rebuilding your reality begins with you. It requires a clear direction, purpose and passion in your life.

You have to rebuild your world, reestablish or at least reassess the structures that support your world view and begin again in the daily struggles of life.

From the cultural metaphors of our past, we can draw powerful inspiration to rebuild our future.

One such metaphor is Noah, surviving the passage of an old world, in a protective ark and emerging to rebuild a new human society.

Whilst we all have our protective asks that have helped us in the past, no matter how useful they have been we must leave them and start afresh.

Like, the ark, the past can be lifesaving, even reassuring, bur  also confining. A lifeboat cannot be your home for life. It is a means to bridge a new start to life.

Water is a powerful metaphor. In scripture, the world began submerged in water, just as we begin life in a fluid amniotic sac. We spend 9 moths submerged in water before we emerge on dry land. Noah spent a year in a box.

However, unlike a fish, we must leave how fluid surrounds if we are to continue to survive.

We must recreate our reality as children. As adults we are also expected to grow and seek new horizons and to expand our perspective.

For Noah, the ark was a tool for him to reach his greater purpose. Entering the ark was not an end in itself.

Empowered by the prospect of a new world, and given 7 divine basic rules for human conduct, Noah sets out to recreate his reality.

In our world it is very easy to get caught up in the security of our past success.

However, vision and purpose are needed for tools to create a masterpiece.

Noah himself is given a vision of a rainbow, a rainbow that reminds us that from the storm came the potential calm of the future.

Once the ark served its purpose of preservation through adversity, future horizons must be met. What will be those horizons?

Mission and purpose must be individualized, they are not generic. If in business I define my mission as ‘to make money’ what makes me different from every other business out there?

If we are not careful, a bank account can distract us from the service we offer to humanity. However, money is purely a means to achieve a greater, more encompassing life purpose.

What is unique to you? What is your divine gift that can make this world a more divine, tolerant and embracing society?

There are so many tools out there, so many websites with information, books to read and programs to enjoy that we can spend all out time submerged in information and forget to get out of the comfort of our ark to rebuild our world.

The Chassidic teacher and kabbalist Israel Shem Tov taught that we are allocated a number of spiritual opportunities  or “divine sparks” that lay buried in our life experience.

It is up to us to recognize these opportunities and release them to the world, actualizing their potential and purpose.

It reminds me of  Jack Canfield’s advice to ask ourselves: “What’s the opportunity that this is?”

In every moment in life, there is something waiting to be revealed and developed.

The Ari, who revealed the Zohar to the world, taught that in all things there is a divine spark. By saying blessings before and after eating a kabbalist seeks to connect to g-d to release is potential.

This is to remind us of the great opportunity inherent in each moment sustained by the food. It is not simply to perform a ritual.

While, different traditions and cultures express gratitude in various ways gratitude can empower our life’s purpose.

In each moment, states Kabbalah, the world is recreated, past and future are perspectives dependent on this very moment that we chose.

However, choice suggests that we have a clear focus and mission in life.

As we do not leave our ark without it leaving an experiential influence on our life, Life itself becomes the journal from which we can derive the clues of the past patterns within our life.

We all have a unique personality, know a set of people and experienced places in ways that no others have. Hence, we have opportunities are unique to us and it is up to us to find how we can develop these gifts as a way to serve others.

We must find within ourselves, where in life we are most needed and offer it to the world. Seek out the patterns of your experience.

Delve deep into the People, Places, Personality and Opportunity in all things and find that divine spark inherent in your life and you will find your life’s Purpose.