Life-purpose

A new year is a new opportunity to examine life-purpose -- here is a Japanese idea, then taken to the "spiritual eye" viewpoint to expand and further bless.

While keeping an eye on the news for items to write and pray about with my readers, I stopped at a refreshing article with a Japanese, yet universal, perspective. Take a look: https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/ikigai-japanese-lifestyle-manifesto-four-questions?utm_source=CNN&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=Jan2018. 

When you go to that page, the illustration is one you will want to copy to your own paper and think on filling out. The topic? Your life-purpose discovered in four main, and overlapping categories. The visual is most intriguing.

The concept of finding this integrated and balanced life-purpose, or “reason to get up in the morning,” is called ikigai.

Here are the questions, and then some spiritually-based answers for your further consideration.

1. What do you love to do?
2. What are you good at?
3. What does the world need from you?
4. What do you get paid for?

Step one — go to the article.

Step two — read it for help with your answers.

Step three — draw out the illustration.

Step four —  and fill in the overlapping circles.

Now we come to the part of prayer and spiritualization in consideration of this concept ikigai.

For the purest, spiritual help in answering the four questions, I’m going to the life of Christ Jesus as reported in the Gospels. If our Master were asked, What do you love to do? What might he say? I have realized that almost every statement he made has the word “Father” in it. This shows how much God, as Father, was continually at the front of his thought and in his heart. His words and actions clearly show what he loved to do. He loved to heal and to save, to awaken and teach, and he loved to do these things because they showed forth the Father — the goodness and the Love that is God.

What was Jesus “good at?” Speaking to the multitudes, inspiring, healing, reclaiming, reforming, awakening, and saving people. Look at his discourses, especially the one that has become known as the Sermon on the Mount. He was an open air preacher; this means that every word or story had to stick like an arrow in the consciousness of his hearers. Was he not “good at” parables? Was he not “good at” demonstrating God, Good? and did he not love to do these things?

What does the world need from him? We need his example, and we need to know the depth of his teachings. The world needs his perfect exemplification of Man as he is in God’s own likeness. The world needs to find the “way” through studying his words and his healing works. One of the best texts ever written to help the world understand Jesus’ teachings and example is one first published in 1875, written by Mary Baker Eddy, entitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The second chapter, “Atonement and Eucharist,” contains some the most profound enlightenment and beautiful words ever written concerning Christ Jesus. We need his example and we need to follow it every day. We need his teachings, practical and relevant now.

What did Christ Jesus get paid for? He was not on a payroll, although he may have been paid in his earlier years as he worked with Joseph as a carpenter. He did not need a salary; he is the one who took few loaves and fishes and multiplied these to feed “5,000 men, besides women and children.” He is the one who told the fishermen who caught nothing to cast their net on the right side, after which there were so many fish filling it that they could barely bring it in. 

How might you answer these four questions from a spiritual viewpoint for yourself?

PS — you may like the youtube connected to the article linked above. The speaker is Marianna Pohgosyan. It is entitled: “In the Pursuit of Ikigai.”

Be in pursuit of your life-purpose that is connected totally to your spirituality, to Truth and Love. Be fulfilled and happy, for the kingdom of heaven, the reality of being, is already within you, and you are within it. The purpose of Life as God is to express Itself in the life that is YOU.