Whole Life Times: You Are Here

October 2007 | Tune In

Some of us are born with it beneath our feet. Some suffer to discover it, some stumble upon it and others die having never felt its nurturing curves, hills, dips and straight-a-ways. It’s your life path. The answer to the big “Why am I here?” question. We asked leading thinkers and teachers to describe some of the universal signs that appear when you’re exactly where you need to be.

“One doesn’t know. It’s a beautiful spiritual paradox… There’s a lot of suffering in thinking you should know and be right and figure things out and that sort of thing. When we are out there in ego, we believe we can know and should know. When we come back to center, we realize that we don’t know and we don’t need to know. So it’s a coming back to center that has us ‘on the right path.’ The tricky part about that is that [when] you’re centered, you don’t know it. As soon as you hear someone say, ‘Ahhh, I’m centered,’ you can know [they’ve] identified with an ego that thinks it’s going to know something.”
— Cheri Huber, student and teacher of Soto Zen, co-founder of Mountain View Zen Center and the Zen Monastery Practice Center, and author of 17 books including There is Nothing Wrong with You and The Depression Book.

“What does ‘right’ feel like? Like it’s the true story, not a made-up one. Like you’re living your life, not someone else’s. You stop comparing your life to some other imagined life in your head. Your like or dislike for what you do doesn’t hinge on what happened that day, or even that month. The mind chatter stops, without being ordered to stop.”
— Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do with My Life?

“It took me quite a bit of whole-body tuning-in to learn to feel it, but there’s a physical sensation of sweet ease in the center of yourself, between your chest and belly, that will let you know when you’re moving in the right direction.”
— Gay Hendricks, author of 25 books on conscious living, including Conscious Loving, The Corporate Mystic and The Conscious Heart.

“ We have tons of inner promptings — dreams, symptoms, feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction — that support or oppose our chosen course. But we have all learned to override those promptings. That is why people come to see me in therapy. Their ‘override’ mechanisms are now causing them greater problems. So, typically, we have to try to disassemble our adaptations and recover a relationship to whatever it is that excites, generates energy, fires the imagination — and then find courage to risk being the person we were meant to be.”
— James Hollis, PhD, Jungian analyst and author of 11 books, including most recently, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and Why Good People Do Bad Things.

“There are so many dangers around this, partly because people in an age of upheaval and uncertainty are clinging to certainties in a way that isn’t enlightening, isn’t leading them on the right path. There’re a lot of false paths having to do with being absolutely right and absolutely certain. You don’t get the whole path. You get one step at a time.”
— Rev. Alan Jones, PhD, theologian, dean of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral and author of several books on Christianity, including Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality, and Reimagining Christianity: Reconnect Your Spirit without Disconnecting Your Mind.

“For me, I know I’m on the right path when I live guilt-free. And the reason I’m comfortable living guilt-free is because I lead a kind life, and there’s nothing to experience guilt over, because I know at all times I’m doing the best that I can, and it’s not something I just say. A selfless life is a guilt-free life when that selfless life is honest.”
— Byron Katie, founder of “The Work,” and author of three books, including the seminal Loving What Is.

“ The first sign would be a feeling of general happiness and satisfaction. If you drag out of bed in the morning and can barely face the day, then you’re definitely not on the right path. If you hop out of bed and you are enthused about what you’re doing, then you are.”
— Deborah King, PhD, author of Truth Heals: What You Hid Can Hurt You.

“ I think you just know that you are moving forward, one day at a time, towards the light, as opposed to continuing on towards the darkness. My experience is that the path of mystery and love is really wide, and to be on any path is to be closer to God and expansion. Certainty that you are on the right path is, for me, not very hopeful, as it excludes the possibility of hearing from and taking in the truth told in many different voices.”
— Anne Lamott, author of six novels, including Crooked Little Heart, and four best-selling works of nonfiction including Bird by Bird and Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith.

“You know you’re on the right track when you don’t have a kind of pressing desire to go somewhere else. I think desire is really the key to know where you are. If your desires are throwing you off and making you dissatisfied with where you are, and you’re daydreaming about being somewhere else, not present to what you’re doing, that would be a good sign [you’re not on the right path].”
— Thomas Moore, PhD, “depth theologian” and author of Care of the Soul, and Soul Mates.

“You know you’re on the right path when you’re giving more than you’re getting. To give means that your intention must be for the other person, not for yourself. And when [you] have that for even one second, [you know] what a human being is for. We are built to serve. The path is two paths: One is to serve, the other path is learn how to serve. Or, you could say, to love.”
— Jacob Needleman, PhD, San Francisco State University philosophy professor and author of many books including The American Soul and, most recently, Why Can’t We Be Good?

“ First we get a hunch that points to a helping action we might take. If we take that action, we enter a zone where mysterious encounters and opportunities live. Each one opens up another doorway. Sometimes it’s a closet to clean out. But if we remain true to this enchanted place, the flow always continues. It becomes first a path, then a mission and then an embodiment that tells us we’re finally who we came here to be.”
— James Redfield, psychotherapist and author of The Celestine Prophecy, The Tenth Insight and The Secret of Shambhala, perhaps the most popular metaphysical novels in history.

“ You have a sacred contract with the Universe. When you are fulfilling your contract, your life fills with meaning, you are grateful to be alive and you know your life has a purpose and what you are doing serves that purpose. When you are not fulfilling your contract — which means when you are not moving in the direction that your soul wants to go — your life empties of meaning, your experiences are unrewarding, and you wonder why you are alive.”
— Gary Zukav, co-founder of The Seat of the Soul Institute and author of numerous bestsellers, including most notably 1979’s The Dancing Wu Li Master, 1989’s The Seat of the Soul, The Heart of the Soul and The Mind of the Soul.

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