How Do We Determine Our Destined Role in the World? — Part 1

Dannion Brinkley told the story in his book Saved By the Light. He was a mercenary, a hired killer. He was struck by lightning. He was pronounced clinically dead. He returned to life. He knew, at that moment, that he was ‘sent back’ to accomplish a task, a mission. He left behind his prior life and founded an organization called Compassion in Action (C.I.A.) to train people on how to work with those who were terminally ill and in hospice.

In the book Called to Heal, author Susan Schuster-Campbell relates the tale of an African shamanic healer she met during her travels. The healer told her that she did not want to take up the role of healer, but every time she tried something else, obstacles intervened, she had serious health problems herself and she could not move forward in her life. This person consulted another healer who told her that her denial of her destined role as a shamanic healer was causing all her problems. She became a shamanic healer and her life suddenly opened out in front of her in a very positive way, and she overcame the health issues that had been troubling her.

Another individual told of having been poisoned and in terrible pain, with all his limbs seized up. He could not breathe. He heard an inner voice telling him ‘do yogic breathing’, about which he knew nothing, having not been exposed to yoga prior to that time. Something started breathing in him and when he woke up, he understood he had been returned to life to carry out a different role than the career he had planned. He left college, took up the practice of yoga and dedicated his future life to that practice.

These are exceptional cases, and few individuals, out of the billions of people living or having lived in the world, have this type of clear guidance about their role and function. But that does not mean that others are not intended to have their own unique part to play.

A disciple asks: “What is my place in the universal work?”

The Mother writes: “We all have a role to fulfil, a work to accomplish, a place which we alone can occupy.”

“But since this work is the expression, the outer manifestation of the inmost depth of our being, we can become conscious of its definitive form only when we become conscious of this depth within ourselves.”

“This is what sometimes happens in cases of true conversion.”

“The moment we perceive the transfiguring light and give ourselves to it without reserve, we can suddenly and precisely become aware of what we are made for, of the purpose of our existence on earth.”

“But this enlightenment is exceptional. It is brought about within us by a whole series of efforts and inner attitudes. And one of the essential conditions if we want to achieve and maintain within ourselves these attitudes, these soul-states, is to devote part of our time each day to some impersonal action; every day, we must do something useful for others.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 3, Action and Work, pp. 58-61