Finding Your Life's Work
by John Sauvage
What is your life’s purpose or mission? What is your life’s work? What bliss will you follow? What is your Dharma?
These are very important questions in most circles. Many goal seekers have climbed the career ladder only to discover that the ladder has no end and that they are tired of climbing. So naturally, one of the first steps many seekers take on their chosen path is to search for creative work that feeds their spirit.
I have spent many hours sympathizing with fellow searchers and agonizing over my own failure to find my elusive life’s work. I came close a few times. Just when I thought I had found the perfect expression of my full potential, something would go wrong. My dream job would slip through my fingers like an early morning mist.
On a recent walk around my favorite mountain lake, my attention was captured by the sound of pine cones falling from the treetops to the forest floor. The trees were filled with squirrels busily harvesting the seeds and nuts for their winter food cache. I could feel their excitement and determination. “They love their work,” I thought.
A few steps later, another thought stopped me cold in my tracks. “I love work!”
“Wait!” an inner voice screamed. “You mean that you love your life’s work that fully utilizes all of your god-given gifts and valuable life experience, right?” the voice inquired.
“No! It’s much more than that,” I thought. “I love to watch my hands move to some invisible force when they fix the toilet or do the dishes. I love to feel the strength of my legs when I take out the garbage. I love to watch thoughts arise from the void when I balance my checkbook or figure out how to use a new computer program. I love to write. I love guiding someone through the Avatar materials as they discover their own joy and peace. I love playing in creation!”
“I love work!” As I felt the power of this new realization, the voice of the inner skeptic disappeared. Gratitude flooded my being as I recognized how Avatar had changed my life. Instead of searching for my bliss to follow, my bliss was following me!
The Avatar tools helped me to recognize that I was looking for bliss in all the wrong places. I was expecting my life’s work to satisfy me instead of creating bliss in everything I did. Every idea I created of my perfect work led only to disappointment. The exercises in Section II of The Avatar Course helped me to recognize that these ideas were just symbols (word lessons). They were not the actual experience (world lessons). You can get more satisfaction from eating a handful of rice than you can by reading the menu from the world’s finest restaurant. I realized that I had been reading a lot of fancy menus, but I was starving.
As I handled my resistances and judgments using the exercises in Section III, I began appreciating all of my work. My life changed dramatically. I no longer judged my idea of my life’s work to be more important than other types of work. I relaxed. I had fun working. I began appreciating other people who were doing types of work I had formally judged as not being valuable or spiritual.
Suddenly, the opportunities I had always dreamed about began to show up at my doorstep. I discovered a world full of people who supported me in ways I could not have previously imagined. As long as I was unhappy and needed to find the perfect life’s work I repelled everyone and everything who might have supported me. When I learned to be happy with myself and nonjudgmental toward others, creating my life’s work became the natural thing to do.
My feelings of appreciation and gratitude are growing faster than any limited idea I can create about my life’s work. Experiencing has become more important than defining. After all, I have the power to decide the meaning of my work in each moment.
John Sauvage, Washington state
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