Checklist for HealthLiving Your Dharma, or Life’s Purpose
Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.
— GAUTAMA BUDDHA
As a person who has read the first hundred pages of many books and never gotten to the end, I’m starting with the most important aspect of this program. If you get nothing else out of this book, please retain this: You have a purpose in this life. How do I know? You are here. That purpose was written on your heart before you were born. Your job is to find that purpose and live it.
Before you throw this book across the room in frustration, bear with me throughout the chapter. I know you may have no idea what your life’s purpose might be. Or maybe you have an inkling of your purpose but are not sure how to live it. Or perhaps you know your life’s purpose but are stuck in a place where you don’t know if and how you can live it. Together we will explore each of these scenarios and help you discover how to get closer to your dharma. But first, let me explain why dharma is so important.
Everything in existence has a dharma. Every single cell in your body has a dharma. A red blood cell would never try to become a brain cell, just as a tree would never try to become a flower. The manifestation of cancer cells occurs when normal cells “forget” their purpose.
It is my firm belief that most illness stems from our not living our life’s purpose. When we are living out of sync with what we’re supposed to be doing, our body feels it. We can, for a time, ignore our purpose, but sooner or later the body protests in an effort to get our attention. If we listen, chances are our body will heal. If we continue to ignore the signs, one of two things is likely to happen: either the illness we experience will become terminal, or modern medicine will assist us in healing for a time and we will experience a relapse later. Senior citizens who find a greater purpose in service after retirement offer an example of how a sense of purpose gives our bodies strength and greater health. Studies have shown that senior citizens with health problems who have a garden or a pet to care for become healthier.1 This reality may sound harsh but it’s true: If you have no higher purpose, you will die sooner than those who have one.
I had a client who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Two weeks after her retirement, she was diagnosed. For a year she went through surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. I met her a few months into her treatment, and we then met weekly. After a couple of months with me, she told me about a huge project she was starting with her sister in order to serve humanity. With a glow in her eyes she said, “A lot of good has come out of my experience with cancer. My sister and I were not that close, and now we talk every day. I didn’t know what I was going to do after retirement, and now I have this project.” Chances are extremely good that she will permanently heal from her cancer. Among other changes she made in her life, she found a new life’s purpose.
Dharma is inner drive, the tugging of the heartstrings that prompts you to live more fully. One person in the public eye who clearly demonstrates living in dharma is Diana Nyad. I recently heard her story on National Public Radio and was moved by her tenacity, passion, and drive. Nyad is the woman who, in 2013, at age sixty-four, swam from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, without a shark cage, in fifty-three hours. This was not Nyad’s first attempt at making this particular swim, but her fifth attempt over the course of thirty-five years. She started her training for her most recent attempt at the 103-mile swim in 2010, and when a journalist asked her why, she responded, “Because I’d like to prove to other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your dreams.”2
Your dharma will drive you to living it no matter what happens. Obstacles and delays may come your way. But if you are truly living your purpose, you will become unstoppable.
Have you ever come to a crossroads in your life where you have achieved many of your major goals, and where you recognize you are unhappy and that something must change? You obtained an education, found the love of your life, had a couple of kids, bought the car, the house, and the vacation home, and then, in a panic-stricken moment, looked around with discontent and said to yourself, “Now what?”
Over the course of our life, we often ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” “What am I supposed to be doing?” Or: “Now what?” Many times we ask this question in relation to a career, education choice, or goal. Most often, the question is linked to the financial outcome we expect to have when we have reached a goal or achievement. Unfortunately, most of us think of dharma, or purpose, in terms of something big, such as becoming a movie star or a sports hero. But it doesn’t have to be quite so grandiose.
In the Indian tradition, the word dharma, although not easily translated, can be considered one’s “righteous duty” or “virtuous path.” For example, it is a bird’s dharma to fly, a cow’s dharma to produce milk, and a bee’s dharma to make honey. It is your duty to live according to your dharma. And when you do, you are living in harmony with nature and the cosmos.
Being in harmony with the universe lets you feel like life is flowing. You have a sense of easily flowing downstream instead of constantly fighting your way up a current. All of us have experienced moments in our lives when we were “in the flow” or “living on purpose.” Think back to the time when you first fell in love and this love was returned. For weeks and maybe months, you were floating on clouds, time had no bearing, and it didn’t matter what the weather was like or who insulted you. You were in love. The whole world could come crashing down around you, and as long as you were with your beloved it didn’t matter. Love is every person’s dharma; and when you are in love, you have purpose. So does that mean we are to walk around with hearts and cupids all day? It might be interesting, but it might also get boring after a while. And we all know that the feeling of falling in love generally doesn’t last forever. But that’s the idea.
Other moments of flow you may have experienced might be scoring the winning basket for the final game in the season, baking the perfect cake, gazing into your baby’s eyes for the first time, or leading a chorus in unison. These are what psychologist Abraham Maslow, in his Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1964), referred to as “peak experiences.” A peak experience is when time stands still, you are completely absorbed in the present moment, and whatever you are doing is effortless. You experience bliss and ease and recognize that the moment is right.
You may have many purposes in life; your purpose may change over time or develop in a way you never anticipated. Dharma does not have to be big in order to be meaningful. Living your dharma could entail raising children, being a bank teller, building houses, or picking up trash. If your work is effortless, you have a love for what you do, and you are in service of humanity, then you are in dharma. Other indications that you are in dharma are a sense of lightness in your body, a joyful or glowing feeling upon awakening in the morning, or a sense that time is flying by. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “Time flies when you’re having fun.” When you are in dharma, your work is fun. Observe children at play, and you may notice that when a mother tries to take her child away from a highly creative playtime the child will protest. This is because the child is absorbed in the present moment. She is in dharma. Dr. Maria Montessori, the first Italian woman doctor and the originator of Montessori education, stated, “A child’s play is his work.” We can learn a lot from children about living in dharma.
We live in a world of overachievers. Western society teaches us that in order to be successful, we must get good grades, play an instrument, excel at a sport, be the president of a club or association, go to a top university, get the best salary at a Fortune 500 company, buy a big house, and drive an expensive car. And the list goes on. Do you get the picture? I live in northern Virginia, where competition is fierce, especially among children. There is a high school well known for its academic excellence in science and technology. It’s a public school, but students must apply to get in. In 2011, over 3,000 students applied for 480 spots in the freshman class.
I heard a young girl explain that even with a perfect grade point average and awards in math and science, she still was not admitted. At fourteen years of age, this child was devastated because she did not get a spot in this competitive high school. She said that at her middle school she had been a math whiz and everyone knew it. Does the fact that she did not win admission to this school make her less intelligent in math? Will she fail to live her dharma if she does not attend this top school? I should think not. However, if she puts the fate of her love for math in someone else’s hands and, for example, gives up studying math with a full heart, she will not be in dharma. Not everyone can fit the Western model of success I describe here; nor is it important. We are simply caught up in the belief that it’s important. And the unfortunate consequence of this belief is that those who do not fit the model of Western success are often considered unsuccessful.
Recently a retired woman who was learning meditation with me explained that her husband of twenty-two years thought she was a failure because, according to him, she lived a “small life.” To illustrate her point, she said, “I raised two boys, of whom I’m very proud, I was a manager at a large corporation, and I took care of my husband and the house. How could he say that I lived a ‘small life’?” The sadness and frustration that emanated from her is a result of the disease that affects our society when it comes to the perception of success.
Imagine your life when you were a child about seven years old. Think of something you loved to do. Think of something you dreamed about doing. And think of something you said you were going to do when you grew up. This is a good age to reflect back on, because it precedes a lot of the social conditioning that would take place, but it’s also an age that most of us can remember. Unfortunately, it may be a time, too, when the adults in your life gave you a little dose of “reality.” If you expressed an interest in becoming a painter, Dad might have answered, “Well, that sounds nice, but how about getting a job that pays the bills?” Dharma would have been instantly crushed. Haven’t we all heard phrases like: “Let’s get practical,” “Do something realistic,” “Find a career that pays the bills,” or “If I had pursued my interest in sports, would we be living in the house we have today?” So, as a seven-year-old who trusted your parents’ advice, you put your dream aside and went on to study something more “practical.” But maybe you still feel a tug inside to become a painter, dancer, or plumber. Now, I’m not suggesting you quit your job and become a full-time volunteer firefighter, if that’s your dream. Unless you’re independently wealthy, making the switch may not work for you and your family. What I am suggesting is that you begin the search for your dharma by asking yourself some questions.
Take a few minutes and complete the prompts in the following list. Be honest with yourself and don’t hold back. Pretend you are a child again, or you’re in another realm, one without limitations. If a desire or a theme continues to show up, be sure to write it down.
1. I love to:
2. My talents are:
3. Whenever I do the following, I lose track of time:
4. Things I could spend all day doing (eight hours or more) and not get bored or tired are:
5. If I could quit my job, I would:
6. My passions are:
7. I’ve always wanted to learn more about:
8. When I retire, I want to:
9. If money were no object, I would:
10. I like to serve others by doing:
Now read over your answers and circle any recurring themes. For example, if you answered, “I love to shop, and I lose track of time doing it,” and “If I could quit my job, I would shop all day long,” and “If money were no object, I would have a wardrobe full of fashionable clothing,” then “shopping” is a recurring theme for you.
Once you’ve circled the recurring themes, take the top two, write them in the blanks provided, and fantasize a little. If you could invent the perfect job using these top two themes, what would it be? Write a paragraph for each one, describing in detail what the job would entail, what hours you would work each day, how many hours you would work, how much the job would pay, the location of your job (city, state, country, or actual company), and what your job description might look like. Don’t stop or correct your spelling; write freely.
Theme 1:
Theme 2:
Now that you’ve finished the exercise, notice how you felt while creating your dream job. Notice the sensations in your body. Did you smile while writing it? Were you laughing? At some point, did you say to yourself, “I could actually do this”? Congratulate yourself for starting this exploration of dharma. You are on your way!
A Dose of Reality: When Doubt Creeps In
Social conditioning is not easy to overcome. And the reality is, we do have bills to pay, families to support, children to care for, and more. Perhaps you are naturally skeptical, so when that well-intentioned adult shut off your dreams when you were a child, you took it seriously and never dared to dream again. If in the exercise for inventing the perfect job you truly began to see your dharma, you may have felt a little sad inside because right now you can’t see how to make it a reality. Or if you still have no idea what you’re good at or where your passions or talents lie, you may be left frustrated or angry.
I Still Don’t Know My Dharma
Honesty with yourself is a good place to begin the search for your dharma. If after doing the perfect-job exercise you cannot see your talents or passions, begin to observe yourself in different situations. Whenever you notice that a book, a TV show, or a conversation with someone has sparked your interest, observe your inner signals. Are you smiling, excited and intrigued to learn more? Does the topic make you think about something bigger than yourself? True dharma takes you beyond yourself into making others’ lives better, brighter, happier, or more abundant. It does not mean you don’t get pleasure from the work. But your own pleasure doesn’t take precedence over all other considerations. Dharma often brings you to others rather than isolating you. It encourages you to realize that we are all connected. Remain aware that you’re about to discover your life’s purpose, and in time your hidden talents will surface.
I Know My Dharma but I Don’t Know How to Make It a Reality
If you recognize your dharma but can’t find a way to fulfill it, perhaps the direct translation of the word dharma from Sanskrit will help you. Dharma translates to “one’s righteous duty or virtuous path.” And not only do you have a calling, but you also have a duty to make living dharma a reality. No living creature on this planet, other than humans, questions its dharma. Can you imagine if a lion decided one day to become a vegetarian? And that this lion then encouraged other lions in its pride to stop hunting? A lion’s dharma is to eat meat. By eating meat and being a hunter, it balances the ecosystem.
Let’s suppose you’ve discovered that your true dharma is deep-sea scuba diving and teaching others how to scuba dive too. But you live in Ohio with your wife, three kids, and two dogs in a colonial-style house with a big mortgage. How, you might ask, can you even think of living your dharma without being irresponsible?
The answer is to find a new way to think about it. Maybe you can save all your vacation days and put extra savings into a three- or four-week family vacation in a place where you can do deep-sea scuba diving each year. Or perhaps you can go to a place ideal for diving and invest in property there, which will allow you to live there after retirement. An even better solution might be to create your own company on the side, one that takes groups a couple of times a year on diving excursions, where you lead the group as an instructor and organizer and earn money in the process. The possibilities are absolutely endless. But you owe it to yourself and the rest of the world to live out your life’s purpose while responsibly and faithfully fulfilling your other duties and obligations.
My Dharma Is Clear, but I Still Can’t Take the Plunge
Knowing your dharma is exhilarating. It’s exciting. But it doesn’t mean you’ll be fearless. Maybe for the first time ever, you’re honoring your true nature. That’s extremely scary because change is difficult, period. Acknowledge this and move on. In order to live according to your life’s purpose you will, for some time, be living outside your comfort zone.
In 2006, I had been searching for my dharma for years. I had had inklings of my dharma. For example, I had known since I was small that writing was one of my life’s purposes. And in 2001, right after September 11, I had taken on the blissful task of writing a book. After that, I wrote two novels and several children’s books. I even spent a year writing to agents and publishing houses, but to no avail. So I continued to search. In a serendipitous event, I was led to teaching yoga, Ayurveda, and meditation. But let me emphasize that it was not easy, ever. In the two years after I made the decision, in 2006, to pursue this path, I got divorced and moved from France back to Virginia with my three kids, two cats, and no job or career. I had decided to start my Ayurvedic business without any business experience whatsoever. Everyone around me thought I was crazy. When money didn’t come in on time or when the business got rough in some other way, I even began to doubt myself. But deep down I knew this was my path. I just knew it.
Please don’t get me wrong: knowing doesn’t mean you won’t have periods of self-doubt and uncertainty. When that happens, go to your heart space. Take a day and look inside yourself for the truth. No one but you knows your truth. Live that truth and place your trust in it. If the way you’re pursuing your dharma is not working, then change direction. But I cannot emphasize enough that you must take the plunge. You do not want to reach the end of your life and say to yourself, “I wish I would have. . .” or “I should have. . .”
Intention and Desire: Creating Your Life’s Purpose
One way to get clear on dharma is to create a list of your intentions and desires. This is a bit different from setting goals, because it has a component of surrender. Often when we have a goals list and we don’t complete it, or the goals don’t turn out as planned, we are disappointed, frustrated, or angry. In creating intention, we acknowledge our desires with words, visualization, and intent, but we are trusting that the outcome will unfold according to universal plan. I understand this is not an easy thing to do. Admitting that you don’t have total control over the outcome isn’t something we’ve been taught to do, especially in the United States. One of the interesting things about growing up in a monotheistic faith such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam is that followers are taught the principle of surrender, as in the expression “Let go and let God.” However, cultural conditioning, in the United States at least, overrides this concept as we become goal oriented and driven while living the American dream. Even if you don’t believe in God or a higher being, if you sit and observe nature for a time you will notice a perfect orchestration of universal energy. There’s something bigger at play here. Watch a flock of birds soaring through the sky, turning in formation with exact precision. Human pilots trying to do the same thing have to work at it for years, but birds do it effortlessly.
Observe trees as they turn from seemingly dead pieces of wood in winter to living, blossoming specimens in the spring. We too are a part of nature, the perfect orchestration of the universe. Somehow, through our thought processes, we lose our way and our connection to the conductor. In chapter 4, we will discuss ways of reconnecting to the impulse within you, an impulse that is also in the butterflies, the trees, and the plants.
For the sake of expanding your understanding of dharma now, it is important to take this step of setting your intentions and listing your desires. What is it that you desire? Desires are not wrong; they aren’t to be snuffed out with shame or self-doubt. Some desires serve a higher purpose than others, but as your awareness evolves and grows, so too will your desires.
A desire can be anything that takes into account the values of gratitude, honesty, integrity, love, forgiveness, and trust. The universe wants balance and harmony, so any desire that is disharmonious with the overall well-being of the universe is unlikely to be manifested. So if on your list you write, “I want my mother-in-law to be hit by a car,” you are not obeying the universal law of love. And even if your wish were to come true, you would only bring negative karmic energy into your life — and that’s not what you wish to accomplish.
A desire doesn’t have to be selfless as long as it includes the values listed in the preceding paragraph. For example, let’s say you desire a BMW convertible. If you acquire the car honestly and with integrity (for example, by not stealing the money for it), and you keep love and gratitude in your heart in the process, your desire will bring positive energy to your life and maintain the harmony of the universe. But if you take that car and use it to sell drugs or drive recklessly on the highway, putting others’ lives in danger, you will create an imbalance in the universe as you fulfill your desire.
Writing down an intention presupposes that the object of your desire is already here, because it is. You just haven’t found a way to see it yet. Suppose your dream job is one that will pay a hundred thousand dollars a year, give you four weeks’ vacation annually, allow you to work from home two days a week, and require only a five-mile commute or less. A job like that certainly exists. You need to set your intention and know that it will manifest in your life at the appropriate time.
Be specific about your desire. The idea here is to be specific but not rigid. If you are too vague, you will not recognize the direction you must take. If you’re too rigid, you will eliminate better possibilities that you aren’t able to see now. Instead of saying, “I want a new house,” give some specifics. For example: “It is my intention to manifest a new house with four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a sunny kitchen, and a finished basement, located on a calm street with a cul-de-sac.”
Take action in the direction you want to go. Once you write down your intention, don’t just sit back and wait for manna to fall from heaven. To use the example of the house: do some research, contact real estate agents, get your finances in order, get preapproved for a mortgage, and visit houses that correspond to your intention. During the process, you are trusting that the universe really will handle the details.
Be open to the unexpected; avoid putting on blinders. Usually when we set a goal, we have in mind a certain picture of how we’d like it to turn out. We even anticipate the path that it will take. Visualization is a fantastic tool in the process of manifesting intentions, but stay on the lookout for unexpected opportunities. If we remain set in our ways, we may not see a different open road that appears before us. Consider every phone call, email, meeting, or conversation a possibility for getting what you desire, even when things don’t go your way. The truth is, you never know exactly how the process of reaching your goal will unfold. For example, if your car breaks down on the highway, and you have to wait all day at the car dealership for it to be fixed, you may have the opportunity to meet a person in the waiting room who can fulfill your desire.
I have a habit of keeping a list of my intentions and a list of my manifested intentions. When an intention manifests, I switch it to the other list and add a brief explanation of how it manifested. This is a reminder to myself that I don’t always understand how it works, but that it does. Develop a sense of gratitude for what you do have. It helps attract into your life what you desire. Always say thank you in the morning for everything in your life.
Exercise: List of Intentions and Desires
Start by making a list of your ten greatest intentions and desires. Your intentions can relate to any aspect of your life. As you see your intentions come to fruition, create a “manifested intentions” list, which explains how and when each intention came to be in your life.
Complete the exercise on exploring your dharma.
Find the recurring themes in your life that surround your passions.
Throughout your week, look for clues to what gives you bliss or creates that inner spark.
Create your list of intentions and desires. Make copies, and keep a copy with you. Put a copy in a place where you will see it every day, and put a copy in a place where you meditate. Read your list daily.
Make a commitment to yourself to explore, do, or plan one thing that will get you closer to living your dharma.
Start a “manifested intentions” list, and begin to watch the magic unfold as your intentions become reality.