I was checking email today and came across a newsletter I receive regularly. There was a post from Wayne Dyer about his book and movie “The Shift”. He shared a poem about the Kalahari Bushmen and it really hit me.
The Bushman in the Kalahari Desert talk about two “hungers.”
There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning. . . .
There’s ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning. . . .
There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. . . .
But of far more comfort to the soul . . .
is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning.
Because meaning transfigures all. . . .
Once what you are doing has for you meaning,
it is irrelevant whether you’re happy or unhappy.
You are content—you are not alone in your Spirit—you belong.1
(Sir Laurens van der Post from Hasten Slowly,a film by Mickey Lemle)
I realized I have been wondering about the purpose of having RA, the reason for it because sometimes things are a little easier to deal with if there is a reason or purpose. I have been wondering for a long time what my purpose is here in this life; so far there hasn’t been any light bulb moment where I suddenly understand it completely. I have been exploring and in many ways my whole life and dealing with RA has been a journey – very long, slow journey. It is as if I am on a wagon train out west and every day the train makes 5 to 10 miles. It is progress to the goal but often the mountains don’t seem any closer than they did when I started in the morning. I began to see that I had been looking for that one piece that would suddenly make everything fall into place and make perfect sense, all would be completely clear to me. Instead, it is a wagon train and there are different trails to explore if I want to, or keep on the beaten path. I am also still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
I asked a medical intuitive the other day “What is the purpose of RA?”. She gave me a very unexpected answer – it could be preparation for the next life. Or it could be the results of a past life. It I am paying for something I did in another life, I had better have had one hell of a good time! She explained that in her case, she had a very, very difficult time in her last life, the beginning of this life she was encased in a cast from the waist down. As a result, she is able to help other people through seeing what the underlying cause is in their condition. I will admit, I wasn’t quite sure what to think – it has been simmering on the back burner of my mind ever since. I know that things come along when I am ready for them, maybe now I am more open and receptive to possibilities I might have thought were crazy or off the wall a few years ago. Yet I still want to know “Why me”, though maybe it is more a matter of “Why not me?”. It continues to simmer on that burner.
Tags: Journey, Purpose, Wagon Train, Wayne Dyer
Gift of RA 
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