Excerpt from Truth: Meaning of Life by Shaman Ross Bishop

Life's Deeper Meaning

By Ross Bishop

I want you to try a simple exercise. Hold your breath while you read the rest of this paragraph. Yes, it's silly, but trust me, it's important. Now that you are holding your breath, pretend that this is the last breath you will ever take. Think about it. How you would like to feel in those last moments of your life? As you exhale, put yourself in the state of feeling you have just imagined. Notice also that as you held your breath, you chose a state of mind that was not your normal one. In that moment you made a choice regarding how you wanted to feel.

This simple exercise contains the premise of this book. We would all like to be in a state of grace during our last moments. Actually, we would like to have peace and serenity our whole lives, but doing that seems beyond our reach. We can't seem to find a way to get there. We stand spread-eagled between two worlds, one man's and the other God's. We cannot be at peace living in the first and we are convinced that we do not deserve the second. And so we stand, immobile, confused and frustrated. The essential conflict between the pull to connect with spirit and the push to avoid real spiritual connection underlies the entirety of human existence. We do the best we can to connect, but we end up settling for less, generally a lot less - either in our careers, relationships or both. Why do we do that? What is it that destines us to be unhappy? Why are we willing to spend so much of our lives being troubled and unfulfilled, living in man's world?

Consider your own life. Are you really happy? Or, have you settled for something less? Perhaps a lot less? Do you have dreams and hopes that are not being realized? Or, are they on semi-permanent hold? Are you frustrated with your life? Are your passions stifled? Have you ever felt the freedom of unfettered emotional flight? What keeps you from being the person you could be? What holds you back from your dreams?

You will find that underneath the surface chatter, the response to each of these questions is that there is a fear that holds you back, that pins you down, that stifles your passion, that keeps you from being the person you could be. Most people stop there. They assume that life is a fearful existence and they never really question that assumption. Instead, they work to cope. They learn to minimize their fears and improve their behavior and although these things are useful, this is essentially treading water. Reaching further down below the fear to the source of our anxiety and feelings of separation, seems well beyond most people's reach.

It's an interesting point if you consider it - we desire peace and bliss in our lives, and yet when it comes to things of such importance, we are willing to settle for so much less. I ask people how satisfied they are with their lives. From a strictly human perspective, it is sad to see how many people are in relationships, jobs or life situations that do not nourish and encourage them. Conscious of it or not, these people are reflecting the views they hold about themselves through the limiting impacts of their life choices. In addition to the fact that we never know when our last breath will be, why would we waste what little precious time and energy we have being held captive by anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, guilt, unhappiness and a thousand other emotions? Why would we choose to be in relationships where we feel frustrated and unrespected? Why would we remain in jobs where we are treated like robots, dumped when the company downsizes and generally disregarded?

This may not seem like a related question at first, but have you ever wondered why you are here? I mean shouldn't there be more to life than to work 40 years, have a couple of kids and retire to Sunset Acres? It's a question that most people think about from time to time. The things most of us worry about like our careers, paying the mortgage, raising kids, relationship issues, the stock market and soccer practice are all important, but they pale in comparison to being at peace and knowing life's deeper meaning. Yet, the answers to these fundamental questions elude us.

Well, they don't really elude us; the truth is we elude them. We allow ourselves to be caught up in the daily concerns of life because the experiences of our past lives and our recent childhood have convinced us that we are unworthy. Thus, we are inclined to leave spiritual considerations to the mystics of India and priests of the Vatican not because these matters are esoteric or unfamiliar, but because we are afraid to delve into them.

One answer is that we spend most of our lives invested in the fears and anxieties that manifest through our egos. When in ego we are not connected to the Creator or His truth. And it is the ego and its attendant issues which fill the space of perceived separation from God. When we live in separation we are unable to be in the realm of the soul, the source of real peace and contentment. Something for you to remember as we progress through the book is that the ego is incapable of love and that this is where we spend most of our time.