Maths + Physics + a good spiritual grounding, good grief, you are halfway there, to understanding the  whole universe, with an open mind.

I found schooling difficult. I would love to see a kid raised in the spiritual aspect of life first, then using that basic knowledge to understand his potential capabilities ( infinite ). Biology to me was all about dissceting frogs. I wish I could go back and understand biology, (with hindsight) and what I now know about spiritual healing.

Forgive me, I am long in the tooth, but if I had been given a grouding in the true nature of what I/we am/are capable of, I would hope I would have lapped up all this teaching, and been ever asking questions and wanting to know more.

We are born with all the spiritual gifts and  higher level understanding. What if we just taught the kids how to apply that DNA knowledge in how to live on Earth, with the energetic and gravitational limitations that we live under, on this planet?.

On a very mundane note.. Why don't we teach kids how to do what they will spend the rest of thier lives doing? - Creating, giving birth to and raising children, with all the various problems that arise therein? Why do we teach children how to talk in Latin, whcih died 2,00o years ago, and not talk about the trials and tribulations of parenthood, which almost all will face????

Dylanfarms.. we SERIOUSLY need people like you to raise  the new kids. Join a community. Great posts BTW.

The education system does have it's downsides. It's developing. It's unrealistic for our university and high school system to change into your idea structure. It could potentially take many years for your idea to become a reality even if it was made law right now. I think you have a good idea though. Your idea about the step-by-step guides.. hmm sometimes not everything has to have a practical basis. Somethings are conceptual and theoretical and could be potentially applied to a lot of things. For example Mathematics, it could be used for engineering, spirituality, economics, computer science, actuarial studies... etc. University I think does break down everything we know about living in this world, or so it does it's best to.

A few points to take note also about students. It would be good to have a system like you said. I think students should be told why they are learning this and have more freedom in choosing their path in life. There are some disadvantages to this. One, the teachers in the first place are not qualified in Life 101 to be able to teach 'useful skills'. They wouldn't be school teachers if that was the case... they would rather be motivational speakers, successful entrepreneurs, billionaires or happy creators of some sort. Second, students might not understand the implications of certain ideas even if they were told what they were for. Alas, the purpose of the knowledge should be acknowledged nonetheless by teachers. But the implications would not be obvious for the student as they lack experience. Therefore teachers have more experience would be able to 'guide' students. I think guide is a very good term. Not forcefully teach the syllabus, but guide or become a mentor. That'll be a good start for a new educational system.

The book I mentioned above Soul-Purpose has exercises in it too, but it's not exactly a workbook.    So you're asking to filling questions about yourself in both books.   As I stated above, I made some bold moves after I read this book and found out what my soul purpose is.    So things like this can really get you going.

Of the two books, I would probably lean toward Karen's.   I like her ideas and writings, and would probably have also enjoyed her numerology angle on my life purpose, I have to check out this book!

PH

I have just taken a week off work with the sole intention of finding my life purpose, and I gave this book the full time and attention it deserves. It is a workbook, and you are asked to write down answers to various questions about your life from birth to now. At the end of the book is a section on numerology (which I have come across before but never taken to heart), but in this case, your numbers reveal your soul nature, and then you tie in the numerology reading with your previous answers, match the dots, -in fact it is like the peices of a jigsaw coming together, the reading shows you where the pieces go.

My wife helped me (as she had input to some of the questions and answers) and we both knew that my life purpose was right, and that I was already 3/4 the way there.

Now I have a clear goal, and can work towards it, and the best part is I am really looking forward to it (we both are). You wouldnt know what a relief it is to finally get confirmation (I got confirmation/congratulations from my HS , btw).

This is a really difficult topic. I think the only way to go about finding your path, unless you know where you're going in the first place, is to keep looking for it. Persistence gets you there. You need to keep asking the question who are you and what are you doing here. You then keep growing and growing... then new horizons open up and you see more and more light. Then you move onto bigger projects and bigger things once you've learnt how to handle your current lessons and mastered them. As Lyra said in another thread, going past fear is a really big lesson too.

Totally, do what you like and do what you can. Not everything will make you happy, but you can still strive to find something you love. Another way of looking at it is changing yourself and your behaviours so that your reality changes because you change and then you love things you never loved before. Changing yourself comes from experience, going past fear and mastering lessons.

Another thing is education and learning. We need to learn about things to gather information to make judgements on what we love. So that's what school should be about - learning about the world and discovering what you love as a person, not strangling students with endless homework that could be potentially meaningless in their lives.

Creative intelligence comes from spontaneity. That comes from power. To be able to be spontaneous you need to overcome fear. I think break dancing is something really awesome in my view. It can be hardwork, but it pays off in the end. The energy you can muster and handle and then channel that in creative ways through your body is amazing. It can also help with confidence. You can get some pretty observable results on the dancefloor from hard hours put into breakdancing! Martial arts can also help with breakdancing as this is a source of discipline as well.

-3G

"Personal power through awareness", "Spiritual Growth: Being your Higher-Self" and "Soul Love: Awakening your Heart Centers", really have life changing energies in them, I hope you read them all, as time goes by.

It's also good to see how you wish to discover your true path in this lifetime.    I'm sure everyone would love to know what that is and how to go about it.    So keep looking and asking questions, eventually you'll have that "ah ha" happen to you and you'll know exactly what you're here to do.

One book that finally cemented for me, exactly what my soul-purpose is was "Soul-Purpose: Discovering and fulfilling your destiny" by Mark Thurston Ph.D.     This book finally gave the details of what I wanted to know, there are exercises in it to help you zero-in on what you planned for yourself before you were born into this lifetime.     When I read this book, and discovered what seemed to me to be my soul purpose (which is being an intuitive consultant/psychic) I made some big changes and in turn moved forward toward these goals.

As it turns out this "skill" or set of skills was always lurking in the background of my life, ever since I could remember.   I just didn't have the guts to really go out and get it done, I was too busy trying to fit in.    Now that I've made some changes in my life, I'm out there doing what my heart loves and having more fun than usual.

I would also have to admit that taking risks goes along with finding your soul-purpose, which I'm sure you're already aware of.    Moving into what you love, can be uncomfortable and even frightening at first, so you have to be ready for that.   But as always persistance pays off, and things work out in the end.

Good luck with your search and thanks so much for your wonderful post....it's was very timely for me, and helped remind me of many things!!

PH

It's interesting how you mentioned outside manipulators. I think the greatest manipulator and liberator is your own self. You can do the most amazing things and yet you can manipulate yourself to not do them through subconscious acts that create barriers for you so that you cannot complete them. Some barriers are self-created and some are from the environment (maybe even your higher self) that really try and direct where you should be going. Therefore the main point I'm getting at is to differentiate where difficulties stem from. Do they stem from naturally occurring obstacles to help you learn and grow or are they deliberately placed there from your higher self to direct you to another evolution more aligned to your frequency? Sometimes this is where the manipulation from outside can come in, which can fool you into changing direction because of a natural obstacle infront that you have overanalysed, and thus keep choosing different paths and never getting any depth in life.

Oceanroar.
Wow. That is one amazing story. Thanks for sharing that. That's really helped. Your life situation something I can relate to. That's an amazing story for me to see.

Amen to that! That's what I plan to do as well. Except I don't know how actuarial studies fits in. I guess it will all work out in the end.

That was simply beautiful. Thanks for sharing that.

It's funny I want to do creative things that what you're doing to. Except I don't know what sort of creative pursuits to take up. There's so many that I could be good at! I really enjoy dancing and I'm doing that now already so I've got some idea of how to express creativity. Except my parents have been pretty darn good with respect to openness and giving advice. They don't care what I do as long as I'm happy. I think that's the best way to teach children. It's what Stuie Wilde would say 'action through non-action'. They're caring the most by acting as if they're not caring at all - letting me do whatever they want. But they give me advice whenever they feel I need it or ask for it.

With your freelance artist path, good luck with that. Do you think you can support yourself? What advice would you give to a freelance artist if there was one reading this? I think if you want to be anything, you have to learn a little about money and finances. That's why I'm doing right now studying commerce and actuarial studies. Yeah it's finite math - stochastic based rather than deterministic. I'm enjoying at the moment. There's heaps of things that I could be doing other than this, but I think in the long run, being at University is the best thing I could do for myself right now.

Let me introduce myself more thoroughly on NR. I am currently a first year university student at The University of Melbourne studying commerce majoring in actuarial studies. Actuaries are involved in risk management and can go into insurance, superannuations and investment. They study accounting, economics, finance, probability, statistics, and risk management. They also get paid ridiculous amounts of money. My hobbies include dancing (soon to learn how to breakdance), reading and magick.

I was deeply moved by this passage in Living with Joy. It's sort of made me rethink right now if actuarial studies is the thing for me. Maybe I'm just a little burnt out from doing so much studying. I'll probably get straight back into it next week . The reason I posted this was to get some advice on how to let go from social values and follow your own path in life. You can't rush into this because you might be making the wrong decision and end up in a worse circumstance than before. So is planning the key to find your own path? Find out what you enjoy first before going in too deep?

Advice and personal anecdotes of how people found their own path are appreciated.

Hey Hildegarde ...

actuarial studies, huh ? i think that has something to do with finite math, no ? incidentally, that was one of the maths i really enjoyed in highschool ...

but ya - about finding your 'life purpose'  ... that is a biggie for sure ... so big in fact that i'd call it Large !

education to me has at least something to do with seeking out the truth ... and i guess joy fits into part of the equation somehow - if the whole thing is approached properly ... your quote was interesting in that it talked about 'thoughtforms' - and also mentioned looking at why we do stuff - whether it's to please others, or if it's for us, for the "greatest good", etc ...

i can share about myself and my 'path' so far a little bit in regards to what you were asking: 

growing up as a kid - i always had 'artistic' tendencies - i love to draw and have always been good at it - i love to play with clay - i like writing and reading ... i really enjoyed drama class in elementary school ... stuff like that

i grew up in the public education system of canada mainly (also part of the public education system in Holland from age 6-10) ... but up until highschool - i was moving along - taking classes in everything ... i actually didn't mind sciences too, especially biology and physics, when i took those courses in highschool ...

it was in highschool that i was getting pressure from my folks to get into medicine or to become an engineer ... although my dad told me - do whatever you do - but make sure you like it ... but still - i did sense some form of pressure from my folks at times about getting into medicine or engineering ...

in Ontario, highschool used to go up to grade 13, and the first time i did grade 13 (they called it OAC), i basically failed a lot of my classes, most of which were sciences and maths --- it was strange, because on the surface it was like i was giving in to the pressure of my folks and was saying that i'd go to university for medicine - but on a deeper level, i knew that's not what i really wanted to do - so that's why i failed OAC the first time around ... then i decided to do it again except this time i took the courses i really liked - stuff like this computers course which introduced me to Photoshop, different english classes, etc.) and i did well and got accepted into a program at Ryerson which is called Graphic Communications Management ... although the program at Ryerson was geared towards the print industry - it was very broad and gave me a lot of useful tools - i only managed to complete 3 out of the 4 years of the program - i failed out after the end of 3rd year ... my marks for 2 of the core classes were borderline - so they decided to suspend me - i fought it but in the end, realized i didn't want to continue in the course for various reasons ...

after failing out of university like that - it was kind of a bummer - i wasn't sure what i was going to do at first - but i knew that the marks i had received were unbalanced and didn't reflect my skills and what i'd picked up in a lot of ways - it had to do with the final exams and the fact that they didn't reflect a lot of what was taught in class - and also the fact that so much of the group work assignments which i did really well in weren't included in the final exams at all ... anyways ... after getting over the yucky feeling of failing, my attitude was like - ya, i failed, so what ? i know my stuff, i know i'm good with people, i know can do a kickass job wherever i get hired ... and so i decided that i was going to get a job, even though i didn't complete my program ... and again - the beautiful thing was that i could apply to so many different industries or areas because of the broadness of my own personal interests and my university program ...

i was looking for work for about a 4-5 months, maybe, after the end of 3rd year  ... sending out so many resumes - without much success - i had 2 interviews during that time for a markeitng job with a big firm and something else unrelated ... but didn't get far with those ...

then, out of nowhere, someone from this massive ad agency called me and asked me to come in for an interview ... and i went in, and  got the job (a friend who knew the place was looking for someone had forwarded my resume) ... this surprised a lot of people, myself included, because this job i got wasn't typically the type of position that gets filled by someone who is a university drop out ...

anyways - i worked at this agency for over 2 years as a coordinator in production -- it was a really neat experience because that position let me see how things work in a large corporate environment from so many different sides + i got to meet so many different types of people - and learned a lot about myself during this time as well from my interactions with people (self knowledge is ongoing) -  ... but they were working me to death ... although i really enjoyed my job and all the interaction between people that took place and all the things i got to be a part of - there was too much work being given to me ... and of course, i was partly responsible for that myself ...

2 weeks before they let me go (yip, i got fired !), i wrote my manager and my manager's manager a letter describing what i felt in my heart - very open and to the point without being rude - basically i told them how i felt that i wasn't being compensated fairly for all the work that i was doing and that the company was unfairly taking advantage of me ... well - i guess that did it ... 'cause they let me go after that -- one of the things about that company and the way they do business is that for many of their entry positions, they tend to pick up kids fresh from university, pay them squat, and work them really hard - those positions also happen to be quick-turn around positions - most people don't stay at one place for more than a year or two before moving to the next place ... 

during my time at this place,  i picked up so many useful things - 2much to go into detail - everything from technical to "spiritual" (human nature) stuff & i'm also still in touch with some good people from the place ... so i look at whole experience as a blessing ...

after i got fired - it was like this perfect transition - i'd been wanting to move to BC for a while - so i had this golden opportunity and i took it - i actually moved out here not knowing what to expect - not knowing if i could even manage to make it here - but things have just kind of been falling into place - now i'm taking a course at a community college here - basically going back to the artistic aspect - refreshing some computer skills - i'm working towards becoming a freelance artist - so that's where i'm at ...

i guess my hope is to be able to use my skills and abilities for good causes - & to be able to make enough to support myself doing what i love ... so far so good ...

about letting go of social values - and finding your path -- hmm ... i guess i kinda feel that's what i'm doing - not caving in to what society or what individuals deem to be correct for me - but thinking for myself -  i want to integrate into society with my own path too ... i think it's possible ... knowledge of self has everything to do with it ... attitude has everything to do with it ... learning - listening - observing - paying attention - finding out what you're good at and what your limits are - looking at the whole of life - looking at the human experience from all perspectives - finding passion towards life - all of life- coming to that sense of passion through facing all the sorrow that's out there in this world and not passing it by - being sensitive to things, people, situations ... it's all tied together ...

It's a good reminder not only to not judge yourself harshly, but not to judge others by your personal standards.  One cannot know what good reason may drive others to make what you would deem "bad" choices.

As far as helping you with your choice of vocation, all I can recommend is pick a direction, any direction, and start moving.  Either the road will rise to meet you (an indication it's the right direction for you) or you'll find walls and obstacles that arise out of nowhere (then it may be time to choose another way... unless the obstacles are put there by outside manipulators who are invested in your not achieving your goal, in which case the opposite would be true.)