When you come into this physical life, you do so with an intention or many. That intention is a big reason why you incarnate into the specific set of circumstances that you call your life. For example, that set of potentials in terms of lifepaths, that astrological arrangement, that city, those parents, at that time and all of the dynamics that each of these things gives rise to. Your ‘purpose’ is in perfect alignment with this original pre-birth intention. Keep in mind that purpose may or may not be about a career you are meant to have.

We like to think that trauma is an oppositional force to purpose. That it derails a person from their purpose. And trauma absolutely can and does sometimes derail a person from their purpose. But something that is critical to understand is that trauma usually plays a huge role in shaping a person for their purpose. In fact, many beings that incarnate into trauma that derails them from their purpose, do so specifically to become lost. Because this gives rise to the desire to find themself. Which sets them on the path of self-exploration, which ultimately leads them to the experience of using their free will to choose their life according to the personal truth they find.

A person’s purpose is born of both shadow and light, both trauma and joy. As people, we love to make trauma wrong. As a result, we make anything that comes from trauma wrong. Trauma doesn’t only play a role in the dysfunctionality, weakness and problems of people. It also plays a role in the functionality, strengths and advantages of people. So, it can be said that trauma is often at the root of people’s failures. It is also often at the root of their success. To understand more about this, you can watch my video titled: What Is The Trauma Healing Paradox? You may also benefit by watching my video titled: Can You Hold Dichotomy? Objective thinking.

When we make anything that comes from trauma wrong, we jump to the automatic conclusion that if trauma played a role in why we are doing whatever we are doing with our lives, that it isn’t what we are meant to be doing. Essentially, if we realize that trauma plays a role regarding why we have a certain career or a certain goal or a specific need or a specific desire or a specific purpose, then we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be doing that career or aiming for that goal or we need to heal so that we don’t have that need or desire and it isn’t our actual purpose, it’s just a coping mechanism. And when we do this, we can get things terribly wrong. We assign the wrong meaning to our realization. To understand more about this, you would benefit by watching my video titled: You Can’t Heal Yourself Out of a Desire. 

You will be hard pressed to find anyone whose purpose simply comes from joy and natural talent and spontaneously generated interest. And those who say that’s all it is, have usually not explored themselves or their past deeply enough. So, it is better to accept that Trauma is an ingredient that you will find in the recipe of a person’s purpose. In fact, for some specific purposes, extreme trauma is the only thing that creates a drive strong enough to propel a person through the challenges that they must overcome to achieve their goal. Challenges that quite frankly are beyond most people’s limits and that others with less drive would say no to. 

When we discover trauma at the root of what we are doing with ourselves and at the root of our goals, we must become aware that there could be big shadows inherent in what we are doing or the way we are doing it. Thus, when we discover trauma at the root of what we are doing, we must begin a process of becoming aware of that trauma and with the awareness of it, we must then decide what to do with it and how to go about healing it directly. It is in the healing of the trauma that we purify ourselves into alignment with our purpose. If we heal the trauma at the root of what we are doing, either:

1. We will discover that the only reason we were doing something is because of a trauma and that in the healing of that trauma, we no longer have any intrinsic motivation to do what we were doing. And we will quit. Therefore, we have a different calling all together. OR
2. We will heal the trauma and discover that we still have intrinsic motivation to do the thing that we were doing. We will continue, but in a different way. It will feel as if the doing of it comes from a different place inside of you, and from a different energy. You will purify yourself into a state of deeper alignment with your calling. And often, people become more successful at their given purpose as a result.

So that you can understand this on a deeper level, I have two examples for you. 

1. Gatik is an actor. This purpose has made him lots and lots of money and granted him lots and lots of significance and attention. Gatik has recently had a crisis relative to his career. He realized that his thirst for fame began when we was a child. It was the result of growing up with parents where nothing he did was ever good enough. Parents that shamed him for needing their attention. They had their own expectations about what he should do and didn’t really care who he was. As a result, Gatik never had space to figure himself out. All he knew is that when he went into a role of someone else, he felt relief of being immersed in a different story and a different life.  And he had an insatiable desire to prove himself. Acting was an obvious way for him to find this relief from the emptiness of selfhood within and from the pain of insignificance and lack of attention.
   When Gatik began to unravel his past and find his own personal truths and heal to the degree that he no longer needed the relief of escaping himself and got into a relationship with friends who were supportive of him living an authentic life, he found that he had no motivation to act. In fact, he hated so many elements of the career itself. Though he was thankful for that chapter of his life, the thing he once considered to be his purpose in life, now seemed much more like a “so that”… Something he didn’t like, but that he was doing only because of the things the trauma had made him so desperate for. All that seemed to remain was a desire for attention. Intrinsically, he felt a huge passion for cooking. It was an interest that he had ever since he was a child. So, in his exploratory phase, he enrolled himself in cooking school. He found a passion for preserving and growing cultural foods, such as strains of beans that were going extinct. Some years later, he had created a cooking show to star in and opened up two restaurants. He felt truly in his purpose.
2. Kathy is a therapist who specializes in marriage and family therapy. Recently, she has become all too aware that the dysfunction in her own family of origin played a huge role in her decision to become a therapist. Her trauma was that she always felt super confused and afraid of all the conflict. The family dynamics created huge instability and all the gaslighting made her feel insane. Also, when her parents split up, she could not get over needing to figure out how to have been able to prevent that. When she found psychology, she found a promise of being able to figure it all out. There were methods for establishing sanity and stability. By helping people to get out of the very patterns that caused her so much pain, she felt safer in the world.
   When Kathy first realized how much her own childhood pain and unsafety was playing into her decision to be a therapist in the first place, she started to doubt how “pure” her practice was. So, she took some time off to really face this element of her profession.
   In this process, Kathy found that underneath that trauma was a genuine love of working through problems. And a love of the intimacy and deep conversations that she could have with people. And a deep intrinsic interest in understanding people and all the research around the human mind. She found that without her own past, she would not have anywhere near the grasp for the subject that she has. As a result, Kathy realized that her trauma had been an integral part of her purpose, which she knows in her heart is: to be a therapist. However, some things have changed. She notices when she is projecting her own need to establish safety and stability onto her clients and finds ways to meet those needs for herself directly, rather than needing them to do something specific so that she can feel stable and safe in the world. She also spends far more time on marriage therapy because she enjoys it so much. And if she gets a client that she is too personally triggered by or that she can’t figure out, she refers them to a colleague rather than getting sucked back into the old distress of feeling like she has to be the one to figure it all out herself; because if she can’t, she and they are doomed to be stuck in pain.
   Kathy is even more in alignment with her purpose now. But the way that she goes about doing it is different, more in-alignment and more successful because of it.

Seeing as how trauma is an integral part of purpose, make a conscious decision with your own free will about what to do with it. When it comes to trauma and to resolving and healing your trauma, scrap what isn’t working for you. Let go of what is detrimental or at odds with what you really want. And powerfully own what is working for you and what is beneficial and what is bringing you to what you really want.

The way to go about it when you find the trauma that is at the root of what you are doing, is to focus on healing it. Don’t tell yourself that it automatically means you shouldn’t be doing whatever it is that you are doing. Instead, get open and get curious. No matter what direction this process takes you, it will be towards something that feels better to you. The process of doing so will in and of itself make you aware of what you are not yet aware of. It will force you to separate out what is and isn’t ultimately in alignment for you. It will reveal to you if you are meant to go in a different direction and towards a different purpose all together. Or if your purpose is what you are already doing and therefore, if instead, it will take on a different form and come from a different place within you. And will in fact deepen as a result of this process.