Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
― Brennan Manning, writer and speaker

I’ve written about your Inka Seed many times. Now, here I am writing about it again, only this time in terms of living your purpose. It’s worth remembering that within your Inka Seed is not only your life mission but the whole of you.

• Your Inka Seed is your birth certificate. It’s your paqarina, your place of dawning. It encodes your origin in the Great Mystery. Your lineage goes straight back to God.
• At the level of your human self, your Inka Seed encodes what you—and you alone from among the more than seven and a half billion people on Earth—are designed to do in this human life. Maybe that is still a secret you are keeping from yourself. But it is not a secret to God, from whom you received this assignment.
• Your Inka Seed also is the treasure chest of gifts, skills, and capacities that you need to fulfill your life mission. You possess so many more qualities than you may yet know or use.

If you choose to ascribe to these beliefs, how do you feel? (Answer truthfully!) Intimidated or inspired? Fearful or blissful? Panicked or peaceful?

Like most of us when thinking about what we are really here to do, you probably feel a bit of both extremes. Being frightened or intimated can motivate you to change, discovering and then living your life purpose. Feeling inspired yet peaceful can foster trust in yourself and God that you are indeed on a journey of personal fulfillment. We humans tend to be motivated both by “fleeing from” and “being drawn toward.” Movement is still movement, even if it is one small step instead of a giant leap. And if you are not yet embracing and living your purpose, then move you must.

Two of the feelings that can prevent or block you from being who you really are and living the life God inspired within you are indifference and complacency. Indifference keeps you static and uninterested in self-engagement and self-realization. Complacency breeds low standards toward the self, causing you to settle for a “good enough” self and life instead of reaching toward grandeur. Both indifference and complacency dampen your imagination about what it means to be alive and to be you.

Also consider that your purpose might be outwardly modest but inwardly momentous. Maybe it’s being a fantastic parent. Really, is there anything more precious than guiding the growth of a child’s mind, heart, and spirit? Your purpose might not be about getting your name in lights, but about bringing light to others. Maybe it’s playing music—not in a concert hall but in a retirement home or at a winery. Your music might be the means for you to live a mission of bringing pleasure to others. If you know what your mission is, you can be living it no matter what the outer circumstances, as the following story illustrates.

I remember reading once that Marianne Williamson, writer and inspirational teacher of human potential, worried that she might be wasting her time serving drinks as a waitress instead of living her mission, which she envisioned to be helping people discover love for themselves and others, and embrace their inner greatness. But there she was—a cocktail waitress. Then she had her ah-ha moment, which totally shifted her perspective. She thought something along the lines of, “I get it! This bar is my church and serving the spirits of these patrons is my mission.” So she began to “serve her flock,” practicing kindness, fostering happiness, inspiring others—right where she was, right at that moment.

Maybe you, like so many of us, don’t know what your mission in life is. Usually that lack of clarity arises because you think your  mission is a way to “do” rather than a way to “be.” You can go back and read my November 29, 2018, post about calling your future to you and cleaning the energetic cords to your future. As I point out there, it’s the qualities of yourself that you want to express and that you want to manifest in your life mission that you call to you, not a specific profession, job, or career.

The process of discovering what you are here for is at least threefold. First, you start by appreciating where you are and what you are doing and how you are “being” right now, at this very moment in time. Part of this first step is realizing that (or at least allowing for the possibility that) there are no mistakes. Nothing in your life—the triumphs and the tragedies—is extraneous or wasted. Everything has served to make you who you are right now and to prepare you for realizing your life mission.

The second step is to decide to bring your best self to whatever you are doing, no matter what currently occupies your time. Bring your humor, your generosity, your understanding, your will, your focused intention, and your love to those around you and to yourself. Be the finest self you can be at every moment and seek to encourage others to be their finest selves. If you feel you have not yet realized your life mission, there is no better preparation for discovering it than acting as if you are living it right now.

Finally, make a choice to experiment. Boot yourself (even gently) out of your comfort zone. Explore the world, starting in your own community. Go new places, meet new people, learn new things, think different thoughts, cultivate different feelings, shift your beliefs. Sweep the dust of sameness from your mind, heart, and actions. Life is made up of life experiences (both inner and outer), and even within the scope of your own community there are no doubt amazing things happening and inspiring people to meet. One of my favorite quotations about remembering to drink with gusto from the fountain of life is from Henry de Montherland: “There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim.” So don’t wait! Start savoring life now.

None of what I have suggested is specific to our work as paqos. It is universally human. But as a paqo, you have at the ready additional tools to help prepare you to live your grandest self and realize your life’s purpose. Your go-to tool is always saminchakuy. Bring in the life-force energy of sami and release any hucha that is reducing both your clarity and the impact of your intentions on the kawsay pacha. You also can undertake practices to pop your Inka Seed, fertilize it, and nutrure its growth. You can work energetically to connect to your future self, especially your sixth-level self.

But your future self can only emerge from one place—the ground of the self you are right now. Your mission in life is rooted in the present, in the spiritual realization expressed by Manning in the quotation at the start of this article: “no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.” Your mission is found in the singular combination of skills, attitudes, feelings, and experiences that come together only in you. As writer Val Uchendu states so simply: “When you apply that gift you possess that comes so easily to you and can be used anywhere, anytime to help someone else; maybe your family, your community, your city, state, country or the world in general . . . that is your PURPOSE.”