Not seeing the wood, for the trees

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@Sue_Hamilton: you asked, “How can I clearly see the lessons my soul needs to learn this lifetime?” The way this can be accomplished is through a continuing and serious meditative practice. In short, by training you mind, achieving tranquillity, and then, while in such a tranquil state, opening your heart to the possibility of the answer you seek manifesting as a spiritual insight—the answer which you now sense only as a liminal presence, but which leads to a certain uneasiness in your thoughts. The following, which is on this subject specifically, is take from my article: “What is a Spiritual Insight and How Does it Occur?” on Medium.com: https://medium.com/tranquillitys-secret/what-is-a-spiritual-insight-and-how-does-it-occur-7e206e02b811?source=friends_link&sk=360f6f222ae0dcca51aedf6c16684b6e

A spiritual insight is never the result of thinking about something. An insight is “food for thought.” That is, it conditions your thoughts, changing their direction perhaps, or clarifying their subject, or—in the best of cases—completely changing your thoughts. Even a good dictionary can tell you that insights never come from thinking.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “insight” as: “immediate and clear understanding (as seeing the solution to a problem or the means to reaching a goal) that takes place without recourse to overt trial-and-error behavior.” Thinking, of course, in the sense that it is a kind of behavior, is very trial-and-error in its approach.

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Another word that is often used for an insight is “intuition”. Though technically, an insight is what intuition provides you. The insight being what comes, and intuition being how it arrives; but we often use “intuition” when we mean “insight.” Intuition is defined by the same dictionary as “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” So, as I said, an insight is never the result of thinking about something.

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Insights arise intuitively, that is, spontaneously and without a cause. Yet, the possibility for gaining insights can be conditioned via making a heartfelt aspiration to achieve insights and following a meditative practice with dedication. These acts do not cause an insight to arise, nor do their absence cause insights not to arise—they just create the conditions for insights to arise.

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Why is this? Because insights derived from discursive thinking are about conceptual knowledge based upon the error of believing that different phenomena are independently real as a result of having an inherent self-nature. As such they can only be insights about erroneous conceptual knowledge and not about the nature of reality. Even discursive thinking about insights gained during meditation can lead to completely false and misleading conclusions. Remember, an insight is a recognition of some truth—not a string of words and references to conceptual ideas.

The direction may be more clear, but the way forward is difficult because it requires dedicated effort to achieve. I hope this is of some help to you.

Upvote:3

I dream of a world where the purpose of life is to help others. Reduce suffering and conflicts, nurture harmony and peace. In my dream, success is defined in terms of how much you helped others, especially by doing what you love. This way you are happy because you're doing what you love doing - and you are also helping others. In my dream, this is a life well-lived, not a wasted life.

Upvote:4

Work on testing the credibility of these assumptions: soul, I, me ,mine, "I am happy" etc. Practice Satipatthana meditation to get the answers you are looking for,

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