The Question that Changes Everything.

The Question that Changes Everything.

There is a slightly little question that can change a men’s life, a question designed to guide humanity, that actually has changed as many lives as persons who have truly lived to answer it. It’s not about who you are, where you come from, or where you’re going. Is not about explaining your existence, it is about aligning yourself with the very heartbeat of Gaia, our Earth. The specific question in point is: ‘What is your Role in Gaia?’, a query that goes beyond mere introspection and delves into the realm of purpose and destiny.

Look. Life on earth is a big and complex but extremely smart symphony. Every person that dares to see can notice how things in nature work in complement with each other. With the exception of… yes. Human beings. Somehow, the animals and plants are fated to fulfill their role in this big orchestra whether they know it or not. It can be that the bee knows that her pollination is essential for life on earth, or it can be that she thinks she is just making her honey, but she is fated through instinct to play her role. All animals, plants, and organisms are fated through instinct to play their role, with the exception of… Human Beings? Well… let’s take a deep look into it.

It’s true that a human being can die without ever knowing what his job was. But as well can be true that a bee or a tree dies without knowing what was the role and importance of the role that they played. So this doesn’t prove much, but, unlike other animals, we human beings have the ability to be very smart in intellectual matters, we have the gift of being able to see when a part is fulfilling its part in the big game, or not. If anyone looks closer, it’s actually very obvious. If the ecosystem is not working, and you follow the trail, you see that something is out, something is not playing its role, and if we look to earth as an organism today, it doesn’t seem to be in its perfect use of design. The trail leads to… bang. Human Beings. So I pretentiously say that we humans are not fully playing our role on earth.

And maybe this power of choice that we have, the power of either choosing to play our role or not play it, could be the so-called free will. Each one of us has the freedom to follow our destiny or not. But at a certain point, we dug so hard, and so deep, and we have created so many distractions to avoid dealing with the pain of not even knowing what our role is, that many of us don’t even think about having or not having a role in life. Or at least, many of us try to escape from it by creating a lot of mental excuses that approve and reasonably explain our accommodation in life. All these distractions are designed to avoid getting in touch with that giant hole inside our chest that each day grows, filling our subconscious with that emptiness sensation, this sensation that we so well mask with our modern ego, our irrelevant problems, and our daily small dramas of modern life.

It’s possible that someone looks at this scenario and thinks that we have been left to drown by God, without a boat in the huge ocean of life, but I invite ourselves to have a better look at the situation. That we have free will doesn’t mean that we have been left without any possibility of guidance to find our destiny, because 1 — we have been left with all this smartness that for some reason must exist, and 2 — there are many evidences that we can consider when we start our journey into answering this main question. We will soon give it a look.

But first, I want to introduce you to one very interesting concept that I learned while I was studying the theology of Umbanda. One of the many lineages that it has tells the story of 2 polarities of forces “Thrones” that influence humans. The Upper thrones being the ‘Orixas’ with their respective names and dimensions of life, and the lower thrones for which this lineage don’t give names. The idea is that when you ask, want, or are open to it, the upper thrones inspire you, give you gas, offer you energy for you to climb up in their direction, and the lower thrones pull you down whenever you go away from the path of your soul.

So if you get greedy for example, they will invite you to be even more greedy, and more greedy, but not because they want your bad. Neither because they feed on you losing yourself, but actually because they want to help you.

Look, Umbanda doesn’t have a fixed idea of Hell. If you go to “umbral”, you can find your way out, it may take time, work, but if you ask for help, and you work for it, then you will make it. Yes, you will have challenges, it is the consequences of your acts, but it’s possible to pass through.

So… what the “lower thrones” are actually doing is bringing you to a certain point of unconsciousness in which your consciousness can’t handle more being unconscious in that size, and then, your consciousness wakes up, noticing what it has made with its own life. It just becomes clear how much this life, and these decisions are not working for you anymore.

So following this interesting reflection, we can see how a human being, when not playing his role, when out of the trail, of his destiny, when by his free will chooses to adventure itself out of the path designed to fulfill him at most, then, some kind of mechanism inside of him ignites a self-destructive impulse in this human conscious, that calls him to be attracted to things that can actually kill him, like alcohol, drugs, cigarette, poison food, games, isolation, self-mutilation, self-depreciation, biological diseases, self-sabotage, bad habits an so on… The human starts becoming little by little, as much more he goes away from his destiny some kind of a monster, and I suspect that this goes and goes through as many lives as needed so he or she truly realizes that this path, is not his or her path, and with this realization, finally, they have space enough inside themselves to face the void and ask, “What is my role in Gaia now?” (‘now’ because many people lose themselves with the idea that “because i don’t know exactly what is my path, then i don’t try it.” but the thing is that your path is not something done, ready, is not an answer waiting to be found, is a path waiting to be created as you walk it.)

And the point is that in the moment in which he or she starts asking this question, the life around him/ starts changing so he can follow his steps back, until the initial point where he actually can answer this exact question with complete precision. But until then, until he resets himself, until he walks back each one of the steps, he cannot fully answer this question, because he is not yet the version of himself that can understand the answer, he is for now, and just temporarily a minor version of himself. A version that went into a journey of experimentation of new possibilities that are not aligned with his own nature, or a journey to escape from his own fears about living his destiny.

All his previously monstrousness has nothing to do with who he or she is, all of this is just a derivation from the essential problem that is: they are not choosing to live by their role. And why is it so important that they play their role is: 1- life needs them to play their role so she (life) can be as beautiful as it can be, and 2 — the place in the world where any human being will better feel, and better live is by accomplishing his divine task, it just feels so good for us, because we are designed for it. Imagine how good honey tastes for those bees, considering that they do this all day long and prefer it to any other food. Our destinies are delightful for us and this is the counterpart to the monstrosity that we can become.

On one hand, the direction of our destiny fulfills us to the maximum that a human being can feel fulfilled, and on the other hand, going in the wrong direction of our path becomes uncomfortable very quickly, and life stops working for us. Actually, we start going each day deeper into the monstrosity of human unconsciousness. Not because life is bad, I bet, but because it cares so much for us, that it lets us choose the path that we want, but makes sure that we notice what we are doing with ourselves, inviting us to come back and find out the amazing life that it designed for us. So yes, we have free will, and that is quite cool, especially when you can be very proud of yourself for still following your path even though you had the choice to not.

So there is an experiential idea behind all of this. The idea is: if you had to focus on one question, on one point of your life, not to solve all but maybe to give you the fuel to solve it, the inspiration for changing things, the wisdom of movement, and the spiritual and practical support to handle all the challenges that you are going through, this point would be to start asking yourself what is your role on Gaia. And the answer might not come clear and sharp as you would like it to. But I’m sure that if you create space in your life, to meditate in the direction of where the answer points, (energetic points), then you have at least the next step of your journey. This next step might be starting by taking out of your life everything, every project, every person, every addiction, and every habit that you internally know that it’s already time to let go. Maybe this step is facing your life fears, or maybe your next step is to take more seriously your emotional need for healing. Maybe it’s solving the issues that you have with your parents.

There are literally thousands of possibilities for next steps. If you stop to really find the answer inside yourself, you will know what your next step is. Actually you always knew, and as much as you try to escape, there is no chance, either you do it, or life starts getting stinky.

So it’s time to go, the journey of your role is waiting for you, don’t be unpleasant with her, don’t spend your life on things that don’t fulfill you… it’s never too late to start, or to restart your path. Good journey, fellow, see you in the new earth.

PS: In case you are still asking yourself why I think that the question ‘What is my role on Gaia’ is that important, considering all the others important question that have been with humanity since ages, here is my point of view: Human beings are much more complex than words; there are no words that perfectly and irrevocably would explain who you are. But if you are doing your job on earth, then it doesn’t actually matter who you are, you have important things to do. Whether God exists or not, doesn’t matter; you already have important things that fulfills and guides you in life. Where you came from or where you go, doesn’t matter; you have cool stuff to create right now, in the present. Whatever questions bring you closer to the most inner beautiful version of yourself, great! Use it. If not, then recheck if it’s worth thinking about. No hurries, you will not fully understand life no matter how much you work on it; because life is not made to be fully understood, it’s made to be fully lived.