Recently I read a good new entry in the psychic memoir genre, The Man Who Sees Dead People by Joe Power. He walks us through his childhood seeing spirits and auras and having premonitions up to and through his crinimal past and his later formal training in mediumship.
Most psychic memoir books have one (or both) of the following problems: (a) the medium is a fake to begin with, s/he is merely a skilled cold reader posing for bux; and/or (b) the person's life story is incredibly boring content told in leaden style. The Man while not great literature by any stretch is at least readable, and the content is credible.
The greatest account of childhood psychic experiences of course is the incomparable Victorian/Edwardian era classic The Boy Who Saw True. Everybody should read that one. But the first part of The Man is a similar account of tragi-comic craziness of being able to see what nobody around you can, but told from adult retrospective, lacking the shocking live-action immediacy of The Boy.
But anyway who cares.
One interesting concept that Power brings up repeatedly and seems to subscribe to is the idea of a 'life purpose' (LP) meaning a kind of destiny, what-you-were-put-on-earth-to-do type of thing. Does anybody buy that idea? Can that possibly be valid? I don't know for sure, but I'm skeptical. First of all, the great Advaita mystics are always blaring at us that life is absolutely empty and meaningless to begin with, which seems to undercut the LP idea. But even without that high occultism, does the LP thing make sense even on its face?
I mean, six billion of 'em crawling around out there. Can all of them have a (non-trivial) LP? Notice I said non-trivial. That's because the LP concept supporters always have a fudge route available, which is to suck up any commonplace human/social, or even biological role, off the shelf. That dodge drains all the juice right out of the concept. So your LP becomes just what you are but maybe a slightly spruced up version, like your LP is "to be the best parent you can be". Bleh. No fun. Not sexy.
The other version of the "Be the best X I can be" dodge (BXB) is even more generic, I also call it the Dalai Lama Dodge (DLD: not that he has anything to do with it, but I like the sound of that phrase...) In this variant version of the BXB Dodge, you say your LP is "to learn to be kind" or something. Barf. Why do you need to come to the physical earth plane and endure/cause all kinds of trouble just to learn not to bother and hurt others? Seems elementary enough that it could be covered in a half-hour pre-flight briefing or something.
Another BXB answer to the why are you here question is: I am here to serve others. Which takes us back to the stupid old joke that no deep philosopher (including the Dalai Lama) has ever really answered properly: "OK then what are the others here for?" Seems like it would be less trouble all around if we just scrubbed the whole scene and called it even.
No, the kind of LP idea that has some real teeth is when you see somebody who's really got something and you get that spine shiver: this person was born for that. Unfortunately it seems to apply mainly to artists, athletes, and other entertainment people, maybe some politicians, I don't know. That's like Bruce Lee was born to be a Kung Fu movie icon, Michael Jackson was born to be a star dancer, Mozart was born to compose, Michelangelo... you get the idea.
Am I being too stuck-up elitist here? I know if we restrict LP idea to those type of characters we've pretty much thrown out the baby with the water because the numbers of such people are vanishingly small. OK fine but where does that leave our discusson of LP? Then we're back to the default and probably true conclusion: LP is a delusion, the whole idea is ridiculous, or, childish at best.
Yet... it's such a flattering idea! The ego enjoys it. And Power seems to very much subscribe to it and reinforce it in his book. It also ties in with the idea of a whole troupe of Spirit Guides who supposedly stand around everybody (not just famous mediums) and are very anxiously fretful that you should find out your LP asap, but of course who never just tell you directly what the fuck it is. Oh noooo, no no no no. That would be telling. Not the done thing. Then you might never learn your lessons properly down here in the earth plane crucible.
Well I say, if you got a message send it Western Union. Just spit it out, go for it. There's no need for six billion idiots and buffoons to devastate an entire planetary bioshpere blindly blundering around, either not knowing they even have an LP or else futilely trying to figure out what the fuck it is and all the while it's nothing more than would fit in a fortune cookie. Be Nice.
Not an efficient allocation of resources in my parochial view.
But anyway, the book is an interesting read, check it out. It is just a tad depressing and perplexing how all the spirits he describes are so fucking bovine and ovine just like all the human cows and sheep here on earth, once they are popped out into the etheric (by dying) they don't question anything, they just set about trying to find a comfortable way to live without ever needing to rub two brain cells together. Well anyway. I know: as above so below, but for fuck's sake. What a bunch of dimwits, on both sides of the line.
