purpose

i can't help but write about my dreams and my feelings

Whenever I travel, I find myself called to offer tarot readings to all kinds of people. New friends at a wedding. First-time solo travelers in the hostel. The flight attendant who’s just curious about the cards and has time for a little moment of intimacy with herself.

For me, it’s an easy way to settle into the kind of presence that I most enjoy with other people. Folks have a way of quickly and effortlessly allowing their truest questions and emotions to the surface when they feel they’ll be supported and reflected by a card pull. There’s a charge in the atmosphere that’s both intimate and ephemeral, and with that charge we get to look closely together at something important.

In recent readings, I’ve been hearing the same refrain over and over again from folks.

I feel lost.

I’m not sure what my purpose is.

A sort of unifying thread is revealed through many of these readings. A certain phase in life, or maybe the times we are living in. Surely, there are many reasons to feel lost even without leaving one’s home.

And, I think it’s just a human experience to ask: what is my purpose? Why did I come here? How do I feel fully aligned with the things that I do? What is liberation? Is it a worthwhile to search for my calling, or is that just a fantasy?

I don’t read tarot in such a way that the cards answer these questions, because I don’t think anyone will be truly satisfied by an answer that comes from an external source. We all have to reckon with questions of purpose on our own.

I have, however, been cultivating the tools¹ to nourish and guide that question in someone else.

The results vary.

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It’s 3:30am as I stumble out of bed, jet lagged, and head to my laptop to write, furiously. All of a sudden I am writing again, words spilling out of me like splashed water as I stumble in the dark, trying to see the screen yet keep my eyes from dilating.

I am still getting used to this bedroom of mine. I may live here for a month or many years, and likely something in between. I’ve only slept here a handful of times so far, having moved just a week before I went on my trip.

In my dream I am holding council with a variety of other intelligences; we come together to interrogate if we have free will or if we were programmed to carry the stories and perspectives that we do. I am the witness: I listen to and enter each person’s story, allowing myself to live as them the way a crisp novel or video might feel.

In my dream I start to notice that maybe every council member’s story is the exact same, with different window dressing. It seems like each of us is having the exact same experience. A sense of panic settles on the council, and as we reckon with the revelation the entire fabric of our shared reality comes apart.

Maybe you had to be there to get the full thing.

I think of dreaming like swimming through raw consciousness. It’s my brain improvising memories. It’s the source code of me. Sometimes absolutely coherent and direct — I had a very vivid dream that sent me on a four month India trip — and sometimes a jumble of interweaving images that befuddle my reason-hungry waking mind.

I think it’s funny that we use the word dream both for this weird, mystical idea highway, this portal into the weird, and for the experience of projecting that things will be different in one’s waking life, the seed of conviction that leads people towards transformation.

The question: “what are your dreams?” yields entirely different responses based on how one is relating to the word. One friend of mine will go into their five-year-plan and how they’re gonna get there, and another will launch into a meandering exploration of what they remember from last night.

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I wonder a lot about what our dreams tell us about our purpose. In a way, they provide raw material with which we shape our stories and experiences. They offer pertinent, if sometimes vague, guidance on whether or not we are walking in alignment with ourselves.

Anyone else have the experience of waking up after a big moment and having entirely new insights about it? I’ve started calling this “6am insights” because I don’t know fully how I feel about something until 6am the morning after full night’s sleep. And this is why I tell everyone who’s considering working with me to sleep on the decision: I want to how their dreams respond to the possibility.

But what are we meant to do with all this raw material?

I don’t claim to have any answers. But I do know that it’s in my dreams that I am composing my favorite music. It’s my dream that got me out of bed to write. It’s my dreams that inspire new pathways through which I might settle into a feeling of purposefulness.

I don’t think purpose is an equation to be solved. It’s a road to walk. Much like our dreams, we can decide that the message is clear and see a finely paved path, or we can treat it as trudging through a series of entangled jungle vines. More important to me than purpose is choice.

And when I hear people repeatedly ask about purpose, yearning to find a way of being in this world that feels like home, I want to scream at them “Trust that inner knowing! It’ll be worth it”

I’m taking a stand for people to come into a particualr kind of intimacy with themselves: one where purpose is not a faraway goal, but available in each moment. I believe that this is our birthright.

What is something you just genuinely love doing? Where is your favorite place to go to be with yourself? Which of your friends helps you feel most seen?

My guess is that answers to these might already point you in the direction of your purpose. The only way to get there is to keep walking.

I’ll see you on the road.

1. probably, at some point i should just write about the tools and offer some suggestions to explore these questions on here. if you would like that please let me know