I Got Lost To Find Myself

by BizMum

The theme for tonight’s mastermind is to define our calling. “I got lost to find myself” was my response when it was my story time. A bunch of us friends were going bananas and telling each other about our stories of how we came to find our calling. Our experiences were simply humorous as we told them but ironically painful to begin with. They were literally sagas of our existence and extreme challenges before we decided on our true passion. The greater the challenge, wise warriors used to say, the greater your accomplishment only if you live to tell the tale.

Crossing The Seas To An Island and Getting Lost

Crossing The Seas. Getting Lost Just To find Myself

The Noble Quest Calling

I dare say all of us started out bright eyed and bushy tailed…so young and inexperienced but ready to take on the world come what may. But what came nearly defeated all of us at one time or another. Coming out on the other side of the experience, we all felt much wiser but shall I declare wondering if we’re actually quite stupid? With wisdom comes knowing when to push or to back off and finding the better way. Then I often realised what I had been doing to find many of the truths was absolutely wrong. Out of many ways to hurt myself, only one really worked. Hence not feeling very clever, and because I felt so accomplished, I can laugh about all those misadventures.

And that noble quest was like all of us in this mastermind, finding that illusive but heroic personality, the self. Otherwise, we say we seek our calling. But after many years of falling down mountains, going on pilgrimages, trying many forms of businesses and failing, winning or losing, loving or hating, we have found that the self and our calling is really one and the same. It is who you become that becomes your ultimate quest.

How I Got Lost

I got thoroughly lost as I began my long and often dangerous quest for my true calling. How that happened has more commonality with everyone else than is often realised. However, my journey was long, much longer than I really want to relate. But I have experienced a number of ways that are great as practical comparisons.

The Top Two Examples Are:

1) The Military:
Raw recruits, I have observed always go through an ‘orientation phase’. They are made to go through some extremely confusing and often meaningless exercises, punishment and simply made to run around without any purpose – watch a chicken without a head trying to do same. Within a very short time, fear is also instilled into mindless would be soldiers, who are now mentally more like zombies than people. And this is the main purpose – through disorientation, the recruits get so confused that they eventually become like marionettes at the whim of any commander. They have lost their sense of self.

Then several weeks later, these marionettes are now ready to be fitted with as deadly a weaponry as they will be meant to be used for. They are trained to use guns, knives, clubs, hands feet or anything else that can kill or injure. Let’s not forget explosives, long range guns and so forth. They are trained to be fit and generally in the tactics of outsmarting the enemy. But really, they are still taking orders to become expandable pawns of any war. Further training for more specific objectives is determined as the recruit progresses. Some even go all the way to become much higher ranking officers. Others become specialized technical workers, and we have the largest contingent becoming specialized killing machines.

But the most unfortunate thing that happens after all this training is that they are never detrained from their killing objectives and mentality before they are released back into the civilian life. I wonder why there are still so many overly stressed and very confused former soldiers living amongst us.

2) Religious Groups
No, I will not differentiate religious sects and religious what you might call it groups. Their modus operandi is all too familiar and similar. Rarely do I find any religious groups that are not fanatical about being helpful to humanity. By and large, they will be rebels for the sake of being rebellious. Their ideology is simple. Put together a set of religious rules, loosely aligned with the established churches or temples and simply recruit as many people as possible. There are so many people who are already confused and not knowing who they want to be, therefore, they are often very easy targets for these groups.

If you’ve actually observed their methods, you’d swear these unsuspecting people are recruits for the army. But in this case, they are being entrained to be some kind of mysterious “god’s” soldiers. Then as another batch goes out, they bring more would be dupes into their fold. And yes, they do get mighty wealthy these so called religious leaders.

Now, thankfully I was really on the ‘outside’ looking in. Also, I had some very helpful people who became great friends later on. They were helpful as we sometimes made milestones together. No, these two groups did not win me over. But that is what we all really did to ourselves as we searched for our calling. We literally lost ourselves.

To Find Myself Through Challenges

Challenges of all sorts came my way with relish. The more stressed I felt, the more the challenges that came my way were stressful, even terrifying. Death threats became common place at times. Yes, but being young and restless, these things gave one a huge lift to the ego to be able to face them down and win. But very soon, one realises that getting up the morning after becomes painful with all those bumps and bruises. I had burnt up all my resources too. But the advantage is that the next time, I win and I get to keep more resource and come away feeling like a million bucks, laughing. That was the turning point for me.

Challenges are what you call to yourself every time. But then wisdom eventually dictates challenges become the much easier to deal with issues. No problem is ever really that insurmountable because as issues, they can always be solved to my satisfaction. And as time went on, the groups of friends I joined became staunch experienced allies who help each other turn apparent disadvantage into advantage. Masterminds are so powerful that they can multiply the effect of advantages into sheer profitable fun.

It’s as you think, that what you desire to happen will come, but I have to remind myself to be mindful that things come in a way not recognisable as an advantage at first. With a mastermind, what one facet is not seen is noticed by another similarly minded and powerful individual. The mind is a calling machine. It is super intelligent with far more connective ability to the universe through your whole body, soul and your friends.

Now, if you can understand this, experience teaches us to do what is easy and wonderful and then rinse and repeat, but do it better. This is the fun. Wisdom teaches us that to get the best results in what you desire, you very simply become that which you desire to do. Describe what you want to do and the calling is what you call that person. It was that simple after all. But then, there is that illusive self of will called the soul. Understand that the soul loves to experience life as it unfolds, therefore the challenges to come so that you know what you never wish to occur. You often get lost before you find yourself. Therefore, being fully aligned with the universe, you will become that all powerful creator. No need to join any human concocted army or religious B.S. That transformation is your calling.