“And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.” 

― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

We experience everything through the lens our lives have created for us. Each person has a unique way of seeing the world based on their experience in the world. Our families begin the creation process and help us with basic survival skills. The skills we learn when we are young become a part of us as we grow. What we experience and how we learn to defend, act, or react to each situation slowly become the patterns of us and ultimately who we are in the world. 

Very rarely do people pay attention to what patterns and stories they carry. We are so programmed into the people we are that we do not always question why we make the choices we make. When we start to pay attention to what is really moving inside of us as we move through the world, we find very interesting things. Who we are becomes an art piece where we notice something different every time we look. We just have to remember to look. 

Our existence is weird. When you break it down, humans are very strange and incredible animals. We need all of the basic things as animals such as food, shelter, warmth, community etc.... but we are able to think about and choose how we attain that. What we don't think about very often is what is motivating those choices. We can spend our entire lives moving through the world unaware of our attachment to it, but when we stop for long enough to start thinking... we find how we are connected to it. 

Theologians and psychologists such as Bill Plotkin and Richard Rohr have started to explain how we spend a certain portion of our lives creating our foundations, and then the rest of our life figuring out how to share that foundation with the world. We become ourselves to share ourselves. Some cultures have rites of passage and initiation rituals into the latter stage. These rituals require intensive self-exploration to discover what truth lives inside of us to share with the world. The western culture does not have such intensive self-exploratory rituals, and therefore many people walk through life without a deep sense of purpose.

It is completely possible to live an entire life without this ritual of inner exploration, but the benefit of looking inside to truly seek to understand ourselves extends outwards to a deeper compassion for everything and everyone. When we learn how complex we are, we reflect that understanding onto the world around us. We are mysteries experiencing other mysteries. Everything is infinitely complex, and somehow it all still exists. This deep search results in a deep communion with the world in which we are a part, and exactly how we play our own roles within it. 

When we seek to understand our purpose, our patterns reveal themselves. When we understand our patterns, we learn how to accept or change them. When we accept the things we cannot change, and change the things we can, we deepen our sense of belonging. The intention we put into ourselves slips out into our presence with the world around us. When we are present with ourselves, with each other, and with the life that we are a piece of, we belong entirely. 

The mystery of you is waiting for you. Have you started looking?