I don’t know how this works for you, but sometimes I find myself rereading a book and discovering something I didn’t understand the first time through. A day ago there was just such a discovery. As I read there was this concept of living a “nominal” life. A person could be having a very good life, feeling healthy, enjoying their work, and more. However, it could still be a nominal life, and a nominal life is one without a great purpose, and a great purpose is one known to the essence of the person, and a great purpose could be many physical manifestations that are in accord with that great purpose.
Now if you are thinking Gandhi, Moses, Martin Luther King or a host of similar people your are correct in assuming they were not living nominal lives. And it is important to know that living a great purpose can be an obscure life out of the public view also. I have had the joy of knowing some people living a great purpose and all were living rather normal lives. So what is it that defines the difference between a nominal life and one in harmony with a great inner purpose? Does such a purpose just befall some people and ignore others?
There are stories of people surviving accidents and having a massive shift in their conscious engagement with life. There was a story on 60 Minutes last year about a man hit by lightning and finding himself drawn to learn to play the piano, to compose fine works and share those with the world. Of course there is no necessity to have a near death experience to begin a journey into finding the latent great purpose of our lives. No, it is a bit more mundane than that. It begins with a desire to be more than the nominal life, caught in habits, sleepwalking through the days, weeks and years.
Does it matter being more than nominal? No, not when you figure there is an eternity in this space time continuum. Every moment is an opportunity to choose and a person can choose an inward search for purpose or veg out on meaningless numbing pop culture. The essence of life is the opportunity for using our will to make choices, choices leading to greater unity and love or choices leading toward chaos and aloneness. I believe finding and living our great purpose, our soul purpose, is the reason we all are alive. Fortunate are those who just know that purpose and move inexorably toward it. For the rest of us it takes study, meditation, prayer, and desire.