Throughout my career, I would often find myself confronted with a certain type of patient. Usually, it would be a middle-aged guy who had gone to a school like Harvard. He’d say something like, “I can’t control my temper, my wife says I’m an addict, I gamble, I just lost $92,000 in Las Vegas, I’m miserable,” etc. And then he would say, “If only I knew why I was here. If I only knew my mission, I’d be motivated and able to do all these things that are difficult for me. But I feel hopeless, because I don’t know how to find out what my mission is.”
First, I would tell him that he’s an ungrateful baby. Now, I could look at him—or a patient who may appear to be even more depressed—on a purely symptomatic basis and come up with a diagnosis. But this wouldn’t enhance my relationship with him. If I believe everything has a cure, then people become an impersonal, scientific, logical problem to solve. And diagnosing becomes a dry, soulless, and ultimately less effective way to deal with life.
Instead, I would then explain to him that I can’t tell him his mission, and that the source of knowledge about his life purpose isn’t in his head. Your head can’t know it.
“Your Life Force,” I would say, “is the part that’s going to point you toward your mission in life and why you’re here. It’s not something you think; you have to feel it.”
And then he’d say, “Why can’t you just tell me what it is?”
“I can’t tell you because I don’t know. Everyone has to discover this for themselves. The discovery of this is not a singular conclusion; it’s a process.”
“Well, that’s very nice, but I have to start somewhere.”
“Start with yourself. This may seem far-fetched, but every human being has some energy inside them, some potential that will help them find their ultimate goal. But you can’t go right to the macro goal. It’s impossible. You can try, but you’d be kidding yourself.”
During a conversation like this, a typical shrink might ask, “What inspires you, what turns you on, what makes you think you know who you are? Because that will lead you out of this morass.” But I know this is bullshit. You can’t think yourself to a conclusion.
So instead, I would say, “Even though consciously you don’t have an idea of who you are or what would make your life meaningful, there’s a part of every human being that holds their potential. If they follow the rules, every person can find their way to this energy that everybody has, which has tremendous power. But you must start at the bottom. There’s a generic approach to the Life Force. You must function as if you have faith in that, even though you might not. God made every human being with an energy unique to that individual. The problem is that in our culture, we always think about the final, macro, outer expression of that. But you only get this by going through the discipline of connecting to the universal Life Force. You may not find it as exciting or as inspiring as you imagine, but the power starts at the bottom.”
When I know he’s willing, I offer the following: “You’re going to start by getting off your ass, turning the TV off, and walking around the block.”
This may sound like a pale response to something like depression, which could take someone’s life. And this is true. But people must start by getting in touch with their Life Force, which requires building a relationship with its three pyramidal tiers: You must build your relationship with your body, your relationship with other people, and your relationship with yourself. You start with the body. This never fails to bring someone’s Life Force up a notch.
Like so many others, this patient’s Life Force is trapped in entropy. He is not alone or unusual.
There’s a generic, predictable set of rules and a dynamic to connect you to your Life Force, whether you like it or not. Doing this has nothing to do with your job or other facts of your life. It only concerns the three tiers of relationship: The more you work the relational pyramid, the stronger your Life Force will become.
