The Problem is the Solution

There's a permaculture principle that says the problem is the solution. In fact, your biggest problem in life is actually the key to achieving your most important goal.

Each of us has a purpose in life. That purpose, at its most basic level, is to experience the world through relationship - through relating to others. Others might be trees or bugs, but the human brain is wired for relating to others. That is the evolutionary and biological origin of the very large cerebral cortex of the human brain.

The angle or flavour of this life purpose is subtly different for every one of us. While one human being's life purpose might be to experience what it is like to forgive others, another's might be to experience what it's like to differentiate from others, and another might have a life purpose that, at its heart, is about experiencing the oneness of all humanity.

To see a life purpose in more practical terms, look at it more from the perspective of the mind-ego and the less from a spiritual or consciousness perspective. For example, the one whose life purpose is to experience forgiveness might on a more practical level have a purpose of helping to rehabilitate criminals, or a purpose of receiving confession in order to help others to forgive themselves.

Someone can only see his or her life purpose if she has her attention in a place of integrity: that is, of higher consciousness. People who are living consciously experience life from an emotional position of ineffability, serenity, understanding, optimism... at worst, affirmation. This is about 15 or 20% of us in the world. Right now, a (rapidly-shrinking) majority of us (presently about 80 - 85%) lives our lives unconsciously. Most of our attention is gobbled up into feelings of blame, regret, craving, or, at best, scorn. This doesn't mean we have no purpose, though, it just means that we don't recognize it.

Instead (and if we're lucky), we'll notice patterns of difficulty in our life. The one whose life purpose is to experience others by experiencing what it's like to forgive others, for example, will have a pattern of experiences that make him feel that life is demanding, antagonistic, perhaps frightening, tragic, or even miserable. This man might be badly abused as a child, or never get a break in his career, even though he has a lot to offer the world. Perhaps he'll have a series of relationships in which, after the breakup, he'll lose his children and most of his assets, as well as having been cheated on by his wife.

The unconscious woman whose life purpose is to experience others by experiencing what it's like to differentiate from others might experience life as lonely, isolated, always looking in at the "popular" crowd from the outside. Perhaps her early family treats her as a servant, her needs are never considered as important as others, and her partner is always the centre of attention, her role being strictly to clean up after him, keep things looking good for him, be the good wife and mother who disappears out of the scene when not needed.

Another unconscious woman whose true life purpose is to experience the oneness of all humanity might only feel truly alive when she's high, or when she's on stage. She's the centre of attention much of the time, but all she wants is a friend who really understands her. Somehow there's a deep pain inside her because she feels deeply flawed and empty.

So this is what it means to have a life's purpose, whether we know it or not. Whether we can align with our life's purpose and accept the challenges that come along as opportunities for experience to bring us closer to union with the reason for our existence has to do with our level of consciousness, and nothing more.

Life will throw obstacles at us, again and again. As soon as you orient yourself toward any kind of a goal, an obstacle will pop up between you and that goal. Want to be skinnier? There will be an invitation to a gourmet feast landing in your lap. Want to get fatter? You'll develop a terrible food allergy or stress from your job will lead to ulcerative colitis. Want a big family? Your wife will divorce you. Want to be a single, childless career woman? You'll fall in love with the "wrong guy" and get pregnant, and then pregnant again with twins 3 months after the first child is born.

These obstacles have a serious purpose. They're the challenges that life gives us so that we can have the experience it's our purpose to have. If it's your life purpose to have the experience of creating peace with others, you will have one opportunity after another to have this experience... through being offered situations in which there is a lack of peace with others.

The "obstacles" are exactly what we need to overcome in order to achieve the goal. What we do when we're unconscious - and, sadly, what our culture teaches us to do from the earliest years of our lives - is run away from obstacles. We don't even look at our goals at all, because those are handed to us by advertising and schooling and the whispers of our culture all around us. We operate from the belief that challenges that life throws at us are guides away from bad things. We believe that whatever our life purpose is, it must be the easiest route, not the hardest. Laziness and fear drive us away from difficulties as though they are the Devil himself. And drive us away from our goals in the process.

In permaculture, the principle of "the problem is the solution" is about turning aspects of your property or business or other system that don't fit the same category as other aspects, into new aspects that provide benefit and resiliency to the overall system. For example, if you've got a lot of slugs in your garden, this provides great food for ducks, which then provide fertilizer, meat, feathers, and eggs for your system... while overcoming the "problem" of slugs. The slugs were only a problem because of an imbalance in the garden.

Your soil is too sandy? Perfect for potato-growing! Your house is too big to affordably heat? Fulfill your dream of opening a winter bed and breakfast for the Christmas festival in your area. Your uncle with obsessive-compulsive disorder has a compulsion to build hundreds of drawers in the basement? Perhaps this is the solution to a monetary shortfall because the geology department at the local college is getting renovated with a whole new set of cabinetry. (This actually happened by the way) You have a dangerous old collapsed barn on your property that is posing not only an eyesore but a safety liability? What a perfect place for the local medicine woman to create her sheltered medicine/meditation garden. (Also actually happened)

The principle translates in hundreds of ways, because, in the grand scheme of things... the problem is the solution.

Conscious people who live their lives intentionally, with integrity, willingness, courage, acceptance, and hope, enjoy challenges because we know that the prize is much more of a prize when there's been a quest first. Unconscious people who live their lives fearfully, with blame, shame, rage, apathy or jealousy despise challenges and as a result live lives of perpetual dissatisfaction... because there are no prizes for them. It's a secret to life that all prizes are earned somehow. Otherwise, they mean nothing.

My biggest problem in life, for most of my life, has been finding a way to be free of authority. On a higher level, this would have to do with experiencing others from the perspective of experiencing what it is like to relate to others unconditionally. The solution to my problem was and is my son.

I knew this would be so long before he was born, but had no idea how it would play out. In the first place, I had no idea what my biggest problem in my life was, because at that time I lived more unconsciously than consciously. I also had no idea that having a child would force me to look at the details of my life problem, one by one, and learn from them. I just had a nameless knowing that I had to have a child, and that it would change everything. And it certainly did.

My son has an "entrapment" conflict (not even remotely a coincidence), which manifests in his body as low muscle tone. This condition, if it comes in adulthood (always after some kind of entrapment conflict) is diagnosed as "multiple scelosis." If a child is born with this conflict in combination with a double-hearing-conflict ("what the hell was that horrible noise"???!!!??), the child is diagnosed with "Down syndrome." (If he hasn't got an extra chromosome, it's called "mosaicism")

For anyone who's unconscious to a significant degree, a diagnosis of a child with Down syndrome poses a major problem and obstacle, at least at first. It takes a tremendous adjustment for most people to accept a life with a human being who has this diagnosis. In North America, the rate of Down syndrome births has decreased by 80% because prenatal testing programs designed to detect this condition have resulted in the abortion of most of these incredible little human beings. Like I said, the majority of us run screaming away from our goals and their corresponding challenges.

First my son gave me an excuse to take a year of materity leave, which I needed just to rest and get my head together. Then my son gave me an excuse to quit my career, which I hated. That was a crucial step toward fulfilling my true life's purpose, which began to take shape in my awareness as something having to do with "self-sufficiency" or maybe "financial independence."

My son gave me an excuse to take brain development courses and learn the human developmental pathway. I learned that we are all on the same path and that we are all one... but that we choose to conform to an arbitrary and narrow path of normalcy, and to sever off anything that can't easily be entrained into that path.

My son gave me an excuse to assert myself against those who would not tolerate my individuality during my whole life before that: my mother and her family. It was hard to do that, because the unspoken contract had always been "conform or be banished." But the banishment was another crucial step toward fulfilling my true life's purpose, which now had a clearer definition in my awareness as having something to do with becoming a healer. Many of the people in my family have an interest in health and have had health problems that I always wondered about.

My son gave me an excuse to draw boundaries with everyone around me, and culled from my life all those who were using my life energy for their sustenance instead of facing their own challenges. Including my son's father.

My son gave me an excuse to learn the German New Medicine, which taught me the cure for diseases of all kinds. This freed me from the path of normalcy, because it freed me from prostration and submission before the great Medical Priesthood. Those quacks hardly have a clue what they're talking about.

My son is currently giving me the excuse to learn how to prepare whole, wild-fermented foods in my little kitchen and to grow, store, and prepare from top-quality grains and vegetables. This because he's so damn picky an eater that I can't get to the grocery store enough to buy him his special treats. It's driven me into the kitchen to become a gourmet chef in my own right.

And, as my son has become of school age, he's given me the excuse to learn the law in order to defend both of us from being oppressed by the authority structure of our society that hides out in the open where most of us can't see it. I would never have looked for this authority structure and found a way to overcome it if I hadn't had subtle and overt threats from school, Health Unit, family, and others to take my child away from me if I don't behave exactly in line with the most boring and uncreative of our society. Confronting and walking away from this authority structure called "the government" has put me face-to-face with the greatest treasure yet: the possibility of a wild, free, and joyful life with my little treasure by my side. It's taken a lot of hard, painful experience to get this far. I can't wait to see what's coming next.

Empowered by birth
But bonded thereafter
We could stand on God's ground
But cling to ego's rafter

...Fighting for debt
An ugly, greedy race
Trip your fellow man
While hiding your face

A person is what???
And you say I must be???
I say fuck you
I wish to be free

-Rob: Menard, Freeman-on-the-Land

I guess if I needed to give some pithy advice to go with this story, I'd say that all you need to do to recognize and enjoy your life's purpose is to raise your level of consciousness. It's not easily done, but it's pretty simple. Realign your sense of destiny and be grateful for everything as well as your ability to see beyond everything. Whatever that ability happens to be at this stage of your development.

Let go, follow your intuition and know in your heart that each transformation brings you that much closer to your goal.