By Debra Lynne Katz (www.debrakatz.com)
“You are so lucky!” a friend recently exclaimed after I finished telling her about how excited I was about learning so much through my clairvoyant readings and the work I’ve been doing with my students. “You know your soul purpose! But I have no idea what mine is!”. I asked her why she was so sure I knew what my soul purpose was.
“Well obviously it’s your psychic work, and writing about it. It’s all going so well for you, so how could this not be your purpose?” Hmmm, it made sense, but something doesn’t feel right about her comment. In fact, it irritated the hell out of me. It made me feel jumpy, claustrophobic, suppressed, trapped. Why? Hell if I knew.
“OK”, I said to myself, driving home from our lunch. “Where in my body is this irritation with that comment?” My attention immediately went to my heart center. “OK, Heart”, tell me, why on earth would you be irritated when someone tell you your soul purpose is your psychic work? I mean, how could it not be? Even apart from my paid appointments, I spend hours a day remote viewing, speaking to my guides, meditating, praying, visualizing, reading, talking and writing about this psychic stuff. I hardly sleep because of it. The only vacation I ever take is to trainings and conferences.
For all intents and purposes, I am happy, enthusiastic and outright obsessed. So why would I be irritated being told this was my soul purpose?” And boom, the answer was there: It irritated me because I was being told this was my SOLE purpose. My only purpose. I was being squeezed into a narrow definition, shackled to a picture of myself that was so much smaller and so much more limited than who I was. Yes, I am a psychic. Yes I do psychic work. Yes I feel like I am on my path.
But I am so much more than this. I have so many other interests as well, some that I’m currently pursuing and identified with (like being a mom ) others I play around with here and there (as a filmmaker and screenwriter) and others that I haven’t even explored or am even aware of yet but that I very much look forward to discovering. (I’m convinced I am going to become a successful actress starting when I am 85. I have no interest in doing this now). I realized I’ve been working hard to get out of other narrow definitions of myself, and this is what my psychic and healing and meditation work has helped me to do.
What have these definitions been? Well most were ones that others put onto me, and some of them I wholeheartedly I bought into. Those belonging to the latter category were first and foremost, being an identical twin. Until the age of 19 or so, this was my identity, who I was, what made me important, special, unique, and what I did best. My sister, Amy, and I did everything together, we looked exactly alike, we couldn’t go anywhere without causing a scene. And now we shared a dorm room together in college, a tiny room, about 12 feet long and 8 feet wide.
By the end of Spring semester of that year, I was so sick of her as she was of me, and I was feeling so stifled, crowded, hedged in (hmmm, there are those feelings again), I would wander around campus for hours in the cold, desperately searching for some place I could be warm and comfortable, but by myself. One chilly afternoon, I was thrilled to find a vacant classroom unlocked, and I went inside, closed the door, and sat there by myself for a long time under a blackboard covered in mathematical calculations I could not decipher, feeling more than just miserable. It wasn’t about sharing a tiny space with my sister, it was sharing my entire identity with her. Something deep inside was telling me I needed to be on my own, but my head was filled with thoughts that said, “but then who will you be?
The only thing that makes you interesting, special, important, is being an identical twin! Without that you are just about the most boring person in the world!” Then suddenly I asked myself a question I had never been willing to consider. “Well what if she died?” What would happen to me then? The answer came immediately with a feeling of despair, “I would not be able to live without her”. It was at that moment that I knew I needed to make a change. I knew something was wrong with my thinking. I knew there was a lie in there somewhere, probably several, and that my very life was dependent on getting to a place where I would say, “You know what?, if she died I would be sad, but I would could be OK”. I knew that finding myself, apart from this relationship was going to be the most important thing I ever did in my life. Up to that point I thought the most important thing was figuring out where to move, or what to major in (something I never really figured out because what I really wanted to learn was not taught in college).
Ironically, around this time I visited a psychic for the first time at a local fair. She wasn’t able to answer either of these questions, but she did tell me someday I would be doing the same thing she did. I walked away certain she was a fraud!
Later in life I would create and recreate myself several times over. I went through quite a few years believing my soul purpose was wrapped up with what ever I was currently immersed in, the roles I played, and what I perceived to be the thing that made me special in my own eyes and of course others. My ego, my bank account, and my passion were all involved.
A lot of effort, emotions, trails and tribulations went into pursuing, achieving and eventually letting go of my attachment to these. When I was a Federal Probation Officer, that seemed to be my soul purpose. When I was a brand new mom that was my soul purpose. When I was in the Philippines studying healing with the faith healers, that was my purpose, when I was in film school that was my soul purpose, when I published my first book, I had found my soul purpose as a writer. In all of these moments, I clung to this concept, this notion, this picture that I was doing my soul purpose because these thought forms made me feel safe. Essentially I grounded through these pictures.
The thing was, when it was time to move on to something else either because I had changed, or because what had been working so well dried up and along with it the money and the joy, or a brand new, unexpected life experience popped up (or out as in the case of my son!), I had to go through a rocky, turbulent, uneasy period that felt like riding a rollercoaster with nothing more to hang onto to then my fingernails. It was a lot harder to let go of these things then to begin them because each time I passed to a new stage I had to readjust my self-identity.
SOUL/SOLE PURPOSE IS A MYTH After doing clairvoyant readings on hundreds of people, I’ve come to the conclusion that the concept of “having a single soul purpose” is a misnomer. Certainly there are many experiences and lessons our souls want to have. Information about these experiences and how to have them and deal with them are what often comes up during a clairvoyant reading, But when someone says, “What is my soul purpose” What am I meant to do”, these questions will yield about as much information as the question, “What should I do”?.
Most of my students will attest to this as well. Unfortunately, most beginning students don’t understand that the lack of information coming to them about these questions does not have to do with their ability, as much has to do with the question itself. When it comes to psychic work, there is such a thing as a bad question! Instead the more helpful question is, what is it that will bring joy to this person?
But even here lies one further problem that is related to the soul purpose problem. Most people think that all they need to know is that one thing to do that will bring them joy. Now for many people, there is something, many things they will enjoy doing. But the fact is, if someone comes for a reading who is already doing things in their life they enjoy, and they ask about their soul purpose, they aren’t going to need to know what it is they enjoy or what they don’t enjoy or what they might enjoy in the future, as much as they need to understand how they can give themselves permission to spend time doing what they enjoy, and also how to earn a living doing what they enjoy, or at least survive while also getting to enjoy whatever they enjoy.
Furthermore, Some of what they enjoy may not be an activity or a thing, but experiencing themselves in a particular way. So often this is where people get stuck. They have the notion that as a psychi, I should be able to just tell them what job to apply for, and it should be the perfect job that will give them the money they need to meet their other goals. They expect me to just say, “Hey look in this newspaper 3 days from now, apply for this exact job with this particular company and all your dreams will come true”. Now that’s not to say I don’t ever get a response like this or that I don’t quite often get information about the company they ultimately will be working for, or that they are currently considering. I actually do. But what frequently happens is I get information about what they must change in order to complete the gap between where that person is now, and a more fulfilling point in the future.
This is important because quite often, even when I accurately describe the future, it doesn’t make sense to them at the time I tell them about it. That’s why I am coming to the conclusion that viewing the present is far more helpful than viewing the future, although both can be accessed fairly easily. It’s in the present that a person’s limited or narrow perspective is causing distress, and if my answer doesn’t fit into this faulty way of thinking, they have trouble initially understanding me. That’s why I am OK if what I say about the future doesn’t make sense. Why should it?!
They are not there yet psychologically. Oftentimes, it is the reading that will help pull out that which is unconscious into the consciousness. That’s why as trained clairvoyants, we can often achieve what it might take a psychoanalyst or therapist months if not years to uncover. Still, there is only so much new awareness a person can handle at any given time, so much of what we tell someone will not immediately be comprehended. It may take an hour, a day or a week or a lot longer to integrate it and of course information about the future may not make any sense until it comes to pass. That’s why as readers of my books will recall, as psychics we can’t get to wrapped up in whether or not our clients understand everything we say the moment we say it.
What we can do to best serve the client is to help them understand the gap between where they are now and where they long to be.
THE GAP within this gap is time and space and it’s often all a person has to do to shift within this gap and new awareness, and ultimately new opportunities will arise. Let me ask you this to illustrate this point:. If you are currently working in a job that you aren’t absolutely in love with, lets say working 9 to 5 for someone else, this question is for you. Why are you not working for yourself? Why are you not even the boss or the CEO? Now you are going to come up with a lot of excuses and some very valid reasons, but here is what it comes down to: You don’t believe you could be, you don’t think you want to, you don’t think you have what it takes. Some of you believe you will at some point but not now, some of you don’t really ever believe you will.
Now I am not saying it would be in your best interest right at this moment to quit your job and start working for yourself. Again, there may be things that have to happen within you, some skills that you need to acquire and information you still need. Perhaps you just don’t have the right personality characteristics or this notion doesn’t appeal to you at all. But the mistake many people make is to think, “All I need to know is the right product or service to focus on and then I would leave this job in a heart beat or I would start my own business”. Well here is the thing, you won’t find that product or service until you make a shift. Ironically, some of you have the right product right now, the right service and the right answer right in front of your nose but you can’t see it because you need to shift your thinking. But there are some shifts of perspectives, some emotions, some programming, some relationships, that need to change so you can see what is right in front of you.
A year ago I was going nuts because I was too busy, clients were falling through the cracks, I was disorganized, trying to do way too much by myself. I struggled for months trying to figure out what to do. People kept telling me I needed an assistant, but I was fearful about being responsible for someone else and thinking how could I train someone? Where would I find them?. Ironically, I had been recommending one of my former students to other people looking for assistants for 6 months.
Finally I released some fears that were blocking me from giving myself permission to receive the help I so badly needed. I got up the nerve to ask this student if she’d like to be my assistant. She immediately said “yes”. Today she is not just my assistant, she is my living, breathing spirit guide! And she was right there the whole time.
Fortunately, it is information about the inner changes we need to make that comes up the most, and that comes in the clearest and the loudest during a clairvoyant reading. It is this information that does the most to move you forward in life. Sometimes very detailed and specific instructions come in as to what to pursue. Sometimes the guidance is that it really doesn’t matter what profession you pursue, or where you work. Instead the focus is on how honestly you are living your life. This can be frustrating to someone who comes to the reading convinced that there is one particular job they are “meant” to do.
I can assure you, I have never heard the voice of God state, “You must become a street sweeper, doctor or elementary school teacher or you will go to hell” or “you must leave your job or you will forever be a loser”. But what I have heard are strong messages coming from a client’s deepest self that said, “If I have to spend one more day at this miserable job I think I will go nuts”. I have heard more than one ethereal voice say, “You are hanging in there due to fear, not because you are getting anything else out of this place”. On rare occasions a voice may say, “This is something you were born to do this, it’s in your blood”, but when this happens it’s not a mysterious thing the person has never experienced, it’s something the person is so excited about and so interested in that they can barely sleep. When I get this about a person, it’s been shown to me that the “impulse” is there and this impulse is registered as a strong enthusiasm that is hard to ignore, although many will try.
SOUL IMPUSLES We all have these impulses, I call them soul impulses rather than soul purpose. Again
