| We are Here for a Purpose Last of a two-part EDGE Interview with Giselle M. Massi by Tim Miejan Giselle M. Massi, author of We are Here for a Purpose: How to Find Yours, is committed to helping others realize the true purpose they have for living in a human body. With the assistance of her now-departed father, Joe, whom she describes as a spiritual guide to her both while he was living and afterward, Giselle created a unique guidance system of offering people Spiritual Life Support© sessions, which are described in great depth in her book. A longtime writer and editor with the Denver Post, she resigned her position three years ago to devote her time to the Spiritual Life Support © sessions she conducts with her father's insight, and to her writing. She will be speaking from 7-10 p.m. Thursday, May 22, at the Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, Kansas City, Mo., about her book as well as answering questions about the process of finding one's purpose. Tickets are $18 in advance and $23 at the door, with discounts for 2 or 4 tickets purchased in advance. Call Uptown Theater at (816) 753-8665 for tickets. The event is sponsored by The EDGE. Giselle (pronounced jih-zelle) spoke with The EDGE by phone from her home in Salt Lake City about how we can all move through life on purpose. The following is the conclusion of our interview with her. How does our passion to do something, for example, our desire to become an actor, relate to living our purpose? Giselle Massi: They really don't. They're not necessarily connected. Sometimes they are. They can be, but not necessarily. Massi: Everything you do for your purpose will not have a connection to monetary gain. When people talk about their passions, they're usually talking about it in terms of profits -- "How can I translate my passion into a profit?" -- and then they confuse that with purpose. I'll give you this example: I have an enormous passion for horses, but they're not my purpose. I could turn my passion for horses into employment, into profit, but that wouldn't mean that I was living my purpose. That would just bring you a lot of enjoyment. Massi: Correct. And I think people get tripped up on constantly thinking in terms of how they're going to utilize their interests, their passions, their desires into some livelihood and then they make the quantum leap that, "Oh, well, then that's my purpose." So, how do we know if we're living our purpose or not? Massi: You become an embodiment of peace and happiness. Not only can you, yourself, tell you're living it, but everybody around you can, because you become the embodiment of peace and happiness. Well, what separates those who are truly happy from those who are not? Massi: Well, I think there are a lot of answers to that. I think a significant element would be a heart of gratitude, and it goes back to what I was saying in the first part of this interview about my father. He had such peace in him because he had no ill feelings toward anything or anybody, and by that I mean under any circumstance. He was so grateful for the life experience that he didn't react in a hostile way about anything. Yes, life is challenging and difficult, but the reward comes from living it from a place of spiritual virtues. That is what brings the happiness. When I talk about spiritual mastery, I'm talking about it being a simple life lived traveling a sacred path. It's a life path of practicing virtues that are beneficial qualities, the life-enriching qualities, those qualities that enhance the quality of being. I'll give you a few examples of the virtues I'm talking about: patience, forgiveness, humility, kindness, courage, duty and gratitude. There are many, but it's through that practice that you become aligned with your purpose. I've interviewed people in the past who have been seeking reform in education and they suggested the implementation of spiritual virtues within our education system. Do you think that would be valuable? Massi: Yes. I think there are many parents who are not equipped, who are not either informed themselves to bestow that kind of learning on their children and there's a void, there's a disconnect so I think that would be wonderful. The caution would be whose interpretation of spiritual virtues, under what standard of spiritual tradition or religious tradition they would be taught? Perhaps there could be some kind of a way of creating a combined understanding of them. Massi: Right. That's what I think it would take in order for it to be done really effectively. Because we have a lot of children who grow up from the very beginning very disconnected and that might help them find themselves. Massi: Right. It might help them remember themselves instead of forgetting themselves, because I believe at our core it's all there. We have all those virtues there and then we're indoctrinated, or taught, not to focus and concentrate on those. Usually taught by example from our parents. Massi: True. I think that's truly the only way we actually are taught. As human beings, we love to converse. We love to gab, and we think that we're actually learning from somebody speaking to us or reading from their work, but really it's just all smoke and mirrors. So you'd say books and workshops might be smoke and mirrors? Massi: When you take this to the ultimate extreme I truly believe our workshops are the way we live our lives, so before the printed book, yes, people learned before the books. You don't need them, because ultimately you are learning by what you experience in life, what you observe and experience. That's our greatest teacher, but words are a beautiful thing. Words are song and we like hearing stories. You had an experience when you related to understanding your mother. It came about through an interview with an actor, and after that experience your father called forgiveness the last spiritual lesson. Massi: That's right. Why does he call it the last spiritual lesson? Massi: There is a ladder, let's say, and on the ladder are rungs of learning. Forgiveness is at the top. It's the hardest and most difficult spiritual virtue to embody. That's why he called it the last one, because when you get that one, it's the domino effect. Everything else leads up to that. Everything is leading up to that last rung. Everything else is basically practice and preparation for that one. And, it ultimately is the climax of the book. It is the ultimate purpose of the book. To get to that point. Massi: Right. Exactly. And how it relates to people's career and their work, employment. This quest for "What should I do with my life?" seems to obsess so many people. You really need to be able to forgive in order to answer those kind of questions about your life. There are many people who take jobs and then realize, "Oh my God, I've spent 20 years at this job or doing this work and I thought this was what I was supposed to do!" It requires that they forgive themselves for certain choices before they can move on to maybe the next deeper part of their life purpose. I'll give you an example: At one of my book signings I was speaking with a man who is a commercial pilot and he had some issues. He was happy to get a copy of my book. Several weeks later I got an e-mail from him after he had finished reading the book. He had been working the assignments in the book and he just wanted to let me know that he thought all his life that what he was doing was his purpose, being a pilot, because he'd been wanting to be a pilot every since he was 10 years old, but after reading the book, he realized that, in fact, it isn't his life's purpose. He discovered this through his own Truth, not just because I pointed him in the direction. It was revealed to him that, yes, in fact, he had spent his adult life doing work that he loved and was passionate about, but it wasn't his purpose, and he was sharing with me that he had embarked on another path and he felt very happy and enriched to go in this other direction. I could sense his relief, in this e-mail, that going off into a different direction and away from commercial flying was a blessing for him. Maybe on a deeper level it felt like this new venture was completing him more? Massi: Right. That he was reaching a deeper truth about who he is and what he wants to do with the time that he has. And on a certain level, it required that he would forgive himself, not necessarily just for making the choice of being a pilot, because it obviously was a great thing in many ways. Many of the choices that he had made along that journey required that he forgive himself so that he could then go to this next place. And perhaps he may not have gotten to where he is now without going through that. Massi: Correct. You know, we're all walking along a path. You just don't get from A to Z without going through the alphabet. Massi: Right. Many times. Sometimes backwards. You know, my dad says it's not about making mistakes. He said we're imperfect human beings and we're going to make mistakes and that's really okay. The important thing is to fix them as you go. That it's totally OK to be making mistakes. You want to, of course, minimize the mistakes you make. One of the ways you can do that is to become more aware of your actions, but when you realize you've made a mistake, fix it as you go and then you'll be OK, he said. So we're really not expected to be perfect. That's totally unrealistic in the realm that we live in. I call this a perfectly imperfect world. Right. A lot of people beat themselves up because they can't attain that perfection. Massi: And there are a lot of religions that espouse this system of elevation to perfection while on earth. From what I've learned through my father, that's totally not the way it works. It sets you up for failure. Massi: Sure. For those who don't have the book yet and who may, upon reading this, want to immediately start doing something, is there something you could recommend that they do to start moving toward where their soul really wants to be? Massi: Yes. This isn't about selling books. This is really about sharing what I think is a most amazing story that just happens to be totally true. My dad has distilled form these infinite Truths that he's learned while he was alive and while he's on the Other Side. He's distilled four principles for a life with purpose. If people were to practice these simple, straightforward directives, they would see a remarkable shift in their life. They're simple, but they're difficult to follow. They require tremendous commitment and discipline. Here they are: • If you cannot help someone, at least do them no harm. • Leave things better than you found them. • Always give more than you take. • Fix your mistakes as you go. And then, "Get on with it!" If you live those principles, practice those and live them to the deepest expression of them, you'll be clicking right along with your purpose. I have one more question not related to that, but it's a concept that I had not heard before -- the one about us being able to lose our soul. Tell us about that. I'd never heard that that was possible. I mean, you think that yes, you can lose your will to live and perhaps die and then you go to the Other Side and perhaps see the error of your ways and come back and work harder at it, but to actually lose your soul? That's a possibility? Massi: This is a reality, from what my father has taught me. And the more I've thought about that, the more sound and real it is for me. As I look out through my perspective, from the eyes of what I know, clairvoyantly and what I've personally experienced, I can see walking zombies, so it's not a big leap to think about what would happen to a walking zombie -- I say that in terms of what appears to be a person who's like dead to the world -- when they physically die. It's not a big leap to think that their soul would be gone and lost. Because, I mean, I don't know if you've met any, but I certainly have observed people that exhibit every symptoms of being a walking zombie. It's a great word. I'm trying to think. I guess there's probably a lot of different degrees of that. I don't know, I guess a part of me always wants to think that there's some... Massi: Redeemable element? Redeemable element, maybe not now, but maybe later. Massi: I'm the eternal optimist also, but I also have been taught to live in the world of...well, I think there are just laws that operate. I think that there are immutable laws that operate. And I think there are people who want to believe that three strikes doesn't mean you're out. But, "Hello!" Yeah, at some point you're out of the game. It doesn't happen often; it's not the most common occurrence. You're not talking about people who are ignorant or asleep to their lives, but people who are making conscious choices not to value life. Massi: Or be engaged with life and the gift that they've been given. I guess I could see a lot of examples of those, but when you were talking about zombies I was thinking more of sleepwalkers, people who are asleep on a level. Massi: On a spiritual level. To a lesser degree, I think about a lot of the people that I've seen who just miss the enormity of life and how incredibly fulfilling it can be, and I marvel every day that anybody could live at that level. I mean it's enough for me that I can breathe. I'm just in awe that air goes in those lungs and comes out. To me, that's enough. To me, that's everything. It's like, "This is just incredible to think about, this whole system of inhale and exhale." And from that I am then allowed to see and smell and walk and skip and the whole gamut of things, and yet there are countless people who miss even that and miss that connection to the other connections it leads to, so there are varying degrees of zombidom. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Massi: In the book I make mention of how I began doing this work with my father, which included charging for my session time those instances when I wasn't offering it as tzedakah (charity). Since my book came out and because I no longer am giving up my personal/free time to help people while juggling a journalism career and raising my daughter, I don't charge for any of my session time. I tell people who inquire about paying me, that if they have been helped by my book and work and know someone they think will also be helped by it, they can buy a book if they want to and give it away as a gift. And so the circle of peacemakers continues to grow. As I got further and further into this work with my father (long before the book was written), and word of mouth about my work was spreading, I knew I would not be able to give everyone a session that wanted time with me. And so the book was eventually birthed. The book is a way to offer my father's knowledge in a concise way and those who are not able to connect directly with me can still be reached and helped. Giselle Massi will speak from 7-10 p.m. Thursday, May 22, at the Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, Kansas City, Mo., about her book as well as answer questions about the process of finding one's purpose. Tickets are $18 in advance and $23 at the door, with discounts for 2 or 4 or more tickets purchased in advance. Call Uptown Theater at (816) 753-8665 for tickets. The event is sponsored by The EDGE. Contact Giselle Massi at GiselleMassi@aol.com or by writing: CrowHawk, P.O. Box 991, Evergreen, CO 80437-0991. Call (303) 892-1892. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at editor@edgenews.com or call (651) 578-8969 or toll-free 1 (888) 776-5687. Copyright © 2003 Tim Miejan |
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