Three Sticks — Moses on Life

One of my favorite television series Babylon 5, marks a critical change in science fiction. It is one of the first truly adult science fiction television shows. Over the course of five seasons the characters undergo a remarkable transformation where they face increasingly deeper question about their lives. These questions (in the order that the characters faced them) include:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you want?
3. Why are you here?
4. Where are you going?

During the show the first two questions, who are you? and what do you want?, are placed in opposition to each other. Those characters that focus on the who they are are seen as followers of good and what is right, while those that focus on what they want are considered evil. By the end of the show the main characters have realized that paths of both questions end in the same place. (Note: Steve Pavlina’s Darkworkers, Lightworkers, and Level of Consciousness covers this same point.)

They also realize that to truly understand oneself you have to also understand why you are here and where you are going in addition to the first two questions. Failure to consider each of these questions will leave you feeling spiritually empty.

Regular readers for Three Sticks know that I have spent the last several months discovering my God-given purpose and aligning my life to support that purpose. This has been a result of me asking the latter 2 questions: Why am I here? and Where am I going? Unlike the characters on Babylon 5, I haven’t spent much time thinking about who am I or what do I want. I have realized that focusing solely on the latter 2 questions and ignoring the former 2 is just as bad as focusing on the former 2 and ignoring the latter 2 questions. I have also discovered that by ignoring the former 2 questions I have created a sense of spiritual emptiness in myself.

Although, I know that I am God’s child, I feel as though I have missed something that is pretty important. I have faith and belief as a Christian, although I will admit that there are times where I struggle with maintaining the proper focus on God. I think that is because I have failed to create a new self-image for myself. After accepting Christ, I attempted to adjust my behavior to match the expected behaviors (Colossians 3:1 -17) of a Christian without addressing my previous self-image. The self-image that I grew up with was unhealthy in many ways. So it is not a surprise that I struggle in thinking and acting like a Christian in every situation.

This is also helps explain why in my article, The Meaning of Freedom that I responded to my crash crunch by getting another job rather than raising money as an entrepreneur would have done. It was my self-image that limited my options. Your self-image can be measured by how you answer the questions Who am I? and What do I want? Your mindset determines who you will be and as such is a foundation of the BE - DO - HAVE principle.

Who are you? and What do you want? are to of the most difficult questions for me to answer. These questions are difficult for me to answer for several reasons

• As a child I was not encourage to voice what I wanted, reducing my natural ability to make choices
• As a highly intelligent and talented person I have a hard time choosing a single path and sticking with it believing that I can do anything that I decide to do
• A need to make the correct choice in all cases, which is hard when their is no correct choice, but there is a potential wrong choice such as choosing a mate

Over the next several posts I will explore each of these questions in greater depth.

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