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an excerpt from the book Discovering Your Soul's Purpose
The Cayce life readings shed some light on this riddle. First, we should keep in mind that ultimately we all have only one purpose in life. It can be stated in a variety of ways, but it is essentially the same:
Second, the Cayce readings propose that each soul chooses just before birth a customized and specific mission that relates to the universal purpose. It's customized because it fits the needs and the abilities of that soul; it's specific because it focuses on certain ways of serving and creating.
However, you have many meaningful experiences that don't exactly conform to your mission statement. There are many supplemental opportunities to serve and create throughout your life.
As an analogy, consider what happens if you marry. You make a commitment to love a particular man or woman, but marriage doesn't eliminate relationships with others. There are many ways of lovingly interacting with people that are not romantic. For example, a woman may be devoted to her husband and still love other men. The way she expresses her love and caring to the other men will be different than to her husband, but marriage doesn't necessarily cut off other ways of reaching out. In the same way, the mission you have chosen as a soul is not the only way you will serve and create in the world during your life- time. There are likely to be many additional approaches.
So your life will probably continue with many balls to be juggled. The Cayce readings suggest that some of the issues have to do with karmic problems you're trying to overcome in this lifetime. Other focal points involve new talents you're attempting to develop for later in this lifetime-and for those willing to entertain the concept of reincarnation, perhaps to develop in another incarnation. And yet, in the analogy of juggling, one ball corresponds to your mission in life. Finding your soul's purpose doesn't mean that you drop all the other balls and keep just one in the air. Certain balls may take on a special importance-you might want to toss them up a little higher than the rest-but all of them are meaningful experiences for you.
This conclusion leaves another problem unanswered. Can a soul's purpose change in the midst of one lifetime? Do we ever fulfill a mission before one life ends and therefore qualify to take on a new one? This is a genuine possibility. From a spiritual angle life is continuous and so the milestones we call birth and death are somewhat arbitrary. There is no reason why a mission couldn't extend well beyond one lifetime-or, for that matter, be fulfilled in less than one lifetime and prepare the soul to take on a new direction.
From DISCOVERING YOUR SOUL'S PURPOSE: Finding Your Path in Life, Work, and Personal Mission the Edgar Cayce Way, 2nd Edition by Mark Thurston, Ph.D., published by TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2017 by Mark Thurston, Ph.D.
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Are you a busy person whose life is full of responsibilities and demands? Is almost every day packed with multiple tasks and challenges? If so, then the idea of a solitary mission may seem foreign. You might expect boredom if your life is focused on just one spiritual task. Since you are already accustomed to juggling several balls daily, why not take on many soul purposes? After all, more spiritual growth can be accomplished that way, right?