The Visionary Heart Path is where the ‘rubber’ of the Universal Core Intention meets the ‘road’ of the specific relative conditions of the individual. While the core intention is universal, each person’s path to the growth mandated by the core intention and the way they will benefit beings is personal and called one’s Visionary Heart Path. This is akin to what some people call ones life purpose or mission. However these terms tend to imply there is someone other then oneself who has given this purpose to you. If your spiritual tradition includes the belief in some creator outside of yourself who gave you your life then that way of understanding the Visionary Heart Path may be appropriate for you and will work well enough as a starting place. However my Visionary Heart Path has lead me to a different understanding in which the eternalist implications of life purpose are problematic. However there is some core truths that the concept of life purpose is leaning towards that are very useful. There are ways of engaging life that will feel meaningful and ways that won’t and there is no way to intellectually choose which is which. For example while being a doctor would certainly a way to benefit beings. But it may not be your way. It won’t be satisfying life choice in that case.
Even though it has a two-fold expression, the Core Intention is single and unchanging. Because the Visionary Heart Path is dependent on relative conditions it never fixed and is always plural. The specifics of the Visionary Heart Path are shaped by the intersection of the Core Intention, the relative truth of who you are (as opposed to the Absolute Truth of who you are) and by the needs of all beings. Because who you are in the relative sense is always changing as are the relative needs of all beings, so to do the specific expression of your Visionary Heart Path. An example might help here. Say you got inspired to right a book that would be great benefit to lots of people. At the same time got inspired to produce a movie with a very powerful and important message. You decided to act on the movie and by the time you are done with that project someone else wrote and published a book very much like what you intended. Both inspirations could be considered authentic expression of your Visionary Heart Path. Choosing one over the other didn’t constitute a divergence from your Visionary Heart Path. Now at this point the needs of beings has changed, someone else wrote the “needed” book, and you’ve changed as well. May be this was your first time involved with making a movie and you discovered you loved. Or perhaps your talent at it has grown and now a movie project that needed those new skills to do it justice comes to mind. It may then be that it would no longer be deep expression of your Visionary Heart Path to write the book you where previously inspired. It could still be and I will provide ways to discover that in future posts. The points are that just because something had the potential to be life choice in alignment with you visionary Heart Path at one time doesn’t mean it will always be so and that there are often multiple possibilities for engaging life that all have equal authenticity as expressions of your Visionary Heart Path. (This example also demonstrate the Principle of Spontaneous Compassionate Responsiveness)
Because the fullness of life itself always overflows the conceptual minds ability to hold it, so to does the Visionary Heart Path, which is the living of life in alignment with the Core Intention, overflow bounds of conception. (see Life Is Weird). There is non way to map completely out in advance. The Core Intention is like the pole star by which you can always orient yourself on your journey even if you don’t know the terrain. It is even more like the Star that Guided the Magi. They had no idea where they where going or, in full measure, what they would find when they got their but using it as their guide they arrived at a exactly the right place.
So you can see it is not possible to make a single declarative statement about what your Visionary Heart Path is. However it is possible to formulate action intentions that are aligned with your Visionary Heart Path. These are known as support intentions (or objective once they are articulated as goals) I will be giving instruction for this in future posts. For now just understand these intentions are not fixed and must continually be evaluated to see if they continue to be aligned with the Core Intention and thus authentic possibilities for your Visionary Heart Path. These are the things that are declared as what may be changed or sacrificed. Like all relative expressions these intentions can become prey to our habits of dogmatic fixations and we will cling to them even when they no longer function in the context of our Visionary Heart Path. The only thing of Ultimate Relevance is the Core Intention and we must be willing to sacrifice all relative consideration if we desire the supreme result of alchemy (and the metaphor of lead into gold barely scratches the surface of how valuable that is) . The key word is willing. It is not that we must sacrifice all relative considerations, just that no specific consideration must be beyond that willingness. Often the need for something to be sacrifice is the unwillingness to sacrifice it. The ‘forces’ that are put into play by the declaration of our intent may force the sacrifice if our unwillingness to sacrifice is an obstacle. Had willingness been present then those same ‘forces’ would not have forced the sacrifice (These ‘forces’ will be explained in future posts.)