Whether you choose a secular or sacred path, the human mind is always searching for its source – people look for this connection in their genetic heritage, their ancestry, their country, and their religion amongst other things.
Your search for belonging is demonstrated by your attachment to everything from the sport teams you support, the food you like to the way you speak. You may love Spanish food because somewhere in your genes your Mediterranean ancestors desired to be fed this type of food.
Something inside of you wants to remember who you were and from where you came.
People want to be connected to their own kind, and even within one’s own country a state, a city or a neighbourhood which differentiates itself from neighbouring state cities and streets in order to carve out its own identity.
When this search for belonging becomes corrupt it turns into racism, prejudice, and even ethnic cleansings. All which we are having to unfortunately witness in the world today.
When your search for purpose is derailed and you cannot find who you really are you become attached to your race, profession, social status, and other popular temporary labels.
In fact, it is important to honour your genetic traditions – you owe much to the body you use, and the physical inheritance it brings you through gender, race, and cultural heritage.
Part of your duty on this planet is to discharge the karma of your ancestors, to fulfil the dharma of your gender, and to abide by the customs and traditions of your own clan and country.
The above are all obligations you must deal with if you want to survive and prosper, but the dharma typology offers you a way out of just mere survival into an expression of your true self – a relationship with the world that is based on the ecumenical principle of unity.
Ecumenical here means “of worldwide scope, universality, concerned with establishing unity among churches or religions.”
Your home lies in the unity of your species, by the understanding that you are related by the dharma that you share.
More expressive than the role of “parent”, – and deeper than gender, profession, or race – is your archetype – your dharma, no matter how it expresses itself in the world.
Today through DNA mapping people are all exploring the genetic heritage many generations into the past to discover their roots, to find their country of origin.
But in the modern world, where nations and borders come and go, and national identities change, the role of the dharma typology remains consistent and constant. This is the real meaning of the root dhri, from which the word dharma originates; “to remain fixed, constant, and centred in reality.”
It is that connection we all seek when we identify ourselves with our sports team, our local restaurant, or our favourite song but as we know, these things lose their meaning and grow stale in time.
Our search for belonging continues.
But those of us who are fixed in the eternal dharma of our own archetype remain at home wherever we go.
Click here to see how you can determine your own dharma typology.