Material Girl, Mystical World: The Now-Age Guide for Chic Seekers and Modern Mystics. Ruby Warrington

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СКАЧАТЬ of its own and had become something—as being asked to speak at an event like Higher Selfie had helped make me aware—that was also having a positive impact on the lives of others.

      Cue major waterworks when I read this quote out during my talk … and OMG, it’s even happening now while I’m writing about it! (But then the moon IS in Pisces today, go figure.) And the fact that this idea moves me so very deeply—the idea that living your destiny is a way of realizing the “preciousness” or value to society of your own life—suggests to me that it gets close to answering the Big Question: the question of why we’re all even here anyway, on both a personal and a human level.

       “You have made very deep promises between your Soul and your Self. Now is the time to carve your place into the memory of this planet earth and serve this promise. May your journey complete its way to your destiny. And may you understand the preciousness of your own life.”

      —YOGI BHAJAN

      SO WHAT IS “DHARMA” ANYWAY?

      I first heard the word dharma when I read about the Dharma Punx in i-D magazine, while I was researching feature ideas for Style. Based out of L.A., Noah Levine and Josh Korda were a pair of tattooed former punk rockers, preaching meditation and other teachings from Buddhist philosophy as an aid to addiction recovery. This was way before my numinous awakening, but still I was deeply intrigued (since my spirit intuition evidently recognized a pair of absolute soul brothers).

      But not having heard of dharma before, I simply added it to the list of mystical-sounding words that lived in the file in my brain marked “to be investigated one day” (along with words like Shakti and mandala). Since dharma rhymed with “karma,” maybe it was something to do with … destiny?

      It wasn’t until Naomi wrote her piece for The Numinous that I gave the concept much more thought. But reading her take on it, I realized that “doing your dharma” is about answering your soul’s calling—and even better, it encapsulates the idea that in doing so, your work will automatically be contributing to the greater good.

      The Dharma Punx named themselves as a way to honor the Buddhist tradition of delivering a “dharma talk,” a sort of sermon on the teachings of Buddhism, and a way of sharing the positive impact the teachings have had on you. And having gotten sober using meditation and by following the Buddhist philosophy that separating from attachment to material things is a way to quell addictive cravings, Noah and Josh were doing their dharma by helping others to do the same.

      The concept of dharma appears with varying subtleties in meaning throughout different strands of Eastern religion. For Sikhs, the word dharma means the “path of righteousness.” The Hindus see it as the “right way of living” leading to Universal harmony. In Buddhism, meanwhile, it gets stripped right back, with dharma simply describing a sense of “cosmic law and order”—my favorite definition, not least since it was becoming increasingly clear that all the numinous practices I found so compelling were actually in service of bringing each individual human soul back into alignment with this cosmic code.

      Take astrology, for example. If, as the AstroTwins put it, your birth chart is like a “blueprint” for your soul journey, then learning about the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of your chart and really making your life choices in accordance with this information (i.e., living as your absolute authentic self) will naturally lead you to do the work you were born for. And by the law of dharma, this work will also, in some way, be of help, or service, to others.

      The same theory can be applied to working with the tarot, to developing your own intuitive powers, or to healing your emotional and energetic wounds, since all these practices are designed to help clear the conditioning and the fear that’s keeping you stuck in a life of your parents’, your ego’s, or society’s choosing—as opposed to following the path of your Universal calling—with the conviction that comes from developing a clear and open channel to your highest Self.

      DISCOVERING YOUR DHARMA

      So chances are you might be sitting there contemplating your life and thinking, Oh, man, I am so not doing MY dharma … , a realization that often begs the question, Because how am I even supposed to know what it is?

      This is where I invite you to travel back in time, back to when you were, say, five to seven years old. What were you happiest doing? And please don’t say, “Watching Disney movies on TV.” This is likely an example of the first way your soul found to soothe itself (adult versions of this include shopping, cocktails, and dating apps) when you got told off or put down for practicing what you really came here to do.

      Let’s say this was … playing dress-up. Or making mud pies. Going back to the Psychic Betsy method of communicating with your higher Self, close your eyes and picture your five-year-old self engaged in whatever your favorite activity is. Now take it one step further, and feel into what it is you love so much about it. What emotional need does the activity fulfill? What aspect of it fascinates you? If your thing was playing dress-up, was it the look and feel of the clothes themselves you loved, or the way you got to experiment with playing different roles? Or telling different stories? And now play it forward. How is your innate attraction to beautiful clothes, or characters, or storytelling being met by the life and career choices you’ve made as an adult?

      When I think back, I remember being a really shy child, and happiest with my nose in a book. But my mum, on the other hand, says she used to call me “Radio Ruby,” since from the day I learned to string a sentence together, I would deliver a rolling commentary on the contents of my head. I reckon she actually found this pretty annoying (fair enough, I would too!). I also remember her admonishing me for “telling tales” on my brother when he’d done something naughty (i.e., practicing my reporting skills).

      Anyhow, as a result, I was encouraged to flex my fledgling researcher/reporter muscle through reading and writing instead, rather than driving my mum batty and tattling on my brother. Naturally, since it was my (soul’s) favorite thing to do, English became my best subject in school. And years later, having decided that I wanted a career in fashion (I did also love playing dress-up), when I went to study styling at the London College of Fashion, it was actually the journalism component of my course—a component I wasn’t even aware of when I signed up—that came most naturally to me.

      And then one thing led to another, and well, here we are. My point being that when it comes to your dharma, your soul has a way of getting things back on track when life (your parents, your ego, society) knocks you off your path. IF, that is, you’re doing what it takes to recognize and heed the voice of your highest Self and are actually prepared to follow the signs being waved in your face.

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