Functional Role and Biographical Identity

To what do you pay attention?

Can you see your inner and outer attention as an investment in your own Reality? 

Are others drawn to you because you do focus your attention their way? 

Do you “pay” attention to people? To their biographical identity? 

The chit chat, surface level conversations—is usually based on another person’s biographical identity. “Where are you from? where did you grow up? where did you go to school? for which team do you pull for? what do you do for a living? Who’s your daddy?” ( ad infinitum)

As life proceeds, and the scroll of the present continues to be advanced into our view,  we hardly ever get the option as friends/observers who are learning from one another—of moving past the issues and identifications of our biographical identity to focus on the higher and nobler causes of identification and attention. 

This is what Helminski calls our Functional Role in life. 

I am convicted today that -First, The Creator honors and understands our biographical identity. The Source of all knowledge knows that our biographical identity represents our ego, our personality, our career ambitions.

The aspect of my life flow wherein The Creator tends to open my eyes and creates new vision, new aim and new calling for me is in that of my functional role in this life, in this eternal present. That is my own "I am".

To what functional role are you being called? How can you best fulfill your highest calling in life?

Do I invest my attention in my biographical identity (my title, my degree, job, my reputation, my social media status) or my functional role?

This nexus is where the ego and the transformed observer coexist to create unity.

Do I deal with my friends and colleagues within and about their functional role( aka highest calling), and whether or not they are making progressive steps towards achieving mastery in that role?

 Does my attention to what they share lead my friends/students into understanding their highest calling? Their functional role?

In light of this epiphany, I can hear a whisper. In deed, with the experience of 46 years of business and vocation experience, I have identified with several callings from the Source. 

One of the primary calling/functional role messages for me is that I am a Teacher. I have a calling to serve as an Encourager. 

I am one who cares about other people’s fulfillment and happiness, and is open to hearing the deep callings and aims of others and helping them disseminate the trivial from the eternal. 

This seems to apply most to those who just beginning the journey of dealing with life/work. Today, these folks are primarily the millennials with which I am associated in my personal and corporate life.

In the recent past, this insight has jogged my memory of the way this role has manifested in my work and in my personal relationships. For 10 years I acted as the College Ministry leader at my former church. One of the reasons this Role was sustained for 10 years was that it centered around one of my ordained primary functional roles.

One of the reasons which dashed and concluded my former job as a banker was my failure to fulfill my functional role and to properly identify with it. I allowed my ego to “take over”. This is a critical error. 

I am aware of my ego’s almost irresistible urge for aggrandizement, for the grandiose.

But I digress.

I have been given the gift of remembrance. I remember people’s names, once I have focused and become centered so that I have paid attention to who they are. 

This too is an aspect of this role-that of a teacher, and encourager.

All the other roles I am called to in this life seem to pale in comparison. Teaching and Encouraging seem to bring more contentment to my life than any other roles, such as that of a Leader, and Executive, or a Director. 

If I fulfill my natural, functional role, the others will be fulfilled as well.