"The being of ourselves is the true gift."

In the latest episode of her Hurry Slowly podcast, Jocelyn Glei interviewed Indigenous rights attorney and activist Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot Nation). Their wide-ranging conversation covered everything from Mitchell’s experiences of racism, to our evolutionary moment, to service, to estrangement, to spiritual maturity.

I particularly loved this question from Glei, which echoes a frustration I hear often in coaching:

Many people feel this yearning to be on [a purposeful] path…They want to be able to access their gifts and to be of service, but they intuitively sense that they may be a little out of step with the path… I’m curious what you have observed over the years about how people come into alignment with their path, in terms of really getting in touch with their inner gifts?

To start, Mitchell says, we must resist our conditioning to self-monetize. Capitalism—the economic system that shapes us, our relationships, and the way we share our gifts—invests us in an illusion. It “[breaks us] down into these fragmented, saleable parts that we offer to all of those that we come into contact with.”

When you monetize your life, you create this distortion in the dream. And so, if we really want to be able to align ourselves with our gifts, we have to strip away that illusion, to connect with our inner truth. We have to be guided by that truth toward our most authentic expression of ourselves…that’s the true gift. The being of ourselves is the true gift.

Mitchell then explains that purpose is about self-knowing, self-acceptance, and alignment—not status, scale, or economic value.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working a deli counter, or if you are addressing thousands of people from some elevated stage. If you are just yourself, then your purpose has been met, because this is not a numeric equation. It’s not an economic equation. This is a vibrational equation. And the vibrational fullness that you bring to the world when you’re fully being yourself is the true gift.
When we are able to really bring forward the fullness of our being, to emerge as whole human beings with all of our stuff intact, accepted, and integrated, that’s that vibrational frequency that we bring to the world in that moment, that helps to harmonize and balance the entire vibrational frequency of the planet, is the gift. Our job is to connect with that, align with that, bring ourselves forward.

She goes on to explain that our purpose don’t appear to us suddenly in a grand, defining moment. Rather, we must tune in and notice the whispers of clarity. We must be open to “growing, shifting, and reshaping ourselves.” Over and over again.