7) The intuition of higher purpose
Here, the self recognizes that at all times, the purpose of an individual life exists in harmony with a larger purpose - the purpose of all of life. Within social and political discourse, this means that a group can sit together and align themselves with this higher purpose by going more deeply into their hearts and intuiting what the higher purpose of the group may be at any given moment in time and how each individual may play a part in it.

Emotional factors limiting the perception of one's own higher purpose:

• Limited experience of the 'deeper self' due to constant immersion in one's surface self.
• A willingness to want things to be easy in life rather than to have to work toward developing meaning and purpose. This shallowness is part of spiritual immaturity and becomes eradicated over time.
• Emotional immaturity and a sense of entitlement, leading to wanting things to be given that have not been worked for and that, in a moral sense, are undeserved. Entitlement, in contrast to shallowness, involves a self-centeredness that exaggerates the importance of the self in relation to others and gives less consideration to the needs of others in any circumstance in which sharing needs to occur.
• Spiritual instability - a willingness to judge life in terms of whatever the manifestation of the moment is. If one is happy or if something good has happened, then life is perceived as good. If one is unhappy, or something bad has happened, then life is perceived as bad.
• Unhealed aspects of mistrust in God related to confusion about the cause of human suffering. The presence of disbelief that certain aspects of life which have been extremely painful could actually still be part of a higher purpose.

Emotional factors limiting the perception of group purpose:

• Disbelief in the integrity of others and a tendency toward suspiciousness concerning their true motives.
• Intolerance of differences causing rejection of inner alignment with others who are perceived as too different
• Need to reject identification with a group based on a sense of superiority
• Need to ridicule or to remain in judgment of others
• Awareness of the unhealed portions of others, emotionally or energetically, but not their soul nature. This causes a misidentification of who they are
• Difficulty perceiving the soul-nature of others
• Fear of being seen due to unhealed portions of the psyche that carry feelings of unworthiness. This leads to a fear of being part of a group or group alignment.

Resolution within the consciousness of Divine mercy:
The understanding emerges that every event in life, whether joyous or painful, is woven into the fabric of the purpose that the soul has chosen. This purpose is also part of God's plan and part of the soul's contribution to its own healing and learning.

The complexity of each lifestream and its ability to incorporate all events into an ongoing forward motion due to the Divine pattern which oversees all, allows even the most painful events and the most challenging, to be incorporated within the forward movement of healing and learning. This is God's mercy in action. There is no condition or event that cannot be woven into the stream of growth for the soul - not death, not illness, not even the experience of torture. Though the event may be traumatic to the human life and may require much time to recover from, the experience itself will create a learning which, as the soul matures, will contribute to that soul's capacity to love, to grow spiritually, to help others, to perceive truth, and to know the sacredness of life. The trauma to the human self is not diminished, but the purpose which all of life serves is never undermined by the trauma.

Ultimately, the knowledge of the soul's capacity to learn from every experience, including the most unfortunate, will be known to each soul, and thus each experience will be considered precious since each is woven into the fabric of the whole. Though the painful moments of life will still need to be held with compassion, the understanding of purposefulness will create a context for viewing everything.

Within a group as well as within an individual, there is a higher pattern that corresponds to the group 'soul' or higher purpose of the group. The scope of such a purpose may be much vaster for certain groups than for others, but in every case, each group of people that comes together is fulfilling an essentially spiritual purpose that contributes to growth and healing, and each has the possibility of manifesting a purpose that is of service to the earth.

The capacity to align with the group 'soul' or with the higher purpose of the group is not limited by the individual limitations of its members, just as the capacity to align with an individual's higher purpose does not require complete healing of that individual in order to do so. What is most needed is a quality of the heart which gives itself in service to the higher purpose of the group, no matter what that purpose might be. This quality of heart has to do with devotion, and it can be found in those who have gone quite far along a spiritual path and also in those whose hearts have maintained an essential purity and goodness, who want deeply to do what is right. What is important in relation to group alignment with higher purpose is the belief that such a purpose exists, and that it is not limited by the external manifestation or goal of a group which may appear to be very practical and mundane. The external referent of any group is the part that it plays in the body of the world, but it is not the soul of the group. The group's soul has more to do with what God intends for the group than what the members intend for themselves, and there is no group that is too small or insignificant to not participate in this larger plan. It is a matter of custom to think of certain matters as less spiritual and therefore of lesser importance in the grand scheme of things, and other matters as more spiritual and of greater significance. But the purpose of any group and of all groups is to serve God and the plan for humanity, the earth in its transition into light, and ultimately, to serve the purposes of light. There is no group of any kind, any where, that cannot, if it chooses to, attune to this calling and discover how best to serve.

The need for each member of a group to have an inner willingness to achieve this common aim is clear. There has to be a willingness to join with others and with God in order to define what the group purpose may be. But beyond this willingness and purity of intention, members may each be very different, come from very different backgrounds, and think of God in different ways. It is important to understand this. There is not a need to serve one religion or one doctrine or one point of view in order to achieve alignment as a group in relation to a common higher purpose. As long as the intention to serve God, by whatever name God is called, is present, the group's soul can manifest effectively through each member of the group in their own way