Every so often the mind returns to the old human question:
What is my purpose?
It’s a natural question; the mind is a meaning-making machine after all. It looks for patterns, direction, and significance. It wants to understand why we are here and what we are meant to do with this one brief and mysterious life.
From a nondual perspective, there is a lot that could be explored in that question. Inquiry can take us right to the root of the one who believes they must have a purpose at all. But for the moment, I’m willing to play in the human space. Not because the deeper inquiry isn’t valid, but because something interesting happened when I allowed the question to land in a very ordinary way.
When I asked myself what my purpose might be, a word intuitively bubbled up almost immediately:
Transitionator.
Now, I’m fairly certain that transitionator is not a real word. But when it arrived, it felt oddly precise, almost as if the mind had simply assembled the closest possible sound to something it already understood.
A transitionator, as I interpret it, is someone who helps guide movement from one place to another. A bridge of sorts… or maybe a sherpa who meets you where you are and travels alongside you as the terrain begins to change.
Sometimes our transitions are the obvious ones. Life shifts that all of us encounter sooner or later. Endings and beginnings, moments where the ground beneath our feet seems to rearrange itself. Other times, the transition is subtler and more internal, a gradual movement from living almost entirely inside the thinking mind toward a more present and awake way of experiencing life.
And sometimes, the bridge reaches into places that are a little less visible. The movement between what we call "ordinary reality" and the "non-ordinary realms" that many traditions simply refer to as “spirit.” In my own work, this can be quite literal. Through practices like shamanic journeying and Reiki, my body becomes a kind of conduit, where energy can move and reorganize itself in ways that are not necessarily being driven by Little Me.
But regardless of the form it takes, the heart of it is always the same.
Movement.
Part of the role of a transitionator is to travel with someone through that movement. To meet them exactly where they are when the journey begins, not somewhere they think they should be, and not somewhere imagined further down the path. Just where their feet are touching the ground right now.
From there, we walk together through the in-between spaces. Through the places that can feel heavy, dense, sticky, or even terrifying. Through the moments when everything feels uncertain and unfamiliar.
Along the way there are many different ways to support that movement. Sometimes the shift happens through simple conversation. Sometimes through silence. Sometimes through somatic exploration, ceremony, energy work, or simply the steady presence of another human being who is willing to walk alongside you.
None of those things are the destination. They are simply ways of helping the movement unfold.
And if there is an end point at all, it might be something like this:
A direct recognition that we are not separate from one another or Nature, and that beneath the surface appearance of things, there is only life moving as energy, continuously shaping, dissolving, and reshaping itself again.
Of course, the funny part is that even this is not really an end point; life keeps moving. But something inside us softens when that recognition becomes lived rather than conceptual. What once felt heavy begins to move. What once felt solid begins to loosen its grip.
Somewhere along the way the traveler discovers something simple and profound:
They were never separate from the movement in the first place.
At that point, the role of the transitionator becomes very simple. Walk together for a while, point gently toward the opening when it appears, and eventually watch as the traveler recognizes that they are already home inside the flow of life itself.