Why are you here?

The season of Epiphany is the time to meditate on our true core nature and to come to some realization of the thing we are to do with this life. Using the model of Jesus' Epiphany (or Epiphanies, actually) when his true nature was recognized by others (first by the Three Kings at the manger, then John the Baptist at his adult baptism, finally the disciples Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration), Epiphany involves the spiritual work of uncovering what is hidden in our selves, and revealing that deep self to ourselves and the world.

But asking the question, "What am I here to do?" and answering it, should not imply that each of us were created in order to fulfill some single pre-ordained mission. Unlike the Jesus myth, where Jesus was deliberately created and assigned to fulfill a unique role, human beings are not individually deliberately created, and the roles we can legitimately and healthfully fulfill are numerous for each of us. God did not create you or me specifically because God needed you or me or to do some vital task. Rather, our existence is the result of a free system of countless individual choices leading generally (hopefully) toward God's eternal aims of deep rich experience, but aims which could have been satisfied in other ways.

In general I think there are more people existing than are necessary to provide the divine satisfaction. God has plenty of human experience and more of (almost) the same does little to increase God's enjoyment. However, now that we're here there are some things we can choose to do that will further the cosmic progression toward the Divine ideals, and other lesser choices which lead less directly toward that goal or even away from that goal. It is the task of Epiphany to discover what in us will lead most directly to the place God wishes to go.