What is the Purpose of Life? What is Karma?

I listened to a piece about Choprawell this morning on Morning Joe. Apparently, Deepak Chopra and his children are making the rounds of the news and talk shows to promote their new YouTube endeavor. Of course, I spent the next couple of hours listening to a dozen of the Choprawell video postings.

Many are worth talking about here, but the piece on the purpose of life and living your karma was of particular interest to me because of my late-in-life career change. I continually feel that I have to justify it to myself, especially when many of my friends, including my husband, are retiring. I am having trouble with the concept of retiring because I am following my karma.

What am I talking about? What is all of this karma nonsense? I've excerpted from Chopra's purpose of life YouTube, below.

What is the Purpose of Life? What is Karma?

Your Karma is your higher purpose

The higher purpose of all life is
     to reach enlightenment and total freedom from conditioning

To reach our Karma
    we exist to fulfill our unique talents and abilities

By fulfilling our unique talents
     we fit into the unique ecosystem
     like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle
     where no pieces are missing

When we fit into the ecosystem
     we feel joy
     and lose track of time

When we fulfill our unique purpose in life
     we serve

Our purpose is
     to feel an alignment with our Karma
     serve the ecosystem
     and experience wholeness

Our larger purpose is
     to reach enlightenment
     which is unity consciousness
     our true identity

When we learn how
     to be
     to love
     to create
     to serve
     and ultimately to exercise subtle intention
          in choices
          and awareness
     we become the evolutionary parts of the universe
     and find our true mortality

from Deepak Chopra

Because I grew up in the Baptist tradition and because many in my family and many of my friends find similar wholeness through their Christian beliefs, I also found Chopra's piece on beliefs worth mentioning and linking here: What is Belief and How Does It Shape Reality? Even before I was aware of Chopra and Eastern philosophy, I felt this way about beliefs: that they are limiting. This piece reiterates and speaks more eloquently about beliefs as limiting one's reality.

Reality is the whole realm of possibilities. When we decide to believe in any one concept as reality, we limit or cut off so many possibilities for awareness and achieving happiness, our karma, and enlightenment.