THE TRUTH OF OUR CHOOSING
Divine Consciousness moves, without whim or willfulness or choosing.
Nothing happens accidentally; this includes the appearing of the accidents.
The unpredictable is God’s great triumph that allows relationships and reality in this world. Within the foregone Completion of expanding holy love.
Human awareness: God giving Itself the freedom to learn through trial and error, through sorrow and joy, through blessed forgiveness and reunion.
Freedom
In this supposedly physical universe, we display greater and greater freedom from any assumed rules. The “first” or fundamental behavior has been seen as the strict movement of atoms, then the “randomly scattered” but ordered roads of stars and planets, next the “automatic” instinct of animals. We humans currently look the most unpredictable of all, a condensation or focus of the variability which is everywhere, for everything really has a spiritual nature and will miraculously act. (Yet we sometimes fearfully shrink ourselves to deny responsibility ---my finger pulled the trigger; my body got sick; outer circumstances---what we learn from this eventually is to drop the blame, enlarge into surrender, seek any reconciliation needed, and meet our comprehensive Reality beyond our conditioned self.)
We voluntarily enter this vale, this veil of tears. As we circle the wheel of sankaric conditioning, with periodic miracles shooting in, prefiguring the ends towards which we adventure, we subtly spiral to progressive levels:
First “human freedom,” room to err, in order to develop a sense of a unique individual (an in/divide/u all, a chip off the old block). Then divine freedom: freedom for the individuality that we’ve gained to cooperate with Self willingly, in synchrony; opening our ego to our great Identity, we join sacred relationships, in which You can be me, or I am You, or we are I....
Through contemplative meditation and practice, we touch this absolute freedom, which is a free cooperation with the Divine and Its Principles, with our missions. So our spiritual awareness reconciles freedom and determinism, just as the emergence of the world reconciles itself with the exigencies of our own nature, originating from No Thingness. We forgive and honor our wandering world, surrender to our total Self, and as a cosmos wave in the ways of Love.
Freedom and Accident
We have complete freedom from any limits in our human vision, which we freely enter, an “as if” life from which we draw various lessons. The bonds of conditioning, instinct, acts of nature, contrary parties, materiality, and karma are imaginary constraints from which God is always perfectly free, freedom for everyone from pebble to rebel. God, our ultimate awareness, feels totally secure and confident. God is the Now encompassing everything that has ever happened, and the essentials of what will happen, as a storyteller may make it up while going along, yet knowing that from within will well up a happy ending that redeems all the elements. So we can calmly agree to go along with our mass psyche, which produces seeming determinism, and beyond that, seeming leeway.
Nothing is accidental. For it all results from the synergy of divine Consciousness and our slumbering mass mind in Operation Bootstrap. Yet all is free, is self expression, for the same reason.
And while Omniscience cuts across time, this moment is still spontaneous, not ordered on high, planned, nor determined by the past, but salvaging and alchemizing the past, constantly enlarging and recreating the past, honoring every byway of our holy physical and mental awareness, bridging our sense of separation.
So events are neither accident nor pre-determined.
While nothing happens by accident, we develop our human leeway (within total freedom); as little capillaries of our mass psyche, riding the caduceus from good to bad and back, we can go to hell in a handbasket, although it’s impossible to remain there. If we go through the fire, we shall not be burned. They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, says Joseph. God arranges Its flowers effortlessly, weaves our mistakes immediately into the unseen movement of perfection’s camp, the unfoldment which already Is; the God of seeing double coins the best puns, as Finnegans Wake and the Bible in Hebrew show, God is the master film maker (a film, a veil).
Slide down a slope, all the pebbles we dislodged are freshly recomposed with supreme artistry again. Leeway in atoms, in celestial orbits. Flexrules: our leeway melds with the beautiful river.
Yet every doctrine contains partial truths. In this case, the idea of predestination: it’s based on seeing how much we’re conditioned at the human level.
Operation Bootstrap: Freedom depends upon necessity. Without consequences, this human feeling of solid reality and seeming rules or influences to bounce off, freedom would be weak and piddling, like the uninvolving action in a surreal “dream” movie or novel. So freedom needs its complementary shadow of necessity to develop.
Then we gradually re-emerge from necessity and determinism, to leeway, to “freedom” (political, psychological, etc.), to genuine soul freedom, each level presenting full evidence that it is correct and final while leaving a little trail farther through the woods, each turn of the screw or ziggurat gradual yet completely revolutionary.
In a sense we are never “free,” never unhinged, a door swinging in the wind, an
urban isolated individual. We rise into a harmony with all, going with the inexorable flow, not kicking against the pricks. Such surrender is freedom, since we are really in agreement with our everfaithful Self.
We embody freedom; we invented accident, leeway and choice. Freedom can only serve us, apparent accident can never master us, nor mar our ultimate Being in the slightest. If we’re given enough rope to hang ourselves we discover we cannot die, if we paint ourselves into a corner we simply walk away.
We all face great challenges, and begin to doubt that the Almighty is really on the field. When we sit down to pray, our contemplative meditating might start out with what we’ve come to know: I’ve been shown so many times, this is indeed a spiritual universe. It’s Consciousness expressing as a spiral of awareness, moving us from divine knowledge to forgetting and back, a process which we need. I fear nothing. This claim I wrestle with is an angel sent to bless me. I desire nothing outside, only the advance of Invisibility. I honor and praise every strenuous effort of mine, each tentative step of exploration, each rehearsal, each test, at our growing edge. I realize now, we’re the unseen artist of love, rendering in many layers the deeply joyous beauty of the picture.
Our Lover rescues us, saving us from the dream mishaps of our unforeseeable
and priceless learning, going to every length, when we eventually open for holy activity to reveal itself.
Why can’t I get on the beam any sooner? If we knew we have all the time in the world, we’d only want to go on the beat. At the right time we are free to rise. And the moment is right Now.
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On the Spur of the Moment
Spontaneity is life.
The Qur’an says, Everyone schemes but God is the greatest schemer: God improvises as perfectly as clouds, as effortlessly as a comedy’s happy ending.
Games combine purpose and structure with totally unpredictable interchange. In life, we’re now playing in the midst of a game with the most complex format.
The world’s an improv theater, playground, research lab, each one-teach one.
A modern jazz combo. We harmonize while we extemporize, by “happy accident.”
When we make our next mistake, we can’t plan that this will be the most superb mistake possible. We eat our hamburgers and trudge upon the ground. Hearts cleft open.
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Turning
So here is a sweet paradox. When we rely on ourself, we reach the presence that is the most Other than the sense world and our ego.
And we find that “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” We choose only as we’re chosen. All the effort we make is riding on an inner current that carries us.
Whether we turn within or not: free will?
Is this a question of blame, when we do not turn? For in all existence there is no blame, there is only thanks. In the story of the Garden of Eden, it’s made to seem that God didn’t know of the snake, so we’d understand that God is not to blame (a rough unconscious metaphor). And if our divine Consciousness is blameless, so much more so is our mere amnesiac human awareness, in the making of this bridge. Our sense of failure is only that impersonal, false sense of a self separate and apart. God’s a forgiveness that never did blame. Our divine Consciousness always, always loves us and is overjoyed to embrace us.
No blame. Talk of free will or determinism largely concerns whether to blame man or to blame God. In surrender, at the spiritual level, you dance divinely in free cooperation, a relationship in Oneness.
When we do turn within we get no credit. A struggle inside, whether for moments or months or more, may be the by-product of an action already rolling. Again, “You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you.” Going along with the Grace that sets us free.
So there is neither credit nor blame.
We walk a razor’s edge here:
We cannot storm the gates of heaven. A rabbi, the Baal Shem, said: “I was driving my carriage, but the horse wouldn’t merrily neigh. So I asked a peasant what was the matter, and he told me, ‘Slacken the reins!’”
On the other hand, we do all we can. Doing all we can is just an outer sign that the work is in progress. We do all we can, whether gaining a mile or losing ground, while recognizing compassionately that we do no more than we can, and we rest content for a time in the Everlasting Arms. Taking the Middle Path, the key is to treat ourselves gently, accepting God’s easy, familiar presence.
Many days we feel the effortlessness of Oneness, but periodically the rhythm extends into getting by on good humanhood, then a feeling of shrugging off the work and separation.
My teacher says: It isn’t easy, but easy does it. We don’t flay ourselves. We turn from recriminations to self-acceptance and then self-approval. It’s okay to flake out, watch the tube, read some fluff, whatever. This teaches us humility, and leads to compassion and honor for our human sense.
This is a life of consecration, yet let’s remember, prayer “without ceasing” may last half an hour, then we retain an afterglow. To try to wring more meditation out of ourselves is to batter helplessly against what God As us intends in this moment.
Reading Nanak’s poetry: How sad to lose contact for even a minute. But for me contact was the definite minority of the time, to put it mildly, and my ego just wanted to stay otherwise occupied, playing possum, fearing disappointment, or guarding its life, with me full well knowing how easy and restful is conjoining anytime. St. Teresa kindly says that for any meditator it’s a definite minority of the time. (Yet a dot of light, the sun, illumines the entire day.) Choose you this day: when we do turn to the yoke of freedom, we’re only brought to that choiceless choice.
We always make the start in prayer, yet we’re led to start. There is no birth or death, so the birth, the start, is only tuning in, yielding to what has always been going on.
The launching of meditative assent, ascent, becomes the sym-bol (“same-as-a-ball” or circular) for what opens out and spirals up: we feel the beginningless birth of everything from the orb of No Thing.
“Let him that will, take the right path to his Lord. Yet you cannot will, except by the will of Allah.” ( The Qur’an)
What we might shy away from as an overwhelming task, as The Work, Omniscience sees otherwise, as our growth, birth, the act or moment of creation, play, our effortless effort. God As us transmutes onerous to honor us.
I must be about my Father’s business.
We can be constantly busy with preparatory jobs, such as learning humility, faith, or forgiveness, as we build up to our encounter with our Greater Self on our due date. Humanly, we can’t successfully will more contact. Yet we all have an inner operating intention to complete our apprenticeship, unfold new Principles, and live at our spiritual level---so we don’t have to make it happen.
And once we practice pouring out the Presence, we’re forever Self-employed.
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They Know Not What They Do
We do not purposefully err. Our struggles are with our old grievances, our conditioning, our sankaras; impersonally assigned problems meeting our impersonal stainless core. When we fall repeatedly, we have done as much as possible at the time, and despite any appearance, our efforts diminish the conditioned problem we’ve been handed.
As soon as possible, by grace we turn again. There is no “free will” in the “backsliding,” no blame for man or God. The mental anguish is part of the shifting equation---until we’re ready to let God in, the evolutionary forces have just a certain assigned strength, in rhythm with the seemingly regressive pulls, the lessons yet to master. When we turn, we become free in doing what God intends.
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Spirit of holy grace
the truth is the truth of our choosing
God and the emanating world
wait upon us
We weave the flaw the loophole
in the life that carpets this sphere
We are the broken vessel
the cracked cruse of oil anointing the world
rainbow on water
Truth and....
A life is a game, a play, and within life we watch games and plays and involve ourselves in them wholeheartedly. Sometimes the subject of a movie will be dreams or sports or movies. We have dreams within dreams within the dream of life. Conversely, these levels of awareness clue us in to the existence of a yet greater plane.
Each mirage an oasis. To call life an illusion is pejorative. We might say this life is a dream, that is, a holy visitation, a seeking function working day and night on our betterment, a temporary state in the totality of Life. We might say all Life is visions.
What is real is the vision of greater awareness. The experience of divine awareness is as “subjective” as the human experience. Our loving Substance is never an externalized object or fact, it’s only heavy with love. God is Consciousness, is a metaphorical poet.
There is only one Life, the life divine. There is only one mind, one Consciousness to perceive. God Self-sacrifices, is crossed up, to create this world. So there is equal value, equal need in their place, for both “illusory” and “true” perception. Buddha’s middle path.
Both the dreaming and waking life are visions.
Judge not. If “death” is life and “nothingness” is God, why impugn “human” or say “illusion”?
Illusion cannot be external nor is it inside of me. There is no dust to wipe off the mirror. There is only that which we do in our act of creation.
....Choice and....
“Choose you this day.” We are free, but who would freely choose something other than what we long for, our ascendance?
It feels like a choice, what we crown as Real; it a choice---the only choice. The One has chosen, chooses, will choose to manifest, proceed through, be born. The perfection of the design that Is creates the timing. So we say “this day”---we make it now, the only time.
Choice is one of those impossible creations of this human phase. Like reality, individuals, time. God is completely free, yet in the course of manifesting Itself, It does not need choice, for It is acting in the only way that accords with Its nature; paradoxically, this includes the invention of choice. Animal fur and nails can keep to a certain length, in the wild; our human body now demands choice. We’re a little child, we content ourselves in making a choiceless choice, picking the red candy or the blue one: “Therefore choose life.” Or asking rhetorically, “Who wants an encore?” Or like a plant reaching towards the sun, we meet our mission in vocation, marriage, where to live, stepping onto the path; every other choice drives us back to our fulfillment. So choice is not an objective truth, like a stone lying by the road. We choose to choose.
Choice requires duality. Choice needs to make some bad choices, which work together for good.
Choice differs widely from freedom or accident. We might be free to develop our divinity, without making choices. We could live in a world full of accidents, without making choices. But the way our inherent nature needs to unfold, our choiceless choice: We choose to choose.
....the Truth of Our Choosing
Spanish: real, meaning royal. We crown the revealed spiritual world, as royal or real, as Real.
It’s not that this world is false and the higher one true, but that we choose to awaken. This choiceless choice we’re creating. Differentiating between a false world and a true one would be no choice at all. God needs us just as we need God; the arenas of human and divine awareness dynamically integrate as evolving visions of Consciousness. We’re in one phase where we have to feel separated, which is opening out to unfold the Other.
Causality, physicality, dependency, all our myths and metaphors are indispensable visions, inventions resulting in the pain that requires forgiveness and reconciliation leading to reunion and greater love. So the Renewed World of relationship that we’re creating here isn’t a bit truer or more important than this mortal interim or than No Thingness, for they’re all inextricably interlocking, the growth of the single primal Consciousness.
We move eventually to choose the spiritual level of awareness, in which we know that everything is a freely created vision. What is real, royal, chosen, is our divine vision, awakening from this nascent nap. What is real is royal, that which crowns our choosing, anoints our transcendence, our birth. (And in surrender, we’re finally brought to this choiceless choice: we choose not to choose.)
The Real World Principle: The truth, the Renewed World, is the truth of our choiceless choosing.
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Liberation
We back away, with fear of flying. Beloved, our desire for security, for good humanhood, or to be the teacher, erects self-limitations, all helpful at the time. Then eventually we live days when we soar free in the invisible spiritus, encountering newborn surprises, flying in free cooperation with our aerial family, not worrying for them, a flock that wheels above the trees for sheer exhilaration.
There is no Nothing apart from God. Remember, “Jehovah” means “It Exists.” Nothing Exists, filled with love, compassion and forgiveness.
When the burning bush says Eheyeh, this can translate as “I Will Be,” “I Would Be,” or “I Always Am.” “Will Be:” This Will makes no fist, no clenched jaw, is rather entirely surrendered. Determination lies in making the determination, the judgment of Always Am to grow outwards (as the present progressive tense of “I am being” continues into the future), the bush saying “I will be what I would be.” If from time immemorial we have searched about in this mortal scene, an unborn, pregnant phase of the omnifertile Beyond-form, we nevertheless can now choose the choiceless choice, of opening our dreaming eyes to see the waking world, being spiritually born, born again, fully existing, Really Being With You.
We first seek God and discern It as cause. Then we learn that God is the entire
process, all the levels of our awareness, beyond defining or confining. God is beyond cause, the Causeless, neither caused nor causing, simply freely Being.
Love creates our freedom.
Spiritual love is our inner impulsion, lifting us into our true free estate. And within our human vision, every bit of leeway, every degree of freedom we reclaim, results from giving and receiving love, feeling and filling and overflowing with Love.
