Does embarking on the
soul's journey mean we are here on Earth to meet
our destiny? Or does free will allow us to make
of life what we wish? I believe both are true.
From our intention to incarnate until this
present moment, we have always possessed free
will or choice. The difference between these two
moments in time is that Soul experiences a unity
consciousness that Personality only glimpses in
comparison, even with the best of intentions.
What does this mean?
Before we come into bodies
we possess unlimited Mind. As expansive beings,
we do not consider Mind to be contained in the
brain, for we do not have brains or bodies. We
exist as energy, limitless energy. This energy
experiences Oneness and simply Is. There are no
judging personalities to discriminate. This
dimension is all-loving, all knowing. There is
no sense of right or wrong, no sense of time as
we know it. When we enter our bodies or shortly
thereafter, we lose consciousness of Source in
order to experience life on Earth. Our essential
nature, our soul nature is loving. Human nature
is complex and full of confusing and often
conflicting emotions. If we were to maintain
consciousness at all times of the incredibly
loving realm from which we emerged, we might
experience such great pain that we would choose
to end our physical existence after a few really
difficult challenges. Human life on Earth would
extinguish itself pretty quickly. We maintain
this forgetfulness, then, in order to
effectively meet the challenges we have chosen
for our soul's growth.
Why would anyone choose to
incarnate on Earth, clearly a planet where we
learn from adversity? Why would we choose to
leave a loving place like Heaven, as many call
it, to come here? Though love might be what many
of us seek in life, if love was all we ever
knew, how would we EXPERIENCE it, with nothing
to compare it to? How would the soul grow
without having something like adversity
challenging it? Perhaps it would evolve over
many eons, but it would be pretty slow going.
The choice to come to Earth is up to each of us.
The experience of human life on Earth is a
collective choice made between Creator and Soul.
Creator, being raw energy, cannot express itself
except through its creations. In essence then,
WE are IT, individual expressions of The One
(along with nature, the stars and all other life
in the cosmos). We make a choice to separate
from Creator in order to experience life as
human beings. Our DESTINY then, is to complete
some human mission, some task(s), and return
more enriched in order to strengthen Creation,
of which we are a responsible part.
Responsibility is key here, for it is what Soul
knows is simply a given, but what humans fight
against. Acceptance of responsibility is what
shapes our experience of destiny.
Thus our destiny is also a
choice, but remember, we have forgotten that
part. We have, as Medical Intuitive Caroline
Myss discusses in her new book Sacred
Contracts, places to go, people to meet,
appointments to keep. Destiny brings us together
with others to fulfill these contracts of Soul.
How we choose to participate in such contracts
is our CHOICE. Whether we nourish and strengthen
Soul or turn our backs on it and die unfulfilled
is our choice. The beauty of choice and destiny
is that there are positive emotional and
spiritual benefits when we align with the good
of all. Instead of railing at the heavens and
playing the victim in life, we can choose to
view our challenges with an eye to the choices
we made before we assumed human form.
All of us know that
fighting takes tremendous energy. Resistance is
a form of fighting. Surrendering to Divine Will
is likewise surrendering to our own will, if we
choose to see it this way. This does not mean we
play a passive role in life and numbly stumble
through. It DOES, however, put us in the role of
Seeker. We become actively interested in life as
a journey. We explore and embrace our challenges
as opportunities to learn and grow. And yes,
some of these challenges seem impossibly hard at
times, usually because they trigger us
emotionally. We respond from personality rather
than from the heart. Yet remembering that our
personalities are like masks which can disguise
our divine nature will help us break through
illusions and judgments. This re-membering
(bringing our parts or fragments back to us)
alters our perceptions where we may again see
the gift rather than the curse in any given
challenge.
Remember that being human
means we arrive replete with a full set of
feelings. One of the strongest emotions we
experience is fear (refer to my article,
BEYOND FEAR).
When we allow fear to dictate our responses to
people, places and things however, we block our
understanding of these learning opportunities.
We become stuck and rooted. When this occurs
again and again, our bodies and minds become
rigid and begin breaking down prematurely.
Accepting the growth inherent in our challenges
can create space to heal. We are not flawed
because life is challenging. Quite to the
contrary, our choices have led us here to this
life, this world. Now what can we do with what
we are given?
