put yourself in the way
and turn out fear
scent anticipation instead
and the advent of things
long awaited for
it’s coming, it’s coming
it’s here
Talitha Fraser
Tag Archive: choice
This story has become a strong (repeating) narrative, or metamessage, in my life – coming to mind at particular crossroads between easy, straight paths and narrow windy ones. Seemingly simple points of decision making around how I spend my money and how I spend my time that can feel weighted with symbolic meaning. These are the resources I have, where do I invest them? Every day that we live is an opportunity to invest in where our hope lies, to build – with whatever we have – the world we wish we lived in. At times the pull to do what is easy, to do what is accepted and expected can be so strong…
“I have seen too many stars to let the darkness overwhelm me”
– Macrina Wiederkehr
“What in me is dark, illumine” – John Milton
(7 Sacred Pauses)
TYPE 2
p.156 Everything that happens is our expression of Holy Will, from the birth of a star in a distant corner of the milky Way to your hand turning a page of this book. In theistic terms, everything that occurs is God’s Will. God’s Will is not mysterious or removed from us – it is expressed in what is occurring right now and what will occur in the next moment, in every corner of the universe. Even though human actions may be out of synch with Being, from a nondualistic perspective even those events are part of God’s Will. Everything that happens, then, is what God wants to have happen.
p.158 The solution to human destructiveness does not lie in trying to regulate or eradicate it but rather with connecting to a dimension within ourselves in which such behaviour does not make any sense.
Just as it is an immense presumption to assume that what is happening externally should not be happening, so it is also an immense presumption to assume that what we are experiencing is not what we are supposed to be experiencing: that we should not be angry at our partner or unsympathetic toward our best friend, for instance, or that we should be more open and enlightened and not caught in some emotional state or other. Out of this kind of evaluation of our own experience we then set about trying to manipulate ourselves so that our experience is otherwise. This propensity to be constantly tinkering with what’s going on with us s one of the characteristics of the personality.
p.159 When we perceive reality from this perspective, we know ourselves to be participants in the Holy Will of the universe. We know that each of our lives is an expression of God’s Will. When we are in alignment with this reality, we know that we are being moved rather than being the mover. Moving with the current of what is happening both inside ourselves and outside of ourselves is what the other name for this Holy Idea, Holy Freedom, means. Holy Freedom is the understanding that we’re only free when we do not resist the flow of what is – when we do not resist God’s Will. What we call free will is choosing to align with what is or to resist it, and in time we see that only by surrendering to what is are we truly free.
Holy Freedom, then, is Holy Will perceived from within our human experience. Holy Freedom means seeing that your personal will and the will of the universe are inseparable. Rather than needing to assert what you want or manipulating reality to conform to how you think it ought to be, which is the will of the personality and a central characteristic of the Ennea-type 2, when you perceive through the lens of Holy Freedom you understand that real freedom is being able to surrender to the flow of what is happening, both inwardly and outwardly. Ultimately the more you perceive reality objectively, the more clearly you see that even the notion of having your own personal will is a delusion of the personality.
p.160 …you find that having your own way is really a matter of surrendering to your inner truth. Your way is following the thread of your own experience. It is not a matter of choosing or not choosing it, your way is something that is given to you. It is the road you are walking on, the landscape you are travelling through. You discover that it is a huge relief not to feel that the territory you are crossing should be different than exactly how it is for you.
This discipleship, or growing up, or whatever you want to call it is the process of discovering and defining our own ecocosm. Each book of spirituality invites me to visit other peoples’ ecocosms and this is useful in as much as it assists with the awareness and structuring of my own. This is where churches suit or not, where communities thrive or not… space needs to be allowed/created for the expression and fuelling of our individual ecocosms. In knowing others better I know myself and this is the strongest recommendation I can make for living in community. In clarifying all the ways that I can understand 1-am-not-you, I can be affirmed in all the ways-I-can-be-my-best-self. We are each of us individually knitted in the womb, the hairs on our head counted, each of us made by God, each of us co-creators with God. Walk the path set before you to walk. God is with you exactly where you are right now. God has put people around you who need you, God has put people around you who can help you, inspire you, teach you… Ask always “What is the next step?” What is your leading edge? Our God moves and invites us to walk along the Way. Pray “Here I am send me” and take a copy of Dr Seuss’s ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go’ because it’s the closest thing to a handbook there is. I’m a Type 2 in the Enneagram, I am INFJ in Myers-Briggs, my top 5 in Strengths Finder are: Belief, Restoration, Responsibility, Individualisation and Strategy, I am single in a world where marriage is the dominant culture, I am a woman in a male-dominated culture, I am mad in several specific but (hopefully) endearing ways and a product of my family of origin and the sum of all my life experiences to date. I am my own ecocosm. I need to own my own ecocosm. No one else will tend it for me. I need to consciously tend my ecocosm – who can I meet up with? what can I read? where can I travel? how can I see anew, with new eyes, those familiar things that are so easy to take for granted or become complacent about the vital life breath of why-I-am? This might be right within the four walls of exactly, specifically, particularly where I am right now. There is a story of an American Indian elder speaking with his grandson:
“…there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, and resentment. The other is good. It is joy, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and bravery.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old man quietly replied, “The one you feed.”
i tell you arise
itellyouarise 