Ask: Do I want this?

            Often when something uncomfortable is occurring in their lives clients will ask if, on some level, they want it. They’ve heard from teachers that nothing happens against their will and even if they are not conscious of it, on some level they want everything that occurs. They are sometimes told that they have in fact asked for it because of what they could learn from it.

A Course in Miracles says you ask for your experience, either fear or love, but not the events in which they seem to occur. There is the appearance of free will and you can choose to see things either through fear or love. You can use uncomfortable situations to remind you to turn your mind to love. Or at least, if you are stuck in fear, you can ask love for another way to look at the situation.

But lets examine the idea that you want what happens. Truth does not lack so it does not learn. Only ego learns. Putting aside ego choosing or asking for experiences to learn, let’s say it chooses experiences just for the sake of having experiences. This is more likely, because experiences are ego’s reality. Again, truth does not lack, so it does not seek experiences. Truth knows itself, it does not lack, so it does not seek for anything. It is whole, without exception.

Last week’s article was about the interconnected whole that is the story unfolding in time. So, it could not be an individual ego that asks for an experience or event or a soul (disembodied ego) that asks for a certain kind of life that then occurs. Ego asks for a lot but gets very little it asks for! Its asking is not a cause, it is usually an expression of its sense of lack. The idea that it asks for everything that happens is for it to feel empowered or to express guilt.

Since the story that bodies and ego play out is predetermined and all appearing and occurring is part of an interconnected whole (the only oneness ego can know), there is no asking and receiving. What is going to happen is going to happen. So, “want” or “ask for” are not really the correct terms when one senses a connection between a will and an occurrence. Wanting and asking for is how ego sees things, it is the kind of thinking that ego projects onto the person. Ego insists that even if its autonomy is false there must be something here like it, an “I”, a “true self”, a being that is making decisions, driving the story for some purpose of its own. But from the perspective of truth, pure consciousness, an impossible idea (an illusion), the opposite-of-truth, is simply appearing and passing by. The details only matter to ego.

Some have reported to me that they saw the life of their person before they were born. Others tell me how during an intense experience they came to see how they wanted it, had asked for it. This is all part of the ego experience. (Ego is used in these articles to refer to the entire “I, me” experience, not just negative thoughts and feelings.) Ego’s spirituality does not have anything to do with truth, it is the expression of the effect of truth on ego, which distorts truth to fit its own reality. A hint of the whole unfolding rises to conscious awareness where it is filtered through ego and ego has all sorts of spiritual experiences. This is the inevitable effect, or expression, of the awareness of truth while ego is in consciousness. You do not have to dismiss your spiritual experiences, simply understand that that they are expressions, that they are filtered through ego, but are not truth itself. Their value is that they do indicate in their distorted way that truth is here.

Back to the question about desire and choice that some ask when they are faced with experiences and events that are uncomfortable for them. Perhaps what is felt as desire and asking is really purpose. What is occurring is part of the greater unfolding, in which ego and your person’s unfolding play a part. To find peace with this, of course, ego must be willing to live not just for itself but to find its meaning and purpose in the person’s part in the greater whole.

 

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