by: Richard Blackstone
Your spiritual growth is a process of going within. Most spirituality information prioritizes what is inside of you rather than what is exterior to you. So your first concern about your spiritual growth is whether you are choosing to go within for answers to your innermost questions.
When you are living unconsciously you are making choices all the time that are mainly concerned with the world that is outside of your physical body. Everything in life is a matter of choice.
Now, you may think that you are not choosing. You may think that what you do in life is automatic, but that is because you have conditioned yourself to believe that way. You have conditioned yourself to keep choosing the same reactions to similar stimuli. You have forgotten that you have free will to choose any state of being no matter what confronts you in life.
If you come upon a situation that has caused you to be sad in the past, then you will probably choose to be sad if you come upon a similar situation in the present. But it is your choice to be sad. It may be made automatically, but it is a choice. When you are walking in awareness you may consciously choose to be happy. If you consciously choose to be happy in a sad situation, you will do different things then what you would do if you choose to be sad. It is entirely your choice.
It all depends on what is inside of you that you choose to bring forth and deal with in the present situation. What you choose to bring forth will be a state of beingness. What you end up doing will depend on which state of beingness you call forth.
If you are sleepwalking you will just think that you are doing something about your present situation, but as you begin to live life more consciously you start to understand that yes, you are doing something, but the something you are doing is determined by who you have chosen to be in the present moment.
When you make your choices unconsciously you have no idea what state of being you are demonstrating. You just know you are doing something to react to the situation in front of you. What will you choose to react with? Once again, it depends on what is inside of you.
What is inside of you?
I want you to think of an orange. If you cut this orange open and squeeze it really hard, what comes out? Orange juice, right? And why is that? Well, that is what is inside of an orange. You are not going to get lemon juice or motor oil; you are going to get orange juice.
Now, let us take this analogy and apply it to ourselves. If somebody squeezes you really hard, that is, they confront you or antagonize you in some way, what is going to come out of you?
Typically, if you are a sleepwalker, what is going to come out of you is anger, confrontation and fear. Why is that? Well, that is what is inside of you. Right at the surface of your feelings are the reactionary qualities that allow you to bring forth those aspects of yourself that reflect who you define yourself to be.
Most of our conditioning has caused us to bring forth those aspects of our beingness that we have been told are the appropriate responses to certain given stimuli. And because we have been told that these are the right and appropriate responses for a given situation, we dutifully fulfill everybody's expectations by regurgitating those responses as a reaction to whatever we have been confronted with.
My question is two-fold. First, “Where is the free will in that?” Second, “Does that serve you?”
My second question is answered by the first. You only serve yourself by exercising your God-given free will. Of course, the key to all of this is to make these choices consciously instead of unconsciously. And how do we do this consciously?
You must be conscious.
Remember, our beingness creates our doingness. Only by being conscious can you do things consciously.
So here is another big Ah-haaaaa. In order for you to understand what serves you and what does not serve you, you must be conscious of who you are being as you encounter the people, events and experiences of your life.
Say “Ah-haaaaa.”
