A wonderful friend of mine posted a common spiritual statement this morning which says, we create our own reality. I find this to be one of the most misunderstood tenets of spiritual philosophy, so wanted to take a moment to explain how I interpret it. I find it a very tricky comment to explain, because it activates a lot of personal triggers. Some people interpret it to mean that if challenges arise in our lives, or if some unforeseen misfortune befalls us, then were not doing a good enough job managing our reality; for some reason, we are creating our own misfortune. Thats not the meaning of the concept, in my interpretation. We—and by we, I mean the local human consciousness—dont CONTROL life, or the entirety of the external world through which we move. That reality is infinitely larger and more complex than a single human individual, and it has been unfolding throughout eternity. That is the ONE life; we are like drops in the ocean of the ONE life. No water droplet controls the tides, the storms, the other aspects of the ocean it meets. Nor do we, as simple human forms, control the entirety of the living universe. What we do control is our RESPONSE to whatever arises in our field of awareness, as well as our own INNER state of being. That is our personal reality within the larger whole that we are also part of. We dont control and are not responsible for the whole; the whole is a collective creation of cosmic consciousness, of which our local awareness is but one teensy aspect. Within that construct, however, we have the power to INFLUENCE the vast and eternal cosmic reality through our inner state of being, our attitudes and responses; in fact, we influence it more intensely and with greater focus once we stop struggling to defend against it or attack it. When we relax and open ourselves to whatever it wants to show us, we grant ourselves permission to SEE the truth, and to respond to that truth from a deeper wisdom than the local, fearful self possesses. Being in lifes flow—by getting out of the way of its astonishing energy—allows the higher power of life to flow through us, and grants us a greater capacity to influence the larger reality. When that distinction becomes clear, the above phrase makes more sense and we intuitively relate to it better. Where it causes problems is when some use it to imply that those who develop cancer, or lose a child in a car accident, or have a house destroyed in a tornado, or are raped or assaulted, have somehow brought it on themselves because they are creating their own reality.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:35:22 +0000
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