All That We Are

If you want to know what a person wants to have in their life, look at what they do have. We get what we choose. It's a truth that runs counter to so much of what we have understood about life, about our being in the world. Yet it resonates for me. We have what we have chosen to have. We are what we have chosen to be. What surrounds us serves us.

I remember taking a course in systems design and cybernetics. One of the key tenets of the course, one of the most telling lessons for me, was that if you want to know what the true purpose of a system is, look at what it does, rather than looking at what it claims to do. So, for example, we claim that the public school system's purpose is to educate children, yet children are not educated, or not very well, even though they become a part of the system and remain within it for many years. They are trained to function within a group. They are accustomed to working within a hierarchic structure. They are socialized. They become, for the most part, functionally literate. But are they educated? So what is the true purpose of the public school system?

And so it is with us. We may say that we choose freedom, for example. Yet true freedom eludes us. Do we truly choose freedom? Does it not, in some way, challenge us beyond what we are willing to experience? We say that we choose enlightenment. Yet we define ourselves as seeking, not as having found. Are we truly ready for enlightenment?

It gets more difficult when we look at areas of our lives wherein we are really suffering, in pain, in blocks to self-fulfillment. Yet the underlying truth remains apparent to me, even then. If we are experiencing it, it serves us in some way. Chronic pain, disability, challenge, lack, disease - all of these seemingly bad things are serving us in some way if they are in our lives. The mission, if you choose to accept it, is to become more and more aware of what you are experiencing and why.

This morning I luxuriated in my warm bed and thought about the back pain that has been a challenge for me for more than thirty years. "Why do I experience that pain?" I asked myself. "How does it serve me?" The answer came as a very quiet little voice within me. "That pain helps me to stay in my body; to anchor myself in the physical." It felt disquietingly counterproductive after so many years of pain, yet it also felt true. Now, having become aware of this, I can choose to continue with it, or to change it. I can choose to be anchored in the physical in other ways, through pleasure rather than pain, for example.

It is not easy to ask the question and wait without expectation or agenda for the true answer to come. It is not easy to accept the truth about ourselves sometimes - the ways in which we have seemingly sabotaged ourselves or brought difficulty to ourselves. In truth, we cannot fail in our soul's purpose, which is simply to be, to experience - no matter what the experience is. In truth, ease is not ease, nor difficulty difficulty. And when you think about it, some of the most wonderfully fulfilling times of your life have been times when you faced and worked your way through a huge challenge.

By stepping outside of duality, outside of these labels of good or bad, right or wrong, easy or difficult, we free ourselves to see the truth of what we are and what we are choosing. We enable ourselves to be all that we are in the moment, in the Now. We become more and more aware of our truth, more and more conscious of our being in the world and its layers, its dimensions. Acceptance enables awareness. Awareness expands consciousness. Expanded consciousness allows greater levels of choice-making in the Now.

Be as you will. I present to you four simple words, given as an imperative: Be as you will. The choice is yours, but are you conscious of it? Are you choosing consciously, with awareness? Are you aware of your true needs and how your experiences serve those needs? Right now. Not in some misty meadow dream of what your life can become, but right this minute. How is your current reality serving you?

Take a deep breath.

We are what we have chosen to be. We are surrounded by what we have chosen to be surrounded by. All that surrounds us serves us in some way.

We used to say that "knowledge is power," well, awareness is a prerequisite for making true choices in the Now.

Are you aware of all that you are? Are you aware of your truths, resonating down through layer after layer until you reach a timeless bedrock of being God also?

Take a deep breath and feel it.

I honour your feeling. I honour your daring, your courage, your love for yourself that empowers you to open to your own truths.

And I leave you as I found you, in the totality of your experience, which is the totality of the choices that you have made until now, this moment, this awareness.