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The Key to the Universe is ChoiceOctober 1, 2000The key to your universe is that you can choose. Carl Frieseke "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: Therefore choose life.” Deuteronomy 30:19 Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. * * * If I say a man is pulled by values, what is implicitly referred to is the fact that there is always freedom involved: the freedom of man to make his choice between accepting or rejecting an offer, i.e., to fulfill a meaningful potentiality or else to forfeit it. Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning I have read and heard this so often that sometimes I begin to lose my sense of presence to its meaning. That is what happens to many ideas that are important to us. We begin to lose a sense of the meaning of the words and the ideas, everyday life rushes in and fogs up the important things and tries to place on the “altar of our being” the trivialities of everyday life, pushing aside the more meaningful ideas we place there . So let’s return the light to our understanding of the real key to the universe and put these ideas back in their rightful place on the altar of our being. This is part of the practice of being awake, to regularly inquire into what we have to bring to understand and use this wisdom. Today we will bring Presence and awareness to the practice of making good choices. In every moment life is presenting us with choices between one thing and another. How we make these choices is a mark of our character. Our experience is defined by two things, the Divine perfect potential we are given and what we make of it through our use of our Divine and perfect Potential within the Divine atmosphere in which we exist. We engage in the making of who we are through the use of our will in the making of our sacred choices. Choice is a sacred gift and yet it is as common as dirt. But just like the dirt that cloaks the earth on which we live, there would be no real life without it. So to return to Viktor Frankl and what he said about our values, he says that what we make important: our principles, morals, ethics, what we believe to be good and true, what priority we give these things determines the choices that we will make. So what we say we believe in our faith and what we say together as humanity determines who we are. Now this may seem so obvious that we give it little thought. Thinking about that idea is also a choice. Shall we choose to be cynical or to engage this gift in a way that shapes our life powerfully and in such a way that our lives serve as a light to those around us? We, through our conscious thinking shape the whole of humanity, and when we don’t think, we are also making a choice about the shape of our experience and of each and every other part of the whole of life. THE TIME HAS COME The time has come, the hour has struck. The Power from within has come forth and is expressing through my word. I do not have to wait -- today is the time. Today I enter into all Truth. Today I am completely free and healed and made happy. Today I enter into my inheritance. Today the Truth has made me free. Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind Gerry Jampolsky, says in his book, Teach Only Love, “Decisions are made by learning to listen to the preference for peace within us. There is no right or wrong behavior. The only meaningful choice is between fear and love.” Okay, let's get down to the nitty-gritty now. So where could you be more loving and caring in your life? Let's be honest here. And what's stopping you--pride, ego, stubbornness, embarrassment? Would you rather stay stuck in your head, holding on to self-limiting concepts which subtly drain your energy or would you finally like to free yourself and find happiness and fulfillment? It's always your choice. Frederick Bailes said that “Man’s power of choice enables him to think like an angel or a devil, a king or a slave. Whatever he chooses, mind will create and manifest” There are two parallel states that we can remember, allowing love to fully express through us makes us feel like the royal children of God that we inherently are and engaging in fear makes us feel small and hard and makes the world we live in a living Hell. Interestingly, we don’t seem to have the option of getting out of this predicament, because when we don’t make a choice, even that is choosing. In Religious Science we say that not making a choice is to allow our experience to be determined by what Holmes called Race Consciousness. It’s also called the Collective Unconscious and is commonly called Fate. If we don’t make conscious choices, our failure to do so determines the outcome. Outcomes flow from our choice, whether it be a conscious choice or a refusal to decide. The results are ours! We chose it one way or another. God gave us this as a gift, and it’s just like those Christmas gifts that keep making the rounds, you might as well go ahead and use it because it is going to keep coming back to you and to stick around! Ever see somebody use something for a use that is not a part of its design? Say plant something in shoe rather than wear them? It’s eye catching, huh? We can use will to pursue all manner of self expression. We can use it to express love rather than impatience. We can use it to make ourselves do something until we become expert and well known for our expertise. We can use it to serve one another and we can use it to serve and find our way back to our center, the experience of God within. It’s up to us. There is an old Irish proverb that says Turning it over in your mind won't plough the field. We have to choose and then move something. Choice involves a process that ends in a movement consistent with the choice. This is the expression of the Will we are given. Emmet Fox said “We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thought.” Our small choices can have huge consequences. Today, pay attention to the tiny decisions you make. Choose Love as your direction. In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof. John Kenneth Galbraith famous American Economist If you wish to grow a new quality within yourself, the way to germinate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast stores of divine energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise. CHOICE OF ATTITUDE Seeing the light is a choice, not seeing the light is no choice. The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. It is more important that the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. The remarkable thing is - we have a choice every day of our lives regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We have not thus far changed the inevitability of death, and we appear to be working on that, we live twice as long as we did 100 years ago. One thing we can do is play a committed and transformational game of change with our attitude. I'm convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And I am sure that is true with you too. We are in charge of our attitudes. Moment by moment we can train this precious gift so that our experience of life is enhanced by the very choices that we make. Our attitude is a powerful choice, it shapes what we see and experience. We can miss the good stuff simply because today we decided to get up on the wrong side of the bed! Here is what someone who was permanently injured in an accident had to say: “Before my accidents, there were ten thousands things I could do. I could spend the rest of my life dwelling on the things that I had lost, but instead I chose to focus on the nine thousand I still had left.” Ram Dass has said similar things since he experienced a very serious stroke. He said that he was a golfer and some other things. He could choose to suffer about not being a golfer anymore or he could experience the consciousness within himself transforming into a quieter state of being. What would bring him the most joy? You are the person who has to decide. Whether you'll do it or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up your mind. Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are. Edgar A. Guest This little poem points out some possible ways we can use our power to choose, and there are infinite possibilities other than just these, the speed that we choose to move through our experiences is in part up to us and is another function of choice. We choose whether or not we will be responsible for the ripple effect our choices have on those around us. The writer, Norman Cousins said, possibly quoting Nehru: “ Free will and determinism are like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism. The way you play your hand is free will.” Any person who recognizes this greatest power--the power to choose. begins to realize that we as individuals are the ones that are doing the choosing and that friends, although they mean well, cannot do the choosing for us, nor can our relatives. Consequently, we develops real self-confidence based upon our own ability, upon our own action, and upon our own initiative. You can choose to be lazy or you can choose to be ambitious. Stop to think about it again. Don't you do your own choosing? The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. Let us choose to believe something good can happen. This too, just like any spiritual practice, can take practice. Dan shared with me something that he learned in his years as a runner and triathlete. He told me about something he calls Adaptive process in which we strengthen the muscles in our bodies as a result of the very stress we place upon the muscles by using them. They grow and grow stronger as a result of the physical challenges that are placed upon them. This is the very thing that happens in our use of will in the making of our choices. The more we do it the more we are skillful and powerful in our use. So, the more we choose to express our highest values, when where we “come from” is Love and the best use of Spiritual Law, the more we see these elevated and more commonly expressed in our experience and in the world we live! This is what makes choice a deeply sacred act. When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world. Scout Cloud Lee in The Circle is Sacred The following are a series of mostly unattributed quotations. In between, I will comment upon them wherever necessary.
· H. L. Mencken
We think oftentimes, that the thinking we have done most recently is the cause of our current conditions. What if we were wrong?
Choose today to honor the divine being whose face appears on your driver’s license. The ancient Greek philosopher and playwright Aeschylus wisely wrote “When one is willing and eager, the Gods join in.” To be willing to choose and eager to receive is your birthright. “Choose you this day whom ye shall serve. Joshua 24:15. Thank you for being here with us today! |
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