The illusion of control

Q. A friend who has gone through a serious illness asked a question about creating our own reality. Can you speak about that, please?

A. The first illusion we must address is the 'our own' in this question. This possessiveness about experience is the cause of much suffering amongst you. Though you have a seemingly personal story, the dance of energies that is the whole is so much greater in power and force. In other words, when you speak of creating your own reality, you are suffering from an illusion of control that is erroneous. Though you have choices about how you relate to your experience, you have not a great deal of choice about the experiences themselves. What happens to you is the outcome of events which are not necessarily within you, but in the environment around you. This environment includes external forces such as the mass mind and the emotions that travel through your community, as well as continuity in time. In other words, events in another time and place can also trigger events in your present. This is not an esoteric truth, but a simple understanding about how energy functions. Different organisms - in your question this means 'people' - respond to different energetic influences. Thus, an individual who is sensitive in a certain way may absorb fear and anxiety like a sponge and process these as breast or prostate cancer. It is in their nature to do so in the same way that it is in the nature of a sponge to soak up water. Nonetheless, these individuals may arrive at a condition of evolution whereby they can process the fear and anxiety through their consciousness, without needing to manifest it in the body. For some, the occurrence of such an illness may trigger them into a leap in consciousness and into healing. The willingness to face what is happening without revulsion or judgment becomes crucial then.

When an individual is born, certain laws are brought into play, in much the same way as when a table is built laws are brought into play. For example, a table must have stiff legs and a certain area of horizontal surface at a certain height. A table does not act like a chair or a blanket or a dog. Thus the individual is subject to certain laws according to his or her nature at incarnation. This sets the trajectory and the 'scene' for the life. In this sense, the 'you' who develops as the conscious owner of experience has little or no control over events. Furthermore, you have little control about your permeability to certain energies, as in our example above regarding fear and anxiety. What you do have control over is the relationship you develop to your experience, and this in turn effects powerfully the outcome of certain experiences.

We have spoken many times about the fundamental nature of all life, which is love. All of you who are on the spiritual path have an inkling of this. This inkling drives you to search for ways to enter into the experience of love and to understand what stands in the way of that. This is the work that asks you to become a clearer and clearer channel, a hollow bamboo, through which divine love, the natural state of consciousness, can move. When you bring loving kindness to your experience there is a natural expansion of the heart. This expansion brings you into relaxation and a willingness to be where you are. This allows energy to travel through you, which is health. In the world in which you live, the arena which speaks to connection to love is the area of ethics. Human beings know, whether they admit it or not, that greed, hatred, violence, abuse of power and so on are contracting and love-impeding. Though many emphasize these qualities out of fear for their own survival, they live in misery as a result. It is for this reason that we often speak to you about sociopolitical issues. It is those of you who hold a vision of love who have the possibility of shifting mass consciousness from fear/greed to love as a basis for government.

But back to your question. We have told you that the forces of desire and aversion are the forces that create manifestation in your world. You literally 'call in' what you desire from the soup of 'all-things-in-potential' that is consciousness, and you materialize that which you dislike through your aversion. They are the same but opposite processes. However, this desire and aversion is not of the quality of preference. It is more in the nature of resonance.

Your deepest longings and you layerings of contraction are responded to by life. Therefore, whatever happens to you is a reflection of who you are. It is for this reason that when you bring to it an attitude of relaxation and acceptance, openings and healings occur. Because you do not know yourself as spirit manifesting as form, you do not know the roles and experiences that have been chosen to be part of your journey. When you treat your life as a journey of discovery and approach it with interest no matter what arises, you become the true vehicle that you are. To do this, however, you must go beyond popular attitudes regarding success and failure, the social conditioning through which the unenlightened community controls the individual.

So, with regard to your friend's illness, let us get specific. He has wanted to know the experience of the dissolved ego. He has wanted to learn compassion. He has required that this life push him into rapid maturity, both spiritual and human. He wanted to break the mold and open his heart. For all of these things to happen, he has needed to experience dimensions of suffering and separation beyond the norm. These are his true longings, the way that spirit moves through him. Understand that spirit has no relationship with success or failure. It is beyond duality. Therefore, when it enters experience in form it does not concern itself with stories of personal suffering. In other words, whether there is enjoyment or suffering, heaven or hell, is of no matter. If this seems cruel or cold to you, remember that letting go of preference is the doorway to bliss.

The experience of mental illness, of madness, of horror and terror, these are part of the human experience, and it is for this experience that spirit enters this form. Spirit does not enter the game for pleasure without pain. Spirit enters the game to have the experience of both. In this dimension, there can be no life without both polarities, and spirit does not prefer. When you, too, let go of preference, you come into alignment with your truth and you open the door to transcendent love.