From my perspective, the biggest boon in life and the most sacred gift we’ve been given is our free will. (1) But it can also be the most difficult thing to abide in another.
For instance, how many times have I seen this situation: John loves Mary but Mary loves Ralph. Ralph loves Susan but Susan loves Bob. And everyone’s free will in the matter has to be respected.
Or everyone has a myriad of preferred ways which they then find they don’t share with their new partner – organic food, yoga, bike-riding, the theater, walks on the beach. So they both engage in what one psychological wag called “reality suction.” Each tries to suck the other into their own reality and on and on the tug-of-war goes.
My free will is sacrosanct but another’s free will is a royal pain in the butt. Oh, if only other people didn’t have free will! If only I could command Mary Sue to love me. If only Emma would stop bugging me about organic food. If only I could have my own way in life and all others would fall in line with it, then my life would get better.
Of course one can recognize the self-serving bias in all of this.
I’m really a five year old in an adult body.
I give up.
Free will is not going away. Even the Divine Mother will not abrogate our free will and she designed the Divine Plan (with free will in it!).
It’s based in the eternal need to learn. And that in turn is based in our eternal assignment to know who we are. The deepest complaint I hear from people, besides the loneliness of their seeming separation from others, is that they don’t know who they are or what they’re doing here. (2)
But we human beings in this quadrant of the universe exist under a definite plan and design. That plan and design is for us to make free-will choices that produce results which are brought back to us by the laws that the Mother has built into life.
The law of karma makes sure that we eventually see and feel the results of our actions. What we sow, we reap. What we dish out to others is dished out to us in turn.
The law of attraction makes sure that what we hanker for and what we fear are both brought to us. These two laws set up the game of life, creating a feedback loop in the face of which we learn how to live as divine beings and finally who we are at an absolute level of reality. Other laws come into play as we learn to create and eliminate and achieve mastery in the ways of life.
I give up resisting the law of free will. I give up thinking that I should serve my own free will and not respect the free will of others. I give up resenting the world because it allows others the free will to not love me. I give up asking the Company of Heaven to respect my free will but stand in the way of others exercising theirs.
Buddha called the Third-Dimensional world a house on fire. If I want to rob that burning house of fuel, the chief action I should take, I think, is to rigorously respect the free will of others. No matter how I feel about the choices another makes, the sanctity of their free will needs to be respected if I wish to work with life in the way it’s set up.
Otherwise I’m faced with a future of trying to control others and get around their free-will choices. And I know that doesn’t work.
In saying this, I feel like Rip van Winkle just awakening.
Failing to respect another’s free will ties up my power in attempts to control. I keep doing it and it never, ever works. My answer of course is to do it more, better, and different.
More control. Better control. Different ways of controlling.
Controlling and being up front about it. Controlling and being devious about it. Controlling and pretending it’s for the other person’s good, etc.
I said a few days ago that the path starts from the trailing edge of our leading foot. Here I’ve taken my first step on a new path – that of respecting others’ free will – and I haven’t the slightest clue what the second step will be. Truly I’m creating the path with each new step.
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Gabriel recently discussed this subject here: “Archangel Gabriel: The Quality of Love Known as Liberty.” Channeled by Marlene Swetlishoff. December 10, 2015, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2015/12/11/archangel-gabriel-via-marlene-swetlishoff-the-quality-of-love-known-as-liberty/.
(2) And answers don’t help. They remain intellectual knowledge, which doesn’t have the power to move us. Only experiential knowledge and realized knowledge does. But just for fun, here are the answers I accept to those two seminal questions: (1) God is who we are and (2) realizing who we are is what we’re here for. Each time one of us realizes who we are, God meets God.