The Examined Life

My Photo
Name:
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Saturday, February 24, 2007

You Are at Cause in the Matter of Your Life

The depth and extent to which you accept, understand and believe this determines the power you have over all that happens in your life.

Consider the alternative. Would you rather see yourself as a helpless, hapless victim blown hither and thither at the capriciousness of circumstances and the whim of others. How does that thought make you feel? Maybe this is how you already see yourself. Have you always felt this way? Were you born feeling this way? I doubt it.

So what happened, when did you forget who and what you are? When and why did you decide you were limited? The fact is, it doesn't matter. You can start to remember right now that you create your life. You have always created your life just as it is, and just as it is not.

How do you start to remember that you are cause in the matter of your life? How do you start to forget that you a hapless victim of circumstances?

First you must accept, accept the possibility that you are the creator of your life. Accept that, just maybe, that in some way, who you have been being in the face of the circumstances and people in your life that you have sold out, you have given up your dreams and that little by little, day by day, dream by dream, your belief in yourself as the steward of your fate has eroded away. Accept that just maybe, your life is just a bad dream of your own creation and you can just WAKE UP, wake up and find yourself in a life where you are the master of your destiny.

Then begin to understand, understand how you have indeed sold out. How you have traded your birthright, the right to create the story of your life in the way you want it to be, for something else, something outside yourself, something temporary, something you allowed others to convince you was valuable for something you know deep inside yourself is all that really matters.

Understand how you have traded all you have that is truly valuable for something which will ultimately become worthless. You have traded away your dignity, your sovereignty, your freedom and your right to self determination for the promise that you can drive a new car for a while or live in a new house as long as you are willing or able to pay the price. You have followed the masses in search of what you had all the time.

How did this happen? How do you get back what what you have given away. The good news is unlike all the temporary things, you still have all the things that are truly valuable, they were and are always there, you just allowed yourself to temporarily forget that you already have everything you need to be fulfilled and that the things outside yourself yourself are just nice to have but not worth selling your soul for!

Finally you must come to believe, believe it is so that you are at cause in the matter of your life. You must find a way to begin to realize again that true happiness comes not from what is outside yourself but from having the courage to hold on to those things that have always been yours and cannot be lost. Believing at this point is a matter of faith and willingness to trust, to know in your heart that lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. You must acquire the courage to seek out those who have not sold out and trust that they see your true worth as a sovereign and capable human being and that they rejoice in your being who you truly are and wish for you to be all you can be. You must stop believing in the lie that you are incomplete and that others have what you lack, even as they encourage you to sell out as they have done.

You must begin to exercise, no matter how atrophied, the muscle of autonomy, sovereignty and self actualization until you can again walk upright with dignity and the confidence that you need nothing that requires you to give up your birthright. You must join with others who celebrate and exercise these values. For as you create your life, we together create the world we live in.

Now you may ask then, how do I get all the things that this life has to offer. I will leave you with the words of a great teacher. I paraphrase here. Seek first that which lies within [yourself] and all the [other] things that you truly need will be provided you.