The Gift of Life

This is one of the earliest essays I wrote and it came out of a series of Thoughts of the Day on Facebook. They were on the topic of personal growth and ways to share my understanding of how our minds work, which we can use this to our benefit. It is true that personal growth is important and how we go about it singularly important. In this regard it is how we live our lives each and every day that matters the most.

Sure, we can work on issues, see opportunities in our lives to become "better" people for at times we must do this to deal with the issues we face. However, to focus on it for extended periods of time also takes us away from living and enjoying the gift of life.

I see this all the time. People working to get past what ails them, what causes pain in their lives or to pursue something that they believe will lead to a better life or to fulfillment or to harmony. I have done it myself during different periods of my life. Yes, these are all worthy goals and not a waste of time. Still, we ought not allow them to consume us or our attention. By doing this we may be allow, even facilitate our rational or thinking minds continual domination over our attention. The inevitable result is it actually keeps separate from our true selves and locked into the treadmill of ego based action and reaction.

We are born who we are for a reason, it is not random or by chance. We are born who we are because of what our true self seeks to experience ITself fully in order to attain full self awareness. In each life we manifest new thoughts that manifest emotions by our reactions to experiences. These are new forces that must be balanced so that the true self is no longer "sleeping" - it awakens.

We do this by exploring the manifest universe and all the sub-planes of energy associated with it from the mental through the emotional and eventually down to the mundane or physical plane. In each incarnation our true self (sometimes labelled by the generic term soul) descends through these sub-planes. In each one IT build a suitable vehicle including elements our higher self needs to learn what it needs to learn. IT is the spark of life that is within us all. IT gathers "mental and emotional energies" to build vehicles to express ITself in these ways and finally IT joins with a body. When our life is over our true self will take back the essence of what we experienced. If there is more to do, if there are still karmic entanglements so to speak, the wheel of life will continue to spin and IT will again put ITself into a body and experience phenomenal reality from a new perspective. 

Do you remember disco balls that have little mirrors all over the surface, each reflecting the light in a different direction? Imagine that each one of those mirrors is one life, like the one you and I are experiencing right now. To us we appear to be the entire disco ball rather than one of the mirrors for we do not start to 'see them' until we get closer to reaching Enlightenment (full self awareness). This is part of the illusion and is not an accident. Our higher self or true self cannot experience the physical directly though knows more of and about it that we ever will. So IT takes aspects of ITself and puts these down into life to explore them in order to learn about ITself. This is the karmic wheel. It and our true self's desire to experience ITself fully "drives" our incarnations. What we experience as life IT knows more or less as potential, yet in that potential are all the elements of our lives. life. To us our lives appear to be everything, to our higher self they are more like one dream after another, dreams that continue until IT awakens and is no longer bound to the karmic wheel..

Years ago I read, or perhaps came to the conclusion that life is perfect as it is for the simple fact that "how else could it be?" Figuratively, in each life we manifest new dynamics and each of these must eventually achieve balance. Like a ball rolling down the hill we continue to incarnate until there is no longer any new dynamics to manifest. The Cosmos, or God (a label for it many use) is unfolding and we are part of that unfolding. At one time there was "No-Thing" save an 'Unmanifest presence'. Over countless eons IT has evolved gradually unfolding and as a result expressing ITself in new ways. It is not random. It is not chance.

In ITs essence IT is energy, which is essentially movement. This energy/movement interacts and continually reacts to ITself. In doing so IT manifest new reactions as the Cosmos continues to turn. Each phase leads to more complexity and diversity of expression. This turning happens in phases as new forces are manifested, interact and come to balance and the Cosmos sleeps for a time only to be reawakened when the balance shifts again into manifestation and new forces come into play. These have been referred to as the days and nights of Brahman.

We do not see these, we only see our lives and so we go about our business mostly ignorant of the greater forces at play within and around us. We do not generally remember our past lives until we are more evolved as our higher self gets too immersed and in a very real way lost in phenomenal reality. Our true self continues to explore ITs expression of ITself which includes 'pieces' of ITs previous lives. We all have these pieces within us; however, until we start to awaken the current life dominates us. In each life we build an ego in our minds with it being strongest in our early lives. It is the egos we build that keep separate us from our true self even though we are never actually apart from it. This too is part of the illusion, one we are bound to repeat. We do so until our true/higher self becomes fully self aware at which point in no longer needs to incarnate.

We remain bound to the illusion so long as we stay in a near perpetual state of doing. This is what happens when use our minds almost exclusively as this keeps us focused on what it's thinking or what we are feeling. Yet this too is essential for only through such doings do we eventually wake up and achieve full awareness of and balance within ourselves. We live many lives and repeat this cycle many times because it takes lifetimes to learn how to to build a better mind that allows us to become free of the illusion it creates. Each and every force manifested in each and every life must be balanced, must come full circle as each new force must undergo all the "stresses" of each phase. Further, in each lifetime we balance some out and manifest more and explore these energies as well from a multitude of perspectives.

Think about the variety and different degrees of emotions you can feel and then consider the dynamics of them. I can experience and have thoughts and emotions about it yet they are unique to me and that moment and this lifetime. I can understand pain and elation from Allan's perspective only. In another life I may experience these same emotions again and explore them though it will be from a different perspective and involve other energies Allan could never experience. This is why each life is precious and none more important than any other and why your life and experiences and emotions and thoughts are no less important than mine. We are all part of the Cosmos, of GOD and each of us, being a unique crucible of creation brings forth into manifestation forces that never existed and which in turn are part of GOD. No one can express what another can and this is why no one is better, more important, more special or more valuable than another.

When we truly embrace our lives and accept that every part of it is what we have created is a reflection of our uniqueness just as everyone and everything we encounter is doing the same then we can come to realize that we are perfect just as they are. This includes what we see as our personal faults and our failings for what we experience as personality over time becomes part of our individuality all of which are part of our unique expression. If we can learn to see this in ourselves then we start to learn to accept that the same is true for everyone we encounter as it is true for all of creation.

We can spend our time exploring without, looking without for peace and harmony. We can choose to spend our time worrying about what others think of us or what the government is doing or what corporations are doing or about ascending to some higher plane of existence, yet none of this really matters. Instead we should consider merely accepting that we will get to where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to get there and not before. So, consuming ourselves with what might, should or ought to be is of no consequence save to us and our ego or "I". Life has it's moments, we may see them as good or bad but this too is irrelevant or of no consequence. Instead we should embrace it all as part of us as part of our uniqueness and an essential aspect of the oneness of which we are all a part, a oneness one could refer to in mundane terms as GOD.

We are neither the joy nor pain we may be experiencing as a reaction to an experience even though it may seem like the whole world to us. I encourage you, as I try to do to myself, to allow what is in your lives to be without letting yourself be defined by those experiences. They do not define you but they confine you if you allow them to.

© 2011 Allan Beveridge

Last updated on August 8, 2022