06.02.06
0302 - Choices
Posted in the Branch at 10:12 pm by Kathleen 
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from Issue 003 — Jul 2001
The lives we live are created by a series of choices made by ourselves, not by any force of destiny or power exterior to ourselves. To believe otherwise is to negate our own personal creative power.
To deny our choices in any way, that is to denigrate them, is to ultimately denigrate ourselves, leaving ourselves with a sense of inferiority that is so overwhelming that we must project it onto a force outside of ourselves. That force we name our destiny andthus we create a conflict between ourselves and our destiny. This is what we do when our choices cause us pain. They so effectively teach us who we are not, that we lose our sense of being whole and lovable, loving entitles.
So we live in the shadow of our choices, seeing them as something other than what they are — choices that could never have been any other way, given who and what we thought we were when we made them. We must give our choices integrity by owning them. By looking them squarely in the face and bringing them into the light of our whole mind or giving them to the Holy Spirit, we thereby allow ourselves to go on choosing in the light of what we learned from our previous choices. In this way our choices become our greatest learning devices and as such must be honoured and viewed with integrity. This is the only way we will ever remember that we are free, for this is our creative power in motion and this power never denies itself in reality.
So ultimately our choices must lead us back to the remembrance of who and what we truly are. Perfectly equal children of life, totally lovable and loving.
Any choices ever made that deny this are only indicative of our buried capacity to recognise our reality, and therefore teach us who we are not. When we teach ourselves who we are not, we inflict pain on ourselves and each other. All pain arises from this basic error.
Our choices then must ultimately lead, us away from pain because in choosing again and again in the light of what we learn from each choice, our innate being will reassert itself; so in learning who we are not, we must remember who we are. As the Course in Miracles reminds us over and over again — choose once again, between the truth of who we are and the illusion.
When the remembrance of who we are comes, then we see that all choices are illusions; for we need no choices to be who and what we are. The Course reminds us that here is the end of choice, for what we are is completely beyond choice. We did not make ourselves. What we are is given to us and cannot ever be undone. We are the children of life, forever one with that life.
Choices then are the illusions that form the Maya, the great veil of nothingness that covers the reality of being. To create within the illusion we polarise our own wholeness into two conflicting elements that nevertheless work together, simply because of their shared identity. Good/Bad. True/False. Yes/No. Reality/Illusion. Human/Divine. What we must remember also is that we have never done anything wrong. All of this was and is necessary to create our stories, our imaginings. We lose ourselves and find ourselves and have great adventures along the way: but these dreams are all written down in chalk on the blackboard of time only to be erased and blown away like dust by the winds of eternity.
© 2000 KP