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NOTE: This
answer was given on March 26, 2007, after the NEW
DIRECTION was implemented.
Answer from Jesus:
You are raising a question
that confuses many spiritual seekers when they first become aware of
the concept that they have a divine plan or a higher purpose. This is
a question that is very much influenced by the fact that traditional
religions – including Christianity – have portrayed God
as the angry being in the sky
who is imposing his will upon you and judging you harshly if you do
not follow it like a robot.
To resolve the enigma, you need to contemplate the fact that the true
God is not the angry being in the sky, and you might study the teachings
in the section about knowing
that God’s will is your will. However, you will also want
to take a look in the mirror and realize that most people have an internal
conflict about their divine plans. As an example, look at the wording
from the question above:
I understand that we
all have made a personal plan before embodying on the earth. Are we
now to follow that plan to the point like robots, or is there room
for improvisation, using our free will?
Do you see that there is
a duality implied here, in the sense that there is a subtle belief that
following your divine plan takes away your free will and turns you into
a robot? However, who made your divine plan? Obviously, you did! How
did you make your divine plan? By making choices through your free will!
You did have help from your spiritual teachers, but true spiritual teachers
do not force you into making certain choices, they present you with
insights that help you make the best possible choices for yourself.
So your divine plan is entirely an expression of your free will, and
thus how can following your own choices turn you into a robot? Yet what
the question correctly illustrates is that for many people there is
a conflict between their higher will and their immediate will. So the
real question to ponder is whether the will you have right now –
your conscious will – is actually free?
What happens to virtually all people is that when they descend into
embodiment, they forget about their prior existence, including their
divine plan. As they grow up, they are influenced by family and society,
which causes them to build certain expectations about life, and these
might well be in conflict with their divine plans. For example, most
people are exposed to external pressures because other people –
including family members – and certain institutions in society
want to control them and keep them within strict boundaries. Let me
assure you that your divine plan does NOT specify that the supreme purpose
for your present lifetime is to be the perfect consumer who is constantly
seeking more things, more sex or more superficial recognition from a
superficial society. Nor does your divine plan specify that you stay
within the confines defined by whatever elite is ruling your society—even
the religious elite which says you are a miserable sinner who can never
do the things that I did.
On the contrary, most spiritual people have a divine plan which involves
challenging status quo by demonstrating that it is possible to live
a more spiritual life even in a modern, scientific, materialistic and
skeptical society. So what is it – truly – that pushes you
to follow an external standard like a robot? Is it your divine plan
or is it the norms of society, the standard of this world—which
is what I referred to as “mammon.” You will recall that
I clearly stated that you cannot serve two masters, you cannot serve
God – as a symbol for your divine plan – and mammon –
as a symbol for the norms imposed upon you in this world. One might
say that your divine plan is not an external but an internal standard,
whereas the norms of society clearly represent something external.
Most people have experienced that there are certain situations where
they are so emotionally overwhelmed that they cannot think clearly,
so they make decisions that they later recognize as being less than
ideal. The reason was that your emotional involvement with – your
attachment to – the situation formed a veil over your mind that
prevented you from thinking clearly. Well, coming into a physical body
is like stepping in behind such a veil, and thus you cannot look at
life as objectively and clearly while you are in the body as you can
while you are outside the body. My point being that when you make your
divine plan, you are free of the veil through which you currently look
at life.
Obviously, the foundation for exercising your free will is that you
have the best possible vision of what your options are and what consequences
they have. Thus, you can actually make freer choices while you are making
your divine plan than you can make right now while you are partially
blinded by the veil built in this lifetime. Reconnecting to your divine
plan gives you a guiding rod that can help you see beyond your short-term
emotional attachments and expectations, so you can make decisions that
are better from an overall perspective. Doing whatever feels good at
the moment without considering long-term consequences is not actually
exercising free will, for if your vision is limited, how can your will
be truly free?
That being said, let me make it clear that your divine plan is NOT a
straight-jacket. Following your divine plan does not mean that your
entire life is laid out in the most minute detail. On the contrary,
everything in your life revolves around your free will, so your divine
plan is not actually made in order to tell you what to do. It is only
by making decisions that you truly grow, and the entire purpose for
your divine plan is to get you into situations that help you make the
best possible choices, namely decisions that empower you to overcome
your limited beliefs and become free to express – in this finite
world – your infinite potential.
The central element in your divine plan is the lessons you need to learn
in this lifetime, lessons that are adapted to both your long-term plan
for coming into the material universe and your short-term plan of rising
above the dualistic limitations you have come to accept for yourself.
My point is that the overall goal is to set you free to express your
divine individuality and potential. However, to accomplish this, you
must overcome your current limitations, and this can be done only when
you consciously see the unreality of these limitations and decide to
let them go.
Any spiritual seeker who is honest with him/herself will know that there
is a force in the psyche that resists growth, resists change—namely
what is normally called the
ego. This force will seek to make you shy away from anything that
is difficult, it will want you to follow the path of least resistance.
This is what I called the broad way that leads to destruction, and it
is not the path which leads to spiritual growth. So when you make your
divine plan, you do take into account this tendency, including how you
might have fallen prey to this in prior lifetimes. Therefore, many people
do indeed create a divine plan that will force them to experience certain
situations – and experience them over and over again – in
order to force themselves to face the lessons they need to learn.
Obviously, this can be quite unpleasant once you are in a physical body
and have forgotten that you actually wanted to experience a difficult
situation. You tend to wonder why you keep attracting the same problems
over and over again, and you tend to believe your ego, which states
it is not your fault and that you should run away from the situations
instead of seeking to learn the lesson. So one can certainly say that
there is an element of force in many people’s divine plan, because
when you are above the veil of this world, you know how easy it is to
run away from your lessons once you are blinded by that veil. Nevertheless,
once you begin to understand this, can it truly be said that your divine
plan overrides your free will? Or is it actually seeking to prevent
you from being controlled by the temporary, dualistic, self-centered
will of the ego—that is not truly free?
What kind of details are in your divine plan? Well, that is a highly
individual matter. Yet for most people a major part of the divine plan
is to balance karma they have with specific other people. Thus, your
divine plan specifies that you embody with other people as your family
or spouse(s) and that you encounter certain people during your current
lifetime. Yet take note that the overall goal here is to balance the
karma, which first of all involves completely forgiving the other person
and establishing a loving relationship. In other words, the real goal
here is that by you setting the other person free, you also set yourself
free form any karmic ties to that person.
The consequence is that your purpose for encountering another person
is to learn a lesson and balance the karma. Your divine plan does not
necessarily specify exactly how that should be done, in terms of what
kind of a relationship you need to have with the other person. Nor does
it say that it has to be a life-long relationship. For example, it is
quite common that when two people meet, their karmic tie will make them
feel a strong attraction to each other—which is actually an expression
of their soul-desire to work out the karma and be free. Yet if the two
people are of the opposite sex – or even the same sex these days
– it is quite common that they think their attraction means they
have to have a sexual relationship.
Over the cause of history, this has caused immense suffering in the
form of creating relationships where both people feel trapped. It has
also broken up countless viable relationships because one person feels
he or she has to follow the latest karmic attraction. Can you see that
what really happens here is that because people are blinded by the veil
of being in embodiment, they simply act out their human expectations
and start a relationship while they could possibly have balanced the
karma in other ways? Can you see that some people go from one relationship
to the next without actually learning the lesson they are meant to learn?
They are always chasing the dream that the next relationship will be
the ideal one, but in reality they will never have an ideal relationship
until they learn the lesson they are meant to learn.
My point here is that your divine plan might have specified that you
meet and interact with another person in order to balance karma. Yet
your divine plan might not have specified that you had to have a physical,
sexual relationship with that person. On the contrary, having such a
relationship might indeed cause you to make more karma, because as soon
as the honeymoon is over, the karma between two people will make it
very difficult for them to get along in a traditional relationship.
They are likely to both feel trapped and to blame it on the other person,
which works directly against forgiving the other person and setting
yourself free. Thus, what was meant to be a relationship to set both
people free now becomes a tool for binding them even more.
Obviously, there are many forms of relationships between human beings,
and sometimes it is indeed necessary for you to marry a person in order
to balance the karma—for a committed relationship makes it harder
to run away from the lesson instead of facing it. Yet what I am seeking
to impart here is two concerns:
-
Your divine plan always
leaves room for choice. You might have karma with another person,
but there is often more than one way for you to balance that karma.
Indeed, if you could – immediately upon meeting a person –
forgive that person completely, you might not need to have any further
relationship with the person.
- By seeking to step outside
your worldly expectations – the veil that blinds you –
and reconnect to your divine plan, you will gain a clearer vision
that can help you avoid making many mistakes in the physical world.
You can avoid taking actions with physical consequences and instead
learn your lessons and balance your karma before it manifests as physical
circumstances that are difficult to reverse. You can avoid experiencing
the same problem over and over again.
As a practical way to avoid
rushing in where angels fear to tread, create a habit of stepping back
from a situation before you make important decisions. Consider your
attachments to a given situation—do you somehow feel compelled,
feel as if you have to do something, as if you don’t have a choice
in the matter? The most common remark after people realize they made
a major mistake is, “I had no other choice!” The reality
is that you ALWAYS have more than one option, but because you have allowed
yourself to become overwhelmed by the situation, you could see only
one option.
By consciously stepping back from the situation and seeking to reconnect
to your divine plan, you will avoid this form of spiritual blindness.
And only when you can clearly see that you have more than one option,
can you make a free choice. You can NEVER make a free choice if you
think you have only one option. In fact, it would be wise never to engage
in a close relationship without first calling forth the balancing of
all karma you might have with the person and making an effort to overcome
any attachments/compulsions you feel concerning the relationship. If
you feel an unwillingness to give up a relationship, it is a sure sign
that there is something unresolved, and if you proceed with it unresolved,
it will most likely ruin the relationship. He who seeks to save his
life shall lose it, whereas he who is willing to lose his life for the
sake of growth will find a higher form of life.
In fact, it is quite common that a karmic relationship blocks your meeting
the person with whom you can have a deeper relationship. Many people
have experienced that giving up a karmic relationship – completely
forgiving the other person – opens up for a deeper, more spiritual
relationship. Obviously, what I am saying here applies to more than
just relationships, and when you are willing to give up your attachments
to a given circumstance, you often open the door for a better circumstance
to manifest.
Your divine plan has two main elements. There is the work that needs
to be done, namely balancing your karma from past lives, and there is
the fun part of your divine plan, namely your sacred labor, which is
the gift you want to bring to this world. Many spiritual people choose
to encounter their karmic challenges early in life, so as to get them
out of the way and set themselves free to do the sacred labor that can
only be unlocked after the karma is balanced.
The problem is, of course, that many people get stuck in their karmic
relationships – making more karma rather than balancing it –
and thus they never get to the sacred labor. You can immensely speed
up the process of working through your karma by applying what I have
said here, especially by forgiving all people with whom you sense a
karmic tie. And this means anyone with whom you have a less than harmonious
relationship. Approach every relationship with the attitude that the
purpose is to set both yourself and the other person free to move on
in life. And never be concerned if the other person does not respond
in kind. If you truly forgive another – if you truly turn the
other cheek – you will be free of the karmic relationship even
if the other person holds on to it.
You can quickly learn to recognize when you find yourself in a situation
where you are not free to follow your divine plan, and the best sign
is that you sense tension and attachment. And while such attachments
always come from the ego, an honest examination will reveal that your
attachments have power over you only because the conscious
self has not been willing to take full responsibility for your life.
You need to recognize that one of the major purposes of your divine
plan is to set you free from the control of your ego and the forces
of this world. Thus, your ego obviously does not want you to discover
your divine plan, and it seeks to avoid it in many clever ways. Here
are the most common ones:
-
The ego seeks to make
you attached to the expectations about life built in this lifetime,
so you allow them to override your divine plan. There are myriad
disguises for this mechanism, such as the idea that you should live
your life according to the norms of your family and society.
-
The ego seeks to make
you accept a set of restrictions for what a human being can do,
thus denying that you are a spiritual being. This involves denying
that you have the potential to rise above your karma and your psychological
issues in order to manifest your Christ potential.
-
The ego seeks to get
you so entangled in karmic relationships that you cannot forgive
other people and thus set yourself free to move on to your sacred
labor.
-
The ego seeks to make
you believe that your problematic relationships are all the other
people’s fault, so that it can prevent you from learning the
lesson YOU need to learn.
- The ego seeks to divert
your attention into following any pursuit in this world, thus never
having the time and attention to consider your divine plan.
We now see that there are
two main things that block you from discovering and following your divine
plan:
This can cause your life
– and even many succeeding lifetimes – to become a treadmill,
where you never get around to starting your divine plan. To break this
cycle, do the following:
-
Take an honest look
at your life and consider problems you encounter over and over again.
Be willing to recognize that they are hiding a lesson you have not
yet learned. Then make a determined effort to learn the lesson.
-
Learning a lesson most
often means uncovering an issue in your psychology that is holding
you back. The issue is unresolved because you have so far been unwilling
to take a look at it. So take that look now and do whatever it takes
– including appropriate forms of therapy – to move beyond
it.
-
Consider your highest
hopes and dreams and then evaluate how the limitations put upon
you in this lifetime cause you to reject your dreams almost before
you dare think about them. Dare to go beyond such limitations and
connect to your highest dreams.
-
Make a determined effort
to use the violet
flame and the rosaries
to consume any karma involved with specific situations or your life
in general.
- Step back and look for
the higher perspective beyond any attachments. Be willing to see what
your ego does not want you to see and what you might not have been
willing to see either. Be willing to see something even if it requires
you to make a dramatic change in your lifestyle or outlook on life.
You can use my technique for attunement
to get a clearer vision.
Your
life can be said to have two distinct phases. One is to balance your
karma, which requires you to live a certain way—a way that is
often heavily influenced by the norms of family and society because
you embodied in that circumstance as a result of your karma. Once you
have moved beyond the karma, you can start the more fun part of your
divine plan, namely your sacred labor. However, in order to accomplish
this, you often have to go through a dramatic shift in your outlook
on life and in your physical lifestyle. And if you have become attached
to any of the conditions in the prior phase of your life, you simply
will not be willing to change, and thus your conscious mind will block
the vision of your divine plan.
To avoid this trap, you need to reevaluate your life and make an effort
to look beyond any attachments. Once you step back, you will experience
that your perspective – on life or on a specific situation –
can change as if by magic. The clouds suddenly part and you now see
clearly. You often see that what you formerly thought was your only
choice was actually the worst choice you could have made in a specific
situation. The other options you now see will all lead to a better outcome.
Or you see that what you thought was the only way to live could never
give you the fulfillment you truly desire. Yet you now see other ways
to attain that fulfillment, and thus you become willing to change your
lifestyle accordingly.
If you want to make the best possible choices in your life, always seek
to reconnect to your divine plan. Make sure you do not get stuck in
the “work” phase of your divine plan and never get to the
fun part. Your divine plan is truly your best friend, your best guiding
rod for getting the most out of your present embodiment. And as long
as you perceive it as being something forced upon you by an external
force, you have not truly connected to it. So step back and take another
look—knock without attachments and the door shall be opened unto
you.
Note: Mother
Mary’s book contains many teachings on your divine plan, including
an entire chapter (Chapter 21) that explains it in great detail.
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Copyright
© 2007 by Kim Michaels |
