Journey of Spirit - Part II
Goal Oriented Creation
We create our own reality. Some can already hear a voice inside them saying, “Now wait just one minute! Are you trying to tell me that I have created events that have and are happening in my life in the here and now? I mean, come on, there are some things that have happened to me that only an insane person would want.” The answer to the question is, yes.
First let me explain what is meant by “creating our own reality.” Each of us do or do not do certain actions. Say or not say certain things. Act or react to the world around us in certain ways. Each of these doings (actions and reactions), words spoken or written — sometime even a thought because usually a thought will lead to an action — will make or create changes in the world around us, the people surrounding us and even ourselves. Two prime examples can be found in the Torah and the Prophets. Cain was a man faced with a choice to make that would forever create for him and those around him a reality. He could slay his brother Abel, he could ignore him, make friends with him and just talk out their respective differences. HaShem made it very clear to Cain that ”If you do right, there is uplift, but if you do not do right sin (the evil inclination) couches at the door; its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master.” Cain’s choice would create his reality, his life situation from that point on. We all know he chose poorly and it cost him, his family and especially his brother dearly. Cain, by his actions had created a reality for himself. Another example can be found with the prophet Jonah. He was called upon by HaShem to go to Nineveh and call them to turn from their evil ways or HaShem would destroy them. In this situation two parties were playing out roles in which each one’s actions and choices would create for them a life situation that would greatly impact their lives. At first Jonah didn’t want to participate in the plan to allow the heathen nation to repent which set him on a path of deep separation from HaShem in the depths of the sea. But he created a new situation for himself when he relented and went on up to Nineveh and shared with them HaShem’s message of repentance. In the case of the people of Nineveh, from the king down to the lowliest commoner, they all heeded the word of Adonai, repented and created for themselves and their land a new reality in which they found themselves in HaShem’s favor and participating in His blessings.
Remember I stated earlier [SEE: Part I: In Another of My Beginnings] that no person is an island? When we were at home we made a contract with HaShem, other souls and ourself. This contract, once “signed,” is placed in a type of "hall of records" in our own reserved section with the rest of our contracts. At some point they will be opened for a private personal review between HaShem and ourself or as Daniel once put it, “and the Books were opened” (Daniel 7:10).
The most important part of this contract is the goal(s) that Adonai and we have placed for us to accomplish. This goal is what we carry deep within us to the here and now and the goal is the primary driving force of our existence while we are here in this frame of dust. Therefore, what we then do is create a reality around ourselves, moment by moment, that is designed to help us best meet that goal (or goals).
Since we are not islands unto ourselves while we’re here sometime our created reality bumps heads with that of another soul causing either a perceived delay in our forward movement, a regress in progress, or the need to find an alternate path, or a different reality, in order to continue on the road of successful accomplishment. We must carefully examine each of these bumps in the road before trying to find another path around them. We cannot assume they are all prohibitive. The bump; usually another person, might well be one of the very things we need to work out in order to successfully move on to the next level of achieving our goal. In fact, working out the relationship with this person, persons or thing may be the goal itself.
Some may be having a problem with this whole idea of being able to create our own reality. I won’t try overly hard to be convincing. It is simply a Divine Truth. We are co-creators with Elohim. While Elohim created all that is on a heavenly and universal scale and out of nothing; we co-operate by creating all that is within our sphere of influence, namely, within ourselves from out of the existing elements that are a part of HaShem’s created act — which is an ongoing, eternal work — and a good one too. (Bereshit 1-2)
Adonai is Spirit and we, created in His Image and Likeness are spirit. We are a spirit who has chosen to be housed in a physical body. Once we chose this union of spirit within dust we became a living soul. While in the limited confines of these clay pots the spirit (you and I) need a method, or means of expression through the clay body. That means is the finite capacity built into the connection. This finite capacitor is known as reason, will and emotion, or what I term, the soul. We tend to confuse our true identity with either the physical body with its five senses or the soul’s expression with its finite capacity to rationalize and feel. We must always remember that ultimately we are neither body or soul. We are spirit, or a living soul. Spirit is our true self. It is the being we are. A man once stated, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Bob Frissell
Do we create our own personal reality? Simply put, yes! Have we created every single minutiae that occurs in the here and now on planet earth? Emphatically put NO! That is only within the realm of the Creator of all things, Blessed be His Name. In Middle and Far Eastern cultures this truth has been known for centuries of Earth time. In the Occident, since the West is quite new by comparison, it has been dawning and becoming slowly awaken only since the late 1700’s. The writers of all the ancient texts from the Sumerians to the Torah, Jewish Prophets and even the Zohar (Zohar II:184b) have written or spoken extensively about the eternal truth of the spirit’s ability to create reality, or what I like to call our life’s situation.
I don’t really like to use the term reality when referring to circumstances or situations because it can become misleading. So then what is reality?
Reality is this: We are spirit playing out a role we designed in order to accomplish a certain task or goal. The role we have created is the life situation we are currently in and that is determined by the choices, thoughts and actions made by us, and while it is not the true reality but an illusion, the co-creators sleight of hand, it is useful in so much as it aids the co-creator in fulfilling its intended purpose for coming here in the first place. The ancients all understood this principal. Job, an ancient man of wisdom who was a contemporary of our father Avraham observed, concerning his present life situation (reality), “The thing, which I have feared the most, has come upon me.”` It is written in the Talmud, “Unhappy is he who mistakes the branch for the tree, the shadow for the substance.”
In much of today’s Western culture, because we have misappropriated Eastern and Middle Eastern thought, we have ended up with what I like to term backward thinking. Because of the habit of backward thinking we have ended up with a philosophy that is mirrored by the ideas of men and women such as Descartes who proclaimed, “I think therefore I am.” With all due respect to this acknowledged intellectual giant he got it backwards. The Truth is: I am therefore, I think!
One final word on creating reality. Please do not confuse the current "Law of Attraction" nonsense with creating one's own reality. They are two distinct and unrelated ideologies. The former running contrary to the teachings of Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. HaShem has a reality for us to experience, like Cain or Nineveh we can choose by our actions, words and thoughts that reality or we can reject it. The teachings of Torah show Adonai's reality for us and as we pray every day, His Torah is a light of Truth and sweeter than honey from the honeycomb making a life, a reality, that is profoundly greater than anything we could ever dream of or imagine on our own.