It’s in everyone’s own interest to make intelligent choices in their lives. And its freedom that allows these choices to be made.
Freedom gives opportunity, and its restriction cuts down opportunities. So it’s little wonder that freedom is held highly in most people’s list of values. But freedom also brings the need for responsibility. And it brings about the question: what is free to do what? The trouble is that much of the psyche is unknown to the average person.
There are different drives and desires, and they crave to be fulfilled. They influence each person beyond their understanding or knowledge, they are animal drives, which put everyone in the dog-eat-dog world of nature’s survival of the fittest. Freedom for some can mean an unrestricted ability to feed their animal drives.
But nature has its laws and they can sometimes be quite brutal, in nature each animal struggles for survival. Ultimately, every single individual creature loses in this brutal battle of nature. An animal is eaten, or gets injured, old age comes, natural disasters take its life away or leave it crippled. Animals have their own relative freedoms, which vary from one to another – some for example are in zoos, others are in the wild, others are pets – but each is restricted according to its type. So an animal will always be an animal, no matter how its life is. It can’t stop being that animal; it can’t rise to be spiritual. And that’s the fundamental difference between humans and animals – humans have the freedom not to live an animalistic life. For many, it’s a choice that can be made.
Spirituality requires the sacrifice of lower animalistic states for it to succeed. And this presents a choice: whether to restrict the freedom to do what animalistic drives want to do, in order to pursue spirituality, or, whether the drives are not restricted and the consequences of that are taken in the circle of nature.
Unfortunately however, a lot of people believe that they can have both, that they can indulge animalistic drives while following a spiritual search. But, that’s not the case. The two are not compatible. There’s no accord and no harmony between the spiritual and the animal. One has to be sacrificed for the other to thrive, as the life of the spirit depends upon the death of the animal within.
If a person chooses a spiritual life, they will have to be prepared to sacrifice their desires, and do the things that benefit the spiritual – even though they might not want to. If someone does take up this spiritual path, then they walk towards the light, shedding the animal within as they go along. And as it progresses, the path of the light becomes increasingly narrow. As this happens, it’s only the obedience to one’s own personal Being, who is not seen, that can guide and save. And by save, I mean from the world of nature, and from the wheel that turns towards the Abyss. One step in the wrong direction can spell disaster. And when someone has gone far along on this path, it’s only the light of the Being which illuminates, like a spark of light, that can lead the way through the terrible all-encompassing darkness. It’s the animal within, the subconscious, which is the darkness. It’s that which anyone reaching for the truly spiritual needs to be free of.
Since mankind is governed mainly by fears and desires, that are egos – and since time is just another dimension we can’t see, is there space for free will?
It’s worth questioning how much of what a person does is free. Being in the program of nature, what exactly is free will? Is it the ability to choose between certain options? But if that’s the case, then what exactly is it that’s choosing? Is it a desire? Is it a thought? What’s behind the choices that are made? If someone is simply in nature’s program, then the animal desires and instincts often influence or determine the choices made, even though someone may believe that they’re free to choose whatever they want.
But there’s a different kind of will, which is outside the animal program. And that’s the will of the Spirit, of the Glorian, of the Being. This is free will, but it’s not personal will anymore. It’s only when the individual will merges with that of the Father, the Being, that a person is truly free. It may seem as though there’s a contradiction in it, but spiritual will is freedom.
What about premonitions?
It’s estimated that about 35% of people have premonitions in their dreams. Where events that are going to happen in the future are seen beforehand. What then is the freedom of choice in something like that happening? Where is freedom in actions that have already appeared in a dream? What about all the different events that would need to be affected for a premonition to come true? Someone can have a premonition of an event that can appear 10 years later. Then how much of that person’s life is truly free, how much is pre-ordained, and how much is destiny?
Most people believe they have freedom in areas they do not, they may be unaware too that there may be only limited choices available. Everyone has choices to a greater or lesser degree according to their circumstances. But there are many forces at play, and the future can be known in advance. The freedom of an animal is not spiritual freedom. The only real spiritual freedom is found when merging the individual will with the spiritual. And that takes the sacrifice of the animal within in order to achieve.
I was just wondering, during your talk you mentioned something about how a step in the wrong direction could lead to disaster at certain times… I was just wondering if you could maybe elaborate on that, or how it might apply to us, sort of at the stage that most of us are at?
Well, everyone who’s starting out is more or less in a state of disaster, even though they don’t know it. So, the steps can wander all over the place, while the disaster is the same.
But if you want to get out of this, then you need to do the right things to get out. And that means taking up the path to enlightenment and gradually walking upon it. To do that, you will have to go through different tests. These tests are put in life and originate from the other dimensions and materialize here. They have to be gone through to make sure a person has the right inner level to have an initiation. An initiation takes place in higher dimensions and is always preceded by a test. The tests are different for each initiation, yet are standard for everyone. They are mentioned throughout many different spiritual teachings through time.
You don’t have to do anything to make the tests happen, only to be prepared spiritually and to have passed the previous tests. In some tests you will have to make choices that are decisive for you spiritually. Situations can be placed before you in which you will have to choose based upon your real priorities. For example, you might have a job that you really like or value, and suddenly a great opportunity comes up in it; but, if you were to take that opportunity, it would prevent you from doing the esoteric work in a serious way. You then have to make a choice, it’s like being at a fork in the road – if you take the job opportunity and leave aside the work for another time, you’ll fail the test and be stuck, or your work will be finished, depending on the test. You’ll then stay locked in the cycle of natures program, and locked in events as time passes. And there are many different routes taking you off the path like that as it goes along.
As it progresses, the path becomes ever more difficult, it becomes extremely complex, to the extent that a movement to one side or another throws it off – even though that movement could be to do something good, it could be the wrong thing to do. In the later stages the slightest deviation can take a person away. Not only that, but the path itself becomes lost in darkness and confusion. So then, you take a step not knowing where your foot is going to land, even whether you’re going in the right direction. There’s a little beam of light that can illuminate the way, and that’s obedience to the Being. That’s further along the track, but it’s the same principle which essentially applies throughout the path from its beginning.
It requires the sacrifice of the animal egos within and the overcoming of desires, which is represented in ancient ceremonies by animal sacrifice, and to make choices for the spiritual rather than the material. Whoever chooses the material has stepped off the track.
Well, how do you make sure that the things that you’re really doing are, you know, that you’re really choosing the spiritual, and that the choices you make are really doing that, by, I guess making sure that you’re not just following a set of instructions, but really doing things yourself, how do you know that what you’re doing is the right thing?
As far as choices go, you made a choice to be here and to listen to this talk. You could have done something else. So in that way, you choose spiritual things in your life. You need to learn what the spiritual is, and how to reach it. You can’t look for the end of the process of awakening before you’ve begun; you’ve got to look at the beginning and see what that involves. Unless you have experience, you won’t know whether what you’re doing is right or not. So in the beginning you need to gain experience and knowledge – to know which way to go and what to do. That’s where choices come in.
If you choose to do something spiritual like you’ve done here now, in listening to this talk, then your choices enable you to learn about spiritual things.
And as you go along making spiritual choices, you actually experience things in relation to them; and in that you gain inner knowledge. And that inner knowledge, which is your own and which you stand by, is your guide at the beginning. Then, as you start to get closer to your own Being – I mean in a real sense – then that becomes your guide, and it leads you on the way.
I’m explaining things from what I’ve been through, it’s up to anyone to use that information if they wish to. It’s not a matter of believing in it; it’s a guide.
How can I follow the guidance of my Being? I find it hard to see what it is. I might ask a question and sometimes I’ll get an intuitive feeling, or I might get a dream which is telling me what I need to do, but other times when I ask I find it really difficult to actually work out what it is that they want me to do. Like I might not seem to get an answer, or if I do, I don’t understand it. Am I just not asking in the right way, or, do I need to interpret my dreams better, or what?
Sometimes the answer can come in different ways. For example if you want understanding of a particular ego, then you can get a painful situation in your life that brings out emotions in you, and if you go through it and observe yourself, you can understand new things about those emotions; so, you get what you asked for, but it may have been in a different way than what you had thought it would be.
To do the will of the Being in the beginning, without knowing what it is requires doing the esoteric work; doing different practices, studying yourself, learning about dreams, having out-of-body experiences and practicing the three key components of the esoteric path.
If you get the basics right and begin to change within, you can get the tests that prepare for the path, which you may see in your dreams, and then you know you’ve really started the work.
If you’ve started to get rid of your ego’s, to help others to progress spiritually, and to practice alchemy, then you go can progress and experience more things of a spiritual nature in your dreams and OBE’s. If you progress enough you can read descriptions of this path and see that what you’ve been through is just as it was described – in the order even that it was described in, and it becomes part of your life. It becomes part of your way of living to have esoteric experiences that are part of the path. They give you something of great spiritual value and become your guide.
This information is like a map, and you travel with your own self-knowledge and practices, and with your own experiences, which come from other dimensions. By doing this, you are starting to do the will of the Being, of the Father. And as it goes along, it becomes clearer as to what it is. In the beginning, it’s very unclear, but as you advance in the work, the guidance comes to you in a personal way. This will happen – it’s mathematical.
I’m just describing how to bake the cake, but the process of awakening will happen if you have the right ingredients and use them properly. Then you’ll be able to go along the spiritual journey of awakening and get the guidance that you need. So keep practicing and make sure that you do what you need to do to be able to get to the hidden knowledge, which is your own personal experience, and at the same time part of the universal spiritual knowledge.
An individual is always part of something bigger – whether it is nature or the spirit.
A talk by Belsebuub, California, USA 2008
