So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door.
And its desire [ is ] for you, but you should rule over it.”
Genesis 4:6 & 7
Life is full of choices, some easy, some hard; some harder than others, some easier than others, but in all cases, a choice must be made or we will end up doing nothing! Sometimes it seems there is no choice to be made, for good or evil, even for better or best, or the lesser of two evils, but, on a purely physical level, there is always a choice, whether we like it or not, like, even if we don't acknowledge or perceive it as such. When we do perceive & acknowledge the choice, then the real difficulty presents itself; for instance, in the case of one dying in order that hundreds, even thousands might live, especially if that one is innocent or even a loved one ( family or friend ), how do we make the choice? Do we let that one person in the world that we are most attached to slip away, or do we allow hundreds or thousands of people to die who are significant to others? However one looks at it, the choice is not an easy one!
'I get it!' From a purely spiritual perspective, in the mind of universal consciousness, there is no choice, only a BE-ingness, but we do live on a 'plane', in a dimension, if you will, where choices must be made. On a very mundane level, we make the choice everyday of whether to stay in bed or to get up & go to that job we love to hate, whether to wear blue socks or red, what to eat for breakfast; cereal or eggs? One may choose to live their life in this biology free from the choices of everyday life, choices like this or that, right or wrong, good or evil, but they have still made a choice! We may choose ( I heartily recommend this, BTW ) to say things like 'it is what it is' & 'let it be', but even in this case, passively or not, we have decided it's not worth worrying our pretty little heads about, or winding up with spiritual constipation.
As much as I've exalted ( in words, anyway ) the Christ Within, one would think I'd be making better choices! In my defense ( I'm not the only one, either ) it IS much easier to say, or write about it, than to put those words into practice! Life in this biology is about the hard choices; if you're not faced with hard choices everyday, you're probably doing something wrong! This is not to say that choosing the easy path is automatically wrong, though the easy way is not usually the best, but when are faced with the hard choices, it's a good sign that we are facing reality, because life is not easy, especially where people are involved!
People ( others ) make their own choices, like it or not, that we automatically perceive as right or wrong, good or evil. For instance, we are inclined to think ( many of us ) that abortion is murder & therefore wrong! It is easy to condemn the act, but when we dig into the reasoning behind the other person's decision, it becomes harder, say, in the case of the mother's life or her baby's, to choose one way or the other. Another may condemn the act of killing enemy combatants in a wartime situation, but when faced with the reality that the other person is going to kill us if we do not kill him or her first, what then? It's easy to say, one way or the other, in the comfort of our own home, but an unimaginably hard choice when faced with such a situation!
These choices, however, MUST be made & like it or not, people must make them! We may ( should ) choose not to live from the Person, or Ego, like Cain did in our Story, but that doesn't guarantee that the other will do the same. There ARE many out there & the number is growing, who, though undeniably living in the Person, refuse to live any longer FROM the Person! Who knows, maybe it will be our example of living from the Universal Consciousness rather than from the Ego that encourages the other to do the same!
'What IS this Universal Consciousness?' you might ask. Realizing the Universal Consciousness, in my way of thinking, is equivalent to realizing the Christ Within; it is the idea, the reality, in fact, that there IS no 'other'! Understanding that, though we are fated, for whatever reason, to living in the Person, in this biological existence, one might say, we need not murder or mutilate the 'other' ( Person ) in order to further our own existence. In other words, by not looking at People as the 'other', we see them as they are, One & the Same Spirit manifesting in different ways, not necessarily wrong or right, just different; it is our perception, whether because of our feelings on the matter, or because we read it in some book, that make it good or evil in our eyes!
The Christ is within every person! 'Is every person, then, the Christ?' God Forbid! By making such a controversial, even heretical statement, I simply mean that it is through our choices in this biological existence that we manifest our Spirit. When we choose to let the Person or Ego ( the Bible terms it 'Sin' ) rule over us, over our spirit, as Cain did, then we end up as Satan, as devils, doing the opposite of what we should. Manifesting the Christ Within, though, means ruling over, or conquering our Ego, not acting on its selfish & animal desires, but according to the knowledge that we are all children of our Heavenly Father & gods in our own right. The choice, my friend, is up to you; will you manifest the Christ, or will you be a Satan? Choose wisely!
Charles Haddon Shank
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