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A common and highly over-simplified New Age meme is, “You create your reality.”
Today I’ll share my current view on this meme.
So…
Do we create our realities or not?
Both, neither, far beyond either.
Let’s unpack this.
On One Level: Yes, We Create Our Realities
On one level, the meme is true.
Absolute Level
In essence, there is only One Creative Power in all of existence.
One ‘Thing’ in all of existence.
As such, if there is only one thing in existence, that ‘thing’ must be You.
“Tat Tvam Asi”: Thou Art That.
You, in essence, are nothing other than God, Tao, Nature, Source, Mystery — call it what you like.
In that sense, you are the creative Source of everything that exists.
It’s all flowing forth from You.
Human Level
I also believe that, on a human level, we also have a certain degree of choice and creative power.
Based on where we direct our attention, we will align with a certain energy frequency, and this frequency will tend to magnetize other beings, environments, and situations that resonate on a similar frequency. (This is the essential teaching of Law of Attraction.)
We also seem to be able to choose, to some extent, whether or not to commit ourselves to the path of Living Truth: The path of becoming ever more honest, skillful, noble, artful expressions of who we truly are.
In these ways, yes, we have great power to create our realities. In a real sense, we chose/created ALL of Creation, and even on a human level, we have plenty of power (especially as we become more conscious) to shape our lives.
Soul Level
It’s also worth nothing that, in my view, on a soul level we do have some degree of choice as to which incarnational chapters (lifetimes) we will live, in which order.
In this sense, the soul has a fair degree of power to create the next phase of its reality.
On Another Level: No, We Don’t Create Our Realities
On another level, no, we don’t create our realities.
Absolute Level
Even our Absolute Nature, as Source, did not create itself.
In my view, which accords with the great sages of history, the Tao is birthless and deathless.
It is simply WHAT IS, WAS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
Uncreated, un-destroyed.
Changeless.
IT did not give itself its Nature.
IT does not know its own deepest secret. Most fundamentally, it remains a Mystery even unto itself.
IT did not decide that its Nature is to lovingly create infinite universes.
This is just how IT happens to be.
To go even deeper…
For this Absolute Source — the innermost You — there is no Creation.
Creation implies time and process.
Yet the Absolute Source is timeless and simply IS AS IT IS.
From the perspective of the Absolute, nothing has ever “happened” or “been created.”
THINGS SIMPLY *ARE* AS THEY *ARE*.
The truest statement we can really make about the Absolute is simply…
IT IS.
In that sense, nothing has ever been created. Only the Uncreated, Un-destroyed Absolute exists.
Human Level
On the human level, in one sense we are preposterously powerless.
We are like ants scurrying about on an anthill, obeying the dictates of an animal nature we did not choose…
And obeying the dictates of a cultural conditioning we did not choose.
Most people are basically like robots, acting out their programming in a machine-like fashion.
As we become more conscious of our situation and de-condition ourselves of some of our programming (a lot of it runs so deep that there’s little hope of ever scrubbing it out)…
We do seem to gain a greater capacity to see who we truly are beneath our conditioning, and to live that truth.
But…
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