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Moonshoe said:
GOD is IAM
YOU are IAM
YOU ARE GOD

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There's a lot of talk about surrendering your will over to divine will. I use to reason that if I am a divine being then my will is it's will. Any thoughts on this one?

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There's talk of a divine plan or agenda and the rebel in me wants to create and follow MY OWN. Sometimes I wonder if that's the programming surfacing of "orignal sin" "separation from source" yada yada for reprogramming. Anyone feel this way?

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Well, I am a rebel, too.  I think it's also called "oppositional defiance disorder", if you believe what the psychs call it.    And I never thought of it that way, but maybe our rebellion has to do with original sin, if one believes in such.  (I do, I think.)

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Do you ever sometimes feel like you are getting sucked in by a force greater then that of your own will? If so, do you ever resist it? Do ever feel like you are being pulled towards something and feel the desire to pull away from it because this little something inside says, you are almost there, break free.

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Yes.  But a couple of years ago, I sort of gave in to God.  Up until that point, I thought I was believing in God, and praying about things, and trusting Him, but then I realized that I was just going about my own business.  (Long story.)

I realized that if I believed in God, then I had to believe that He had my interests at heart, even if they didn't always coincide with what I thought were my interests. 

So I decided to start looking for "signs" for what I believed God wanted me to do.  A short time later, I found this essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson wherein he expressed very eloquently what I felt.  I won't requote the whole thing here, but basically he said that the divine universe has put before us what it is that we are here to do, and all we have to do is pay attention to the signs. 

If we pay attention to the signs, if we do what we are supposed to do, then our lives will be easier than we make them.

But like Renegade said, it's all like opening a pandora's box.  One question leads to another.  But I also read a book by some guy, whose name I can't remember right now, and some "guru" in that book says to the author that sometimes, we can be "not spiritual". 

But I'm not tired of seeking the truth.  What wears me out is waiting for so long for the next answer.  The next piece of the puzzle.  Granted, it's MY puzzle, but hey, it's my life, and my thoughts.  So I'll build the puzzle any damned way I want, based on whatever piece of information that I think is pertinent. 

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Surrendering to a higher will, making it separate from my own is what I ultimately kept pushing away from me. I would start questioning free will stuff and think that if I am following the will of another then what the fuck good is my free will. I would start to feel like somethings pawn or puppet in someone else game plan and then get defiant.

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The dreaded "free will" topic.    Someone should go find Phluck's (or was it Sclorch's??) free will thread and drag it back up. 

I believe in free choice actually.  Even if I decide to follow God's will, I am still exhibiting my free will, or choice, in doing so.  I could also not follow His will. 

Sorry for what I'm about to post, but I can't help myself.  No free will at all.  I feel compelled. 

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Spiritual Laws
from Essays: First Series (1841)

The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. He who sees moral nature out and out, and thoroughly knows how knowledge is acquired and character formed, is a pedant. The simplicity of nature is not that which may easily be read, but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.

We judge of a man's wisdom by his hope, knowing that the perception of the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth. The wild fertility of nature is felt in comparing our rigid names and reputations with our fluid consciousness.

We pass in the world for sects and schools, for erudition and piety, and we are all the time jejune babes. One sees very well how Pyrrhonism grew up. Every man sees that he is that middle point, whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-pedler.

There is no permanent wise man, except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again, not in the low circumstance, but in comparison with the grandeurs possible to the soul.

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love, ? a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care.

O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature, that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures, our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey.

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place, and occupation, and associates, and modes of action, and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty. If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun.

I say, do not choose; but that is a figure of speech by which I would distinguish what is commonly called choice among men, and which is a partial act, the choice of the hands, of the eyes, of the appetites, and not a whole act of the man. But that which I call right or goodness is the choice of my constitution; and that which I call heaven, and inwardly aspire after, is the state or circumstance desirable to my constitution; and the action which I in all my years tend to do, is the work for my faculties.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds, that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade? Has he not a calling in his character.

Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.

This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers.

The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward "signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men," is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.

By doing his work, he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. By doing his own work, he unfolds himself. It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him.

The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he a part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation. He must find in that an outlet for his character, so that he may justify his work to their eyes. If the labor is mean, let him by his thinking and character make it liberal. Whatever he knows and thinks, whatever in his apprehension is worth doing, that let him communicate, or men will never know and honor him aright. Foolish, whenever you take the meanness and formality of that thing you do, instead of converting it into the obedient spiracle of your character and aims.

We like only such actions as have already long had the praise of men, and do not perceive that any thing man can do may be divinely done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden.

What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In our estimates, let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually a new estimate, ? that is elevation.

What a man does, that he has. What has he to do with hope or fear? In himself is his might. Let him regard no good as solid, but that which is in his nature, and which must grow out of him as long as he exists. The goods of fortune may come and go like summer leaves; let him scatter them on every wind as the momentary signs of his infinite productiveness.