Opening up to Life Openness Options Opening up to Life (August 1996) Life in a physical body has its own special properties. It is the uniqueness of this physical existence that provides us with clues about the purpose of our lives. A desire to open up to sensation must be rounded out and given credence by genuine reasons for opening up. For without genuine reasons, these desires are little more than intellectual ideas. A desire to open up simply for the sake of it, is not enough to motivate you, nor is the intellectual understanding that if you don't open up, something terrible could happen to you. You must be prepared to pursue inspiration and to be influenced by it. Opening up to sensation is an absolute goal, it cannot be isolated. You cannot feel a desire to open up to sensation without also a desire to get involved in life and to experience your world in a more complete and open way. In speaking of being open to sensation you are in fact talking about being open to experience. Experiencing life is the essential point of living in a physical body. Experiencing the world is the essential difference between being alive and being 'dead' or at least being without a physical body. Realizations can be had, awareness can be transferred, knowledge can be collected, presence can be communicated, but experiencing life is exclusive to life in a physical body. If you will not open up to the experience of physical living what point is there left in life? Anything you might learn intellectually will not advance your spiritual growth - only a conscious awareness of the experience of living can do that. There are special challenges that only occur in a physical body with a brain and a mind that exist in no other environment. You are not here to learn about life through what you hear and read and think. You are essentially here to learn about life through experiencing it and applying that learning by being able to consciously manipulate your experience of living. It would be useful to give some consideration to just what it is you feel is the purpose of your life and the part it has to play in what you do from now on. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1996 - 1999. All rights reserved. Openness (June 1992) How do we test our openness? In a land without war, without conflict, without disharmony between its people, a land that had always been so, would it be true to say that its people are open and peace-loving? Or simply that without the existence of a threat, their love of peace is untested - and that only their response to such a threat could define their true state of openness and peace? If this is so, on a personal scale, wouldn't it also be true that an individual's openness is defined by that person's ability to be open in the face of threat, in the face of opposition, in the face of conflict? Logically then, this implies the necessary requirement for adversity in one's life if individuals are to realize their potential for openness and inner peace. Without such opposition, progress remains unverified. Similarly, if we acknowledged that being in harmony with other people presents our greatest challenge in life, then in order to develop genuine openness, we must seek out those who provide us with the greatest temptation to be closed. Only then do we have an acceptable measure of our love of peace and our ability to be open - and only then do we have the opportunity, through requirement, to become more. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1992 - 1999. All rights reserved. Options (June 1992) The more options in life, the more strength we can gain through choosing. Option - the right, power or liberty of choosing: the exercise of choice. A thing that is or can be chosen - Doubleday Dictionary - US Option - choice, choosing, a thing that is, or may be chosen. Liberty of choosing, freedom of choice - Oxford Concise Dictionary - UK In decision making we must consider the options. Are all the options considered, or just some of the options? Is it possible to define all the options? Do they have to be defined in order to make a choice? How frequently are decisions made on the basis of a choice between one option or another? Is it possible to increase the range of options by perceiving situations differently? Would increasing the range of options empower the individual with greater choice? In order to be open to the greatest progress in life we must acknowledge our ability to choose the direction that we go in. Our ability to choose for ourselves depends on our ability to perceive the options. If we can only perceive one or two options, our choice is limited by that perception. If we are able to recognize three or four or even five options, then we have given ourselves more choice and thus more opportunity for experiences. Personal power is gained through being able to make an informed choice, but more importantly, through knowing that we have choice and that the choices are unlimited. If options are unacknowledged, then so too is our power of choice. Even if an option is undesirable, the very act of acknowledging the existence of the option, whether it is chosen or not, affirms the individual's power to choose. The absence of options assures the individual a predetermined direction - they are compelled to follow a certain path. To be truly objective, everything must be considered as a viable option, then the capacity for achievement is limitless. And of course, with the power to choose, comes the power to choose not. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1992 - 2002. All rights reserved.