Click for audio: This Matter of Choice
As we continue to explore the idea that we have taken on a physical body because we choose to do so, some very good questions are raised. Why would we, for example, choose to be born to a pair of abusive parents when there are so many others who would nurture rather than rob us of a healthy childhood? Why would we choose to take up a body that is handicapped by something like blindness or some other physical limitation? Why would we choose to be born into poverty when we could just as easily choose wealth?
From the point of view of the soul-evolutionist, the answer always has to do with lessons we need and choose to learn. There is something in our struggle with abuse, something in a physically-imposed handicap or something in the experience of poverty that our soul needs to advance on its upward trending evolutionary trajectory.
From the perspective of the completed soul, this reasoning makes no sense. We are confusing our choice of taking on a body with the experiences we have once we have the body. Beth and I once made the choice to ride our bicycles near the summit of Mt. Evans, one of Colorado’s fourteeners (14,000’+ above sea level). What began as a beautiful, warm late-Spring day turned into a winter nightmare, complete with hurricane force winds, lightning strikes all around us and white-out conditions for which we were totally unprepared. To the question, Why would you choose such an experience, our answer would be, We didn’t. We chose to ride bicycles on a mountain. The hard experience that came with it, while certainly a lesson in survival, had nothing to do with our original choice. When you ride bicycles on mountains, you sometimes encounter storms.
Choosing to take on a body is not the same as choosing experiences you may have with the body. In the case of the latter, you choose how you will respond to these experiences. If you respond with the attitude that there must be something your soul had to learn, you may never resolve the issue. You will live out your life as an abused child, physically handicapped or tainted by the bane of poverty. If, on the other hand, you understand that your soul is completely untainted by any of these experiences, then you start now, right where you are as a complete soul who has taken on a body and is here to experience life on this material plane. In other words, you take up your pallet and walk.
I had a similar experience on Mount Evans not more than a stone’s throw from yours. A friend and I hiked up the South face to be caught in a sudden late evening squall and pitched our tent in dark panic as night fell. We shivered in the misery of wet clothing and bedding as the storm beat against what seemed too fragile a fabric. The next day we found ourselves positioned on a scree field beside the lake near summit in literally the only place we could have pitched shelter. We remained three days overlooking Denver and the Eastern plains watching other hikers pick their way through the rocks and disappear over the summit. Except for three hours daily it rained.
I suppose if I were blatantly honest I would tell you that I carry a sense of touching life’s ribbon of meaning. When I feel most connected spiritually, I sense a connection with the ribbon extending infinitely into my past and trajected beyond my future. More of a story carries me into needless conjecture fraught with limitation and meandering hyperbole.