Day Fifteen

Yesterday I wrote about how to explain the principles of free will and today in one of my meditation books Paul Tillich, a Protestant theologian, was quoted saying “Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.” I have thought about the quote non-stop and have tried to connect it to the principles I wrote of yesterday explaining free will.

Wanting and experience are the basic principles of free will. The ability to want is connected to our ability to make choices. The ability to make choices is an expression of our free will. The choices we make are based on the experiences we have had. Each experience we have conditions us to make repetitive choices. The more we are conditioned the more predictable our choices. The expression “you can’t teach and old dog new tricks” is based in this principle of theology.

The freedom to risk according to Tillich is rooted in man’s courage. Courage comes through motivators. For some people motivators are fear, anger, guilt, loneliness. For other people motivators are joy, happiness, love, passion. Our experiences influence the motivators we use to make decision or choices. These motivators influence our use of the God given gift of free will.

Free will has a positive and a negative pull. When our experiences condition us to respond freely to positive motivators then we embrace the risk of making decisions based on our positive experience. Such positive experiences have conditioned us to feel the freedom making decisions brings to our lives. This is a positive pull. When we experience conditions us to respond to negative motivators we shun from taking the risk of making decisions because we have been condition in such a way that we don’t know or have forgotten what freedom feels like. This is a negative pull. The consequence is always too high and the risk of making the wrong choice to great. This is called flinching. We flinch because we have been conditioned to always expect the worst; expecting the worst wallows in fear.

As I have worked and wandered around the apartment when I couldn’t sleep last night I thought about how I know more people that have been conditioned negatively rather than positively. Look around at the people in your life. How easy it is to tell them all the intangible positive parts of themselves you see and then think about how their negative experiences stop them from seeing the intangibles you see in them. Imagine what the world would be like if we all only had positive experiences in our life. How would anything change in life? How would we grow and evolve as people without both negative and positive experiences. What determines the worth of a person’s life is not their experiences, but how they handled, worked through and moved beyond their experiences.

The premise of my book is to help people look beyond the negative motivators that have dictated their life. To trust in something that won’t disappoint (a God of their understanding) and to shift the way they see themselves so they can reach a position of trusting that inner voice; that inner voice that wars inside those of us with negative experiences.

The voice to trust comes from within because that is where God lives in all of us. God is an intangible that we must understand individually and come to trust collectively. Faith and trust in God is an action of being a part of; fear and unworthiness are actions of isolation separating us from our fellows and God The voice may be buried so deep within that we haven’t heard it in a very long time, but it is there within all of us; trusting that inner voice is an action of believing that teachers present themselves in our lives when we are ready.

The first choice we make utilizing our new understanding of free will is to accept the teacher when they appear. How many times have our negative motivators pushed teachers out of our lives because we didn’t want to step up and act with courage. Acting with courage requires moving out of our comfort zone. Negative motivators are comfortable we wear them like a pall. They protect us from having to make the decision to risk. What is it that we risk? We risk having a negative experience again. But if we follow the inner voice teachers who can give only positive experiences surround us. Negative experiences come from not following our inner voice; we follow our head and our feelings of fear, unworthiness and guilt.  

The risk in utilizing free will is that the consequence of making decisions is unknown until we take the risk. Taking the risk always comes back to courage and courage requires faith and faith is based in trust. Trusting that no matter what you will be ok, you can handle the consequence of the decision whatever the consequence is. In each one of us there is a sense that we call our gut. The gut is the predictor of our willingness to accept the consequences for our decisions.

When we act in accordance to what our gut tells us instead of letting our mind and our feelings of fear, unworthiness and guilt guide us we are acting courageously. We make the right decisions and we are willing to live the consequences whatever they may be. The consequence loses it power because in accepting the risk we live true to the God given gift of free will. No other creature in the universe has free will…only man. How we use this gift of Grace defines the outcome of our lives.

At what point in our lives do our experiences begin to shape our choices, limit our willingness to take risks and cover us in that pall of self-doubt, lack of confidence and belief that we aren’t good enough? At some point in life the ability to pick ourselves back up and brush ourselves off and to continue to move forward becomes too difficult or so we think and feel. In this split second that most of the time goes unrecognized faith is lost and we give lip service to the principles of faith, but our actions of how we are living do not match our words. We become incapable of walking the talk or so we think because we have lost the courage to have faith and hope .

When we are in a state of hopelessness, fear, guilt and all the other negative motivators we push the world away. We isolate in the negative that has become comfortable and we begin to believe that we aren’t strong enough anymore to take risks. Risks equal decisions. We begin to believe we don’t have the ability to make decisions anymore.

What we are believing about ourselves is that freedom given to us thorough the Grace of free will isn’t for us. Freedom may be for other people, but it is not for us. We separate ourselves in our minds from humanity and eventually we separate ourselves physically and emotionally from humanity as well. For me I work at home, that is all I do unless someone approaches me with another alternative. I am comfortable in my isolation. When I am alone I am comfortable not feeling good enough because I have no one to compare myself to. I wallow in my discomfort because it has become comfortable. It feels easier for me to isolate than to take the risk to be a part of. It becomes a chore for me to shower and leave my house.

In the world when I step out of my isolation I mingle amongst people and I want what they have: relationships, companionship, friendships, partnerships. All of these fellowship things are painful to see and not have and to believe I can’t have. It is easier to not leave the house, to not feel the reminder that my life experiences have conditioned me to respond to negative motivators rather than positive ones. I have lost faith, I am afraid to feel, I become convinced I have nothing to offer and I retreat into isolation because I believe I am my negative experiences. I have lost my way I have chosen to push humanity away which means I have turned my back on the voice that lives within me. I can worship only one God at a time. That is a limit placed on my free will. I cannot be filled with fear and faith at the same time…it is impossible.

Renewed faith begins in believing that when you are ready to create new experiences a teacher appears. You may not know you’re ready because the voice inside you is buried so deeply, but something greater than you knows you are ready and a teacher appears.

Faith is like fire. For any of you who have started a fire from striking flint you know that it takes more than one strike to create a spark to light a fire. A fire doesn’t start by willing or thinking it to start. A fire starts by striking two pieces of flint together creating a spark. The spark ignites a flame that burns as long as the fire is fed.  I can’t think myself anything. I have to act myself into something.

This is how we capture our faith. This is how we learn to trust again. This is how the reflection of our fire in someone else helps us create new positive experiences. This is how we use our free will for our betterment rather than our demise. We must feed ourselves with fellowship. We must fight our desire for isolation because as much as it feels like the easier way it is a difficult path. Isolation is making the choice to turn our back on hope, on faith and on humanity.

God made us to need companionship. God made us filled with desires and passions that only fellowship can satisfy. When we isolate we go against our nature, but if we isolate long enough isolation becomes our nature. This is a perverse use of our free will. In order to reverse what has become my nature I must do the opposite of what is comfortable. If I believe I am not good enough I must act as if I am until I believe it. If I believe I am financially unorganized and weak then I must become organized and strong financially. If I live in a state of guilt then I must act as if I live in a state of innocence which is without thoughts of unworthiness until I believe it. If I live in fear then I must live in faith trusting I will be ok no matter what happens to me until I believe it.

But this is all a process. It didn’t take just one experience to make me loose my faith and it want take just one experience to recapture my faith. The key is willingness to believe. In the last two months I have been willing to believe that a teacher has entered my life. With each experience of having the phone ring, a text come through, date to see each other, a look from across the room, a hand placed gently on my thigh or lips placed tenderly on mine I begin to gain trust because these experiences are positive. Eventually enough positive experiences will build up and overpower the bad experiences of a slap, a punch or a kick. I will stop flinching. I will stop feeling hopeless, afraid and unworthy. I will begin to trust what God, the muse and friends see in me is really who I am.  

This is my book the journey from the negative to the positive; the teacher has appeared so now I must write and cry away ever last negative motivator until there is nothing left, but the positive. This is not a process lived in isolation; it is a process lived in fellowship. I will regain my ability to make decisions because the risk Paul Tallich talks about is no longer overwhelming.

I will come to feel it is unnatural to isolate and have faith that no matter the consequences of my decisions I will be ok simply because my decisions are based on positive experiences instead of negative ones from the past.  I will not crumble because I have come to believe and trust that faith in fellowship is my natural state of being.

God doesn’t want me to live alone. I do have intangible qualities to offer others and I can bring my share to every relationship because what I bring is defined by the needs of the other person not defined by my fears and feelings of unworthiness. Eventually I will become free and return to the person I was always meant to be. Today I take the risk and make that decision to have the courage to live free……………..