Free Will or Not? Or both?

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone.

 

Gloria Lee wrote:

> Jerry,

>

> Your recent changes to the appearance and many hours of work on the website

are

> wonderful!! Loved the caveat and warning before contacting living masters,

very

> cute...but Jerry, who "possesses a very sound psychological makeup" ???

 

Hi ee. This is funny but an interview with Ramesh Balsekar talks about

personality here:http://www.wie.org/j14/balse2.html

And basically he says we gave no choice but to act as God wishes. I wonder if

there are any comments?

> Maybe most

> people think they do, but it wasn't until I understood how flawed the whole

thing is

> and learned to laugh at mine that I found any real basis for peace. Nonduality

may

> appear "dangerous" at first perhaps, but how can the way it really is be

threatening?

> Nonduality is coming to one's senses, coming home, knowing the truth of that

"clear

> seeing" (who said that? Nick somebody)... what's really scary is duality. Just

look

> around at the effects of that !!

 

haha! I agree with you Gloria!

> Admit it, Jerry..you just go for that rebel sexy image...doncha?

 

hehe :-)))) haha

>

>

> Love you truly,

> Glo

 

I will also share a quote from Gangaji ~

 

"the choice is yours

 

After aeons of choosing to tell a story of separation

from God, the story seems choiceless. It seems choiceless,

but it is not. You have simply been continuing to choose

the story that was passed on to you by your ancestors, by

your past lives, by your past mistakes, by your past desires.

What is choiceless is the truth of who you are.

 

Choice lies in the mind's ability to either deny that

truth or to embrace it. That choice is free will--the free-

dom of choice. You have no free will regarding who you

are. You are that fully and completely. But you do have

free will regarding the powers of mind and imagination.

You call play as if you are not who you are. You can play

as if you almost are, but still not quite. You can play any

number of variations and permutations of choosing or

denying who you are.

 

You have played like this for aeons. Eventually a weari-

ness arises in the play because the play is limited. For all of

its display, for all of its beauty, for all of its pain, the play

is limited because it is based on the assumption that you

are somehow separate from Truth, from understanding,

from love, from God. The whole play is based on the

assumption of separation, and the assumption rarely gets

investigated. The assumption is believed to be rea1, and

from this belief the play gets very complicated.

 

I am inviting you to see who is really playing.

 

You are naturally consciousness. What we name "God"

is supreme consciousness. You are naturally one with God.

You are naturally Truth. All the rest is unnatural. It may be

normal, but it is not natural. It may be usual, but it is not

natural. The play even has its purpose because with the

belief in the play, and the unnatural normality of it, there

is an opportunity to imagine yourself as lost, to experience

the pain and the suffering of being lost, of being cast out,

of being separate from God. Then this imagination, this

play with all of its pain, can give rise to the yearning for

reunion of Truth in all of its glory.

 

If you find that you take for granted the truth that you

are consciousness, that you are one with God, that you are

Truth, then this taking for granted is a kind of trance or

sleep state in which you will one day imagine that you are

separate, that you are lost, and the search begins again.

 

In the invitation that is extended from Ramana, the

invitation of direct self-inquiry, you have the opportunity

to turn your attention to who is lost, who is separate. You

will find no one. There is no one lost. The lost one was

fabricated in the mind to begin the play. If your resolve is

to investigate intensely, freshly, completely, to not fall

asleep by continuing to practice the belief based on the

assumption of separation, then you will meet yourself as

that very consciousness in which player, seeker, separation,

and union appear and disappear."

 

Gangaji