So much of what we learn in Life can only be recognized by looking back, sometimes over years or decades. It’s actually very important to press Pause and look back occasionally. We get so lost in eyes-on-the-ground-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-everyday-minutiae. We need the curiosity to look back over the years. Assess. Where have we been? Where have we come from? See how much we’ve come through. It’s sorta like heading up 30,000 feet in the air and taking a look-see—seeing the beauty of the patchwork quilt land below. Perspective. You can only get a Big Picture from Perspective. Perspective and Paying Attention.
Once awakened, I felt I was ‘tabula rasa,’ blank slate, for what was to happen next. Life continued to roll on in the day-to-day job, home, children, husband, friends. But something felt different. It made me all eyes and ears and heart and mind and feelings and anything else that would help supply data of what to do, what lay ahead, what might be expected of me. I laid any preconceived notions aside, wouldn’t formulate my feelings about beliefs until I collected data.
“Trying to give the living reality of the Self a constant amount of daily attention is like trying to live simultaneously on two levels or in two different worlds. One gives one’s mind, as before, to outer duties, but at the same time one remains alert for hints and signs, both in dreams and in external events, that the Self uses to symbolize its intentions – the direction in which the life stream is moving.” Carl Jung, “Man and His Symbols (MAHS) p. 212
So it is with Paying Attention and the Perspective gained by having lived and thought longer about all this, that I have garnered enough data to postulate several theories and/or beliefs, in my life, for my Life. All in the name of trying to understand just why a Creator wanted us human beings to be a propagated species, and what that Creator might have wanted from us as that species. It may feel like I’m jumping ahead of myself here, but this does tie in with The Catalyst.
Here are the Dots: Synchronistic events led me to The Catalyst who jolted me out of my life of being asleep. What made me suspect (and search to confirm) that this was not just a love affair but something more? Something intended just for me? What was I to do with this awakening? What was expected of me once I felt ‘awake?’ What made me feel compelled to find these answers and not just take the easy road and continue being asleep? It would be a challenge: the man or the mission. And what part was the prince to play once he had awakened me?
One foot in front of the other, one day after the next, one year, then another, I strove to get answers to the myriad of questions that populated my wondering life! I had the “Who?” the “Where? the “When,” even the “What?” But the peskiest of questions is “Why?” I needed the “Why?” Why did this prince find me and how was his kiss able to awaken me?
I was open-minded, open-eyed, open-hearted to what experience came my way. Tabula rasa. Once ‘open’ to the Call to look inside, finding your parts and pieces, doing the work to become whole, you sense you have tapped into some unnamed ether or Part of You that starts throwing breadcrumbs, sending signs and synchronicities, finding the right books, running into the right person, hearing the right words, et al. Where does that come from? How do all those things just ‘show up’ to lead you forward into the unknown?
The Schematic of Life
If you believe you have a soul and that it is eternal—well, you may not, so I’ll qualify that. I have researched and reached my own singular conclusion: I believe not just that we have a soul, but that we are soul; it is the eternal part of us. Therefore, it was ‘before’ and will be ‘after’ and ‘forever,’ right? I believe our soul already knows eternal things—before, during and after. It knows the future (and all possible futures).
Watching my life progress like a series of stepping stones after wakedom, I came to believe we come to this life with a plan, a schematic if you will, of what lessons we need to learn in this life, how to accomplish them with all of the possible gees and haws of free will to choose right or wrong.
It’s like your soul, the place of the unknown (or Unknown), knows which lessons you chose to learn this life, including but not limited to, all the possible-option-futures compounded in the choices you make at every moral decision-time.
In other words, each time you come to a decision, it’s a fork in the road. The decision you make takes you down one fork only. You have chosen one future over the other. The next decision is a fork, and the future that comes with that choice—which looks different from the future you would have had if you chose the other fork.
A new future, a new life at every decision you make. Your life—what you came here to learn, why you chose this particular set of circumstances, the souls you planned to meet and work with or work through—all have meaning. The ups, the downs, the mistakes, the misfortunes, the milestones, the good, the bad, and the boring—all are contained in the Schematic you designed—in the place you were before you were born and will be after you die. In the eternal, you have the wherewithal to know it all, plan it all, in every possible, simple-and-complex decision you will ever make, every future you can exponentially choose.
Oh, it’s not just me who extrapolated this way. Listen to this Dot that was dropped and I picked up on somewhere along the path:
“There’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, called ‘An Apparent Intention of the Fate of the Individual,’ in which he points out that when you are a certain age—the age I am now—and look back over your life, it seems to be almost as orderly as a composed novel. And just as in Dickens’ novels, little accidental meetings and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot, so in your life. And what seem to have been mistakes at the time, turn out to be directive crises. And then he asks: ‘Who wrote this novel?’ Life seems as though it were planned… ” Conversations with Joseph Campbell “An Open Life” (Schopenhauer 1788-1860)
(Note the “—and look back over your life.” He pressed Pause.)
He even says it right there, “little accidental meetings (The Catalyst) and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot” and then, “Who wrote this novel?” It’s very easy for me to get from there to the conclusion of a Schematic. I also want to make it perfectly clear, I knew none of this when I took that first leap into the deep dark abyss. I want credit for that courage! I was following something that can only be described as some “inner” urging. And it’s not that I’m that special.
After accumulating more knowledge and understanding with more reading, more learning, more asking questions, I now believe we all have some inner urging to find our true Selves, not just play assigned roles our entire life. Hence, the Myth: the knights being called to search for the Holy Grail on their own paths.
Here’s another Dot that I recognized and put in my ‘pertinent pocket’ from the book a father wrote of his daughter’s descent into madness and his search in every nook and cranny for the mysterium that would bring her back.
Carl Jung has written about the importance of seemingly happenstance events in our lives. He called it synchronicity, implying that there is a logic and a destiny to such events, a hidden blueprint that derives from our own particular natures, or the force of the world around us, or perhaps from a supernatural power beyond human understanding. To the extent that our conscious choices move in harmony with this design, our lives find fulfillment. If this is so, there exists the possibility that the suffering and the joy, the defeats and the final victory, were all part of a highly personal yet supremely cosmic pattern that remains, and may always remain, a mystery.” Frederich Flach, M.D. in “Rickie”
Looking at life this way should give a certain reassurance. Certainly it paints a bigger picture to the minutiae. You can learn (sometimes hard) lessons without feeling sad, disillusioned, disappointed or bummed—knowing they are merely lessons that you chose to go through. You can sorta lean into them knowing you’re learning something…keep looking for that. What is the lesson? Keep heart, eyes, ears open. It’s your story; you already know the outcome—like a Perry Mason program where you know, you’ll win the case!
So when I asked, ‘How do you know you know someone you’ve never met before?’ It’s because your Life overlays with the Schematic you planned…
Have you ever met someone and immediately fell into link-step with them in practically every perfect way? You both remark, “It’s like I’ve always known you.” Well, you probably have always known them—you just don’t remember on this plane.
What about those people who say, “I always knew I was going to be a (fill-in-the-blank, singer, sculptor, scientist, et al) from the time I was real little.” And they became GREAT at it? Were they born to do that? How did they know?
Geniuses, prodigies in all the arts and sciences—can’t be all ‘nurture.’ Where did the ‘nature’ come from? Did they bring it with them in their soul? And if so, how did their soul get that much talent or intelligence?
It just seems that some people were born to do what they do (or did) in life. It’s like they planned it, or it was predestined. Read “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” Everything in the Schematic of his peculiar life was designed for just one life-saving cataclysm.
The goal of Life may be trying to align your decisions with the Schematic you designed—“Right Choosing.” Leaning into some unconscious directing for making the right decisions to learn the lessons you came here to learn—the good, the bad, the boring.
Have you ever Landed in a Plane Backwards?
If you are new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it is best to start at Post 1 and continue in numbered sequence, like connecting Dots.