God doesn't care if I wear my True Religion jeans or my Citizens. Nor does He care if I order the Pad Se Eu instead of the Pad Thai. He doesn't bat an eye if I want to fly to LA on Monday or stay in Cambridge a couple of more days. In fact, you know how much sleep He lost wondering if I should take the new job in LA or stay in my current one? Precisely zero.
Wayyyyyy back in the day, I acquired a belief that there was a wrong and a right choice to everything. For a long time I was at the mercy of other people's opinions, as if someone else could deem my actions either correct or incorrect, valid or invalid. Belief systems are a slimy bunch, and as I've evolved, so have they. I thought I dropped the whole people-pleasing disease, but missed that I had simply replaced it with the God-fearing disease. Yes - fearing God is a disease.
Before you shout blasphemy, chill. See, the thing is, God's like your mom who asks you what you want for dinner -- Duck al'Orange or tofu w/ brown rice and veggies? She really doesn't care which one you choose -- she'll make either happily. Except God's even better than your mom b/c God will let you choose peanut butter and chocolate ice cream for dinner! Sure, He might sneak a little broccoli in there for good measure, but you still get the ice cream!
The point is, there's no pissing God off. He might sigh heavily; maybe even roll His eyes while watching humankind do itself in, repeatedly. He's likely even, w/ a swift hand, to set us back on course. But this is all done with an unshakable parental compassion and love. As long as our choices make us happy, He's happy. It's that simple.
"So..." you might ask, "are you saying that God is happy if I choose to kill someone or maim a kitten?" No, that would be stupid.
The world is a buffet where the choices are decided by the individual. For me, I felt like a kid in a candy shop when I realized this. If you don't believe me, experiment for yourself. Set an intention -- as specific as you choose -- and then believe with conviction that it has already happened. You must doubt any doubts that arise as negative energy is counter-productive. Then, sit back and wait for it to happen. It was explained to me recently that the more specific the intention, the more powerful AND the greater our internal resistance. Thus, intending on a red Ferrari (as opposed to a sports car or even just, a car) means that antiquated patterns within yourself are more likely to tell you it's impossible, and thus, hinder the outcome.
It's pretty rad to realize that I can ask for what I want and know that the Universe endeavors to support that, but then the big question becomes, holy shit! What do I want? Back to the God-fearing disease... Once I started getting what I asked for, I started to panic b/c I didn't know what I wanted. Or at least I thought I didn't. In reality, I was falling back into fearing that I could make a wrong choice, and I guess the extension of that thinking being that I'd lose some sort of cosmic favor if I took the easy path. On Thursday I saw a meditation teacher who explained that all of nature takes the easy path -- it always does what feels good. The tomato plant doesn't worry if its leaves are green enough, it just grows. The chipmunk doesn't worry if the sunflower seed is going to make him fat, he just eats it. If the chipmunk on its way to grab the sunflower seed hears a rustling, he stops and waits until it is safe - his desire for the seed no less diminished. Nature is governed by harmony and therefore, as humans, we must be too. Thus, the only "right" choice must be that which feels harmonious. I've repeatedly made it more complicated, thinking that honor lies in suffering or that martyrdom equals worthiness. Actually, martyrdom equals exhaustion.
My neighbor and I just went to see An Inconvenient Truth (excellent!) and then for some hot chocolate (doubly excellent!). He's a post doc at Harvard working on solar cell energy and he's pretty smart. I like talking to him because he keeps it real. So we're walking today and I'm explaining to him my experiments with intention setting and he responds, "you know, scientists would think you're nuts." Given that he *is* a scientist, I wondered if that was his passive way of telling me he finds me certifiable. He's smart, but he's also pretty nice. "Yeah, I know," I answered. Another friend said essentially the same thing to me when I was telling him of my experiences. "[The problem with your thinking is that] it can never be proven wrong" he complained. Well, perhaps. You know, I've tried the cynical route, and it's a lonely life. Its stoicism is purely imagined. It is a great freedom to know that I am not a victim to my circumstances and I have the unmistakable power to affect the course of my life. So I don't know -- maybe my faith should be bridled, my optimism curbed. But if it's good for the chipmunk, why not for me?
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I'll be teaching in LA at Equinox. My friend Kristin totally hooked me up!
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Happy Birthday, Hav!