Everything Unto Him

It's all so very simple. God isn't playing games. God is teaching His children. Much is the return of our past choices. We choose what our lessons will be. When our actions return, we understand what our choices really mean. The second part is that we learn in life, however we are also teachers. There are many wonderful souls who are willing to go through great adversity in order that someone else sees. I think we all carry part of that in us. God sets the parameters, however the choices within those parameters are all ours. We show God and the world just what we need to learn. Make wonderful choices. The love and goodness returns to us as well.

Through my life I have gone through times where I really didn't think that this was the truth. However, I've grown older and wiser and I have come to the realization that we really don't have any control over the outcome of things that happen in our lives. I do believe that we do have control over the ways that we get to the end, but I don't think that there is any way that we can change the ends that we will face in our lives.

This is interesting discussion. As a Zen practitioner, I do not believe in a creator deity as such, but will acknowledge the existence of the Whole or Universal. When something is experienced to completion, it disappears as it becomes one with the whole. So if I am suffering, I focus my attention fully on the experience and allow it to be, allow it to expand into the realm of everything. At the point of complete expansion, it disappears. With headache and other pain, I feel it expand to become everything as I meditate upon it. With the emotions the same thing will happen. There is no time limit to the experience, for if I am motivated to free myself of the pain and use acceptance to do this, I will get to keep it, because I am looking to rid myself of an experience, therefore resisting and not experiencing it to completion. It is not always easy because resistance to discomfort feels to be wrapped around my mind layer by layer, like onion skins, each layer will disappear to reveal the layer underneath, which may or may not be more pain, and there are some problems that as I get closer to the core, where it will disappear, will grow more intense. _Derek

I think that God wants us to be strong and self willed. His will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. God's grace does sound nice but I think we need to think of what the best way is and do it. With our souls at stake we have to be in the word I suppose. I am agnostic so I question much of it.