Do you really feel that "divine and perfect order" is synonymous with Fate, predetermination, or scripted reality? I don't.
I respect that you may -- you certainly would not be alone -- but would you like to try and convince me? I'm curious to hear some original arguments that aren't pat and parroted from the Somebody Said So bin of wisdom.
Two Sources of Belief
I actually believe we can experience wildly different truths and all be Right. All we choose to believe arrives by two avenues of knowing:
- learned wisdom -- somebody else's truth; tribal/social collectively-held beliefs; borrowed; inherited; read somewhere; heard somewhere
- channeled wisdom -- personal truth; based on your own unique experience; original/rebellious; invented; revealed
These Two Basic Sources of what you believe to be true may be in opposition, or they may be identical, or they may partially overlap in some features -- your personal experience may reinforce what is collectively held to be true.
Back to this notion of Divine and Perfect Order: I run across this concept in so many places -- I accept that my feelings fall in a minority. I've been willing to consider aspects of what other people describe as "perfect" -- try them on like fashions, hold them up in comparison with my own experiences, observe my reactions...
My idea of Divine and Perfect is just too mind-boggling to use the word "order." It's probably the limitation of my human brain stuck in the third-dimension, unable to contemplate an order so advanced that fate, linear time-lines, and pre-scripted paths just don't quite compute. There's no complexity in that, there's no synergy, there are no multiple dimensions -- it feels too simple-minded.
Do those who speak of the Divine and the Perfect in the context of order merely reference something that I mistake for "simple," yet they really only intend it as a kind of shorthand for something vast and complex? Am I misunderstanding, or is this meant to be strictly interpreted?
The word Order doesn't match the amazing chaotic choreography I witness with such wonder and awe.
Is Divine and Perfect Order linear, planned, knowable, obvious -- did we really create every last condition of our realities in advance?
For me, the words Divine and Perfect point to something much bigger than that -- scarier, thrilling, unfolding, unpredictable, exciting, yet to be determined. I just don't feel we are actors in God's latest cable series; I do feel that we are co-creators.
Poor Gods up there, watching never-ending marathons of a gazillion reality shows with no surprises. Really? Do you think so?
Whatever. This doesn't feel magical to me. It doesn't feel wonderful. It feels like Wanting to believe that everything happens for a reason.
There are reasons all over the place. You're not likely to live without stepping in some meaningful reason every time you turn around, every step you take, with every breath.
Do you need to feel those breaths are preordained in order to feel safe -- or are you willing to engage the Divine and the Perfect in the Wild?
I don't even WANT the Universe to be boxwood hedges manicured to perform the hard-edged geometry of something inorganic -- wildflowers turn me on. I admire weeds -- that they need not be cultivated and hand-held to be insidious, pervasive... survivors.
Divine and Perfect Order to me is a dance with Chaos, so complex that we begin to question where the design must (might ever) emerge.
Do you really need to believe that before you came here you scripted every last day, line of dialog, and petty detail? Or is your life a live improvisational masterpiece?
Can you not be thrilled by the prospect that you jumped into this incarnation like leaping from a plane with little more than adrenaline, faith, and a parachute/last-minute exit strategy?
I don't need to feel in control in order to experience power. It's just the opposite for me.
I think Spirit is a hell of lot more bold than that.
Feel Free to Disagree
I believe we're all right. That what you believe is your reality, and what I believe is mine, and that those things need not be One and the Same.
What do you believe -- specifically about the whole Fate, Predetermination, Divine Order thing? Keep in mind that believing and knowing are not the same thing. And before you answer, take a moment to listen to your own truth before you simply repeat something you were told.
Can you trace the voice of your belief back to someone else? When you test that against your interior truth, the still small voice within you, your Higher Self, does it happen to resemble a tradition, to concur? Or does your truth require you to remake and reinvent?
I feel that the most authentic answers to the questions of what you believe and feel may well be the answers that have no traceable origin -- that you never heard, never read somewhere, never absorbed -- the most authentic answer may also be the one that makes you either excited or uncomfortable because it has no obvious source.
If you come up with an answer that disagrees with what you intellectually know to be true, you may be onto something real.
