God's will vs My will

Welcome to my blog! I have been a spiritual seeker for over 20 years, with a broad range of interests under the metaphysical umbrella. I created this blog to share with you some of my thoughts, insights, and experiences that have come from this journey. I also intend to share with you some of the wonderful resources that I have found particularly helpful along the way.

As the starting point, I want to write about a spiritual dilemma that I have been struggling with for a very long time: God's will vs. my will. Many powerful spiritual traditions recommend that we completely surrender our lives and our will to God, and then simply get out of the way. A perfect example of this is the third step of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (www.aa.org):

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him [emphasis in original].

To me, this is an extremely sane way to live life. I consider God (aka a Higher Power, or, the Universe) vastly more qualified to run my life than anyone else, especially me. If I have truly and completely surrendered my life to God, I can rest assured that anything and everything that happens to me is for the highest good.

Yet inevitably we face choices. Most spiritual traditions acknowledge that we have free will, and many say we are co-creators with the Universe. At some point or another, we must take action. God is not going to live our lives for us. If I am unemployed and then receive two job offers, which of these is it God's will that I accept? Sure, I can pray for guidance, but ultimately it is me that must make the choice.

Taken a step further, some say that most of our reality (if not all of it) is created by our thoughts. If this is the case, I am solely responsible for everything that happens in my life. When those that promote this world view mention God, they often say that it is God's will for us to use our own free will to achieve our highest potential - but that it is completely up to us how we choose to create our own reality. The Universe will simply manifest reflections of our thoughts, and this is what we consider "reality." An excellent example of this philosophy is the subject of Gregg Braden's book, The Divine Matrix (www.greggbraden.com). These ideas are also the foundation of affirmations and visualization, the fundamentals of the extremely popular system of The Secret (www.thesecrettv.com).

As with most things in life, I struggle to find the middle path between these principles, both of which I consider valid. One of the many joys of our existence is that there is no one correct answer - it is a divine mystery. I believe that every individual has their own Ultimate Truth, but there is no one Ultimate Truth that applies to every individual.