People often forget that God gave them free will. He wanted to have someone to share the eternity with, and the only way for this relationship to be meaningful at all is to have it with somebody who entered into it (i.e., relationship) by their own free choice.
The following infographic illustrates what happens in our everyday lives when, based on the feedback that we get from the environment, we choose (i.e., having a free will) a particular reaction (be it expressed in thought and feelings only, or vocalized with words, or made more manifested through some other physical action).
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If we imagine man’s consciousness as the spiral stairway at the top of which is God consciousness and at the bottom of which is animalistic and evil behavior, we can conclude that at any time in his lifetime man is somewhere on this staircase either climbing up or descending down. By the virtue of death man is not taken straight to the top by some kind of fast elevator nor is he uncontrollably sliding down; he is just taking a little respite before he comes back again in a new physical body to continue his journey, step by step. Nobody can do it for him as well as nobody can force him to go either way; he has the right to choose in which direction he wants to move.
At any point man, who is depicted as a small yellow star, is getting the feedback from his conscience as well as from the surrounding environment. He is able to choose how he wants to handle it—does he want to use the discrimination switch and direct the feedback into the self-improving process, or would he like to throw it into the blindness filter and take an easy way out through the “bigger than me/everybody does it anyway” conclusion?
If he turns on the red switch of discrimination, he will process all the feedback in a positive way, directing it into actions geared toward self-improvement. As a result, he will walk upwards (clockwise) on the steps of faith, understanding, strength, expansion, and humbleness, gaining in love and knowledge. By his own effort and by God’s grace, his consciousness will ascend God-ward faster and faster until it expands into the state of Cosmic Consciousness (i.e., oneness with God). Even though this infographic shows only five steps, it is important to note that man is moving progressively in a spiral fashion over these kinds of steps many times as he reaffirms his positive behavior in different scenarios and situations. Propelled by his continuous self-improvement efforts, he is spiraling upwards into the denser and denser regions of love and knowledge until he reaches Perfection at the top.
If he chooses otherwise, to use the blue switch of blindness instead, he will essentially choose to forget about his sonship with God and he will sink more and more towards the domain of restlessness and misery, walking the steps (counter-clockwise) of: hatred, anger, fear, suspicion, and the superiority complex. By his own effort and by the support of the Impure Nature (i.e. Satan) , he will fall deeper and deeper into the domain of spiritual darkness. Again, like in the case above, this spiral movement is gradual; nobody will become a bad person by making just one mistake, but if they continually choose to go through these five kinds of negative behavioral patterns, they will descend into the denser and denser regions of jealousy and ignorance and perhaps even hit the rock bottom of egotistical and evil-inclined existence.
However, being God’s children, we could never be 100% evil and completely forget about our true nature as souls. The moment we become disillusioned with darkness, perhaps after many incarnations of bad behavior, we will face the opposite direction and start climbing the steps of virtue—such is our power and our freedom to choose.
Read more about the spiral stairway of man’s consciousness in the sixth chapter of the book Whence Do We Come?. Download your free PDF copy of the book here.
