Conscious Choice: You Can Have It Both Ways

December 2003 | Body & Mind Health

You Can Have It Both Ways

by Julia Mossbridge

I’ve attended workshops in which the most important message has turned out to be: Get out of your own way and let God (or however you may refer to your Higher Source) help you. This "Let Go and Let God" approach seems to be an essential cornerstone of the recovery and personal growth movements. I remember when I first asked God to show me how to change my life. I was struggling with my research, feeling guilty about being a not-so-with-it mother, and questioning my friendships.

Finally, when I was up against a sort of spiritual wall, I stopped banging my head and prayed to receive God’s help. Immediately I felt as if I could finally exhale and my perspective shifted to a more positive angle. So as far as I’m concerned, there’s a good reason for the high status of the "Let Go and Let God" approach — when you actually do it, life runs more smoothly.

At the same time, there’s a lot of talk among the same recovery and personal growth crowds about something that at first seems to be the opposite of letting God run things; that is, the value of taking 100 percent responsibility for everything we experience. This "100 percent responsibility" approach suggests certain perspective-altering questions, such as: How am I responsible for my failing relationships? What do I gain from staying in a job that doesn’t bring me joy? Why do I keep seeking out unsafe places to live? It asks you to keep in mind that you can choose, moment-by-moment, what you put up with and what you transform. For example, on cold, miserable winter days when I consciously accept that I am making a free choice to live in a climate with four seasons, my outlook brightens and I begin to see the beauty and mystery of winter.

This all makes sense, until you notice the paradox in the two approaches: one method tells us that everything is up to God, and another tells us that everything is up to us. When I first noticed this paradox, I thought that I could resolve it by just deciding that different situations call for different approaches. Sometimes letting God take responsibility seems right and sometimes it’s useful to challenge myself to be responsible. That’s a good practical solution, except for one flaw: when I experimented with using both the "Let Go and Let God" and the "100 percent responsibility" approaches at the same time, I got transformative results!

Here’s what happened. I had spent a few weeks feeling on edge — not just your standard, stressful-day edgy feeling, but really feeling like I was on the precipice of my life, looking down a steep cliff. Bone-shattering rocks on the beach, sharks in the water, that sort of thing. I felt like the only way out was to take a leap — not a drop down to my death, but a flight forward into my new life. Although this leap seemed so necessary, it also was completely foggy to me. What would taking the leap mean?

So I tried it — I prayed and asked to receive as much help as possible from God, all the time committing to using whatever help was offered. At the same time, I took 100 percent responsibility for the outcome of this leap, whatever it was. During my prayer, I had a wild and exciting idea spring up: I wanted — no, I actually needed — to start charging people for my intuitive readings.

Continuing to ask for help and also claiming responsibility, I spent two hours that evening creating a brochure and business cards. By the time I went to bed, I had become clear on exactly how I wanted to run this business, what my rates would be, how I’d market it, and why it seemed so important. The whole time I felt like I was making conscious choices that included, and thrived upon, God’s input.

It turns out that my summary of both approaches was wrong. Letting God help you is not the same as giving all responsibility to God and taking responsibility for your choices does not mean everything is up to you. The reason both approaches work so well together is that they are really two essential variables in the same simple equation: God (double arrow) Us. In chemistry, the double arrow is used to show that the two sides of an equation are in balance, so the equation really means that by asking to receive help from God (arrow going toward "Us"), we are also taking responsibility for our lives, which helps God do the Divine work that needs to get done (arrow going toward "God"). Trying to make a distinction between these two is like asking where a circle begins — it’s not important, and doesn’t have an answer anyway. Instead, our job is to choose a point and join the circle.

Julia Mossbridge, a Chicago-based writer, is also a mother, cognitive neuroscientist, and author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul’s Work (New World Library www.unfolding.org).

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: