For the Personal Essence, on the other hand, intention has a different meaning. It is related to the integration of essential will. When this happens one realizes that one's actions must be in harmony with all natural forces even on the level of Being; otherwise there is a splitting from Being, and an incorrect action will result. So instead of intention one experiences a spontaneous flow of intelligent and purposeful action, realizing that Being flows through one, as one, and it is the flow that determines one's life, action, interests, creativity and so on... So there is nothing in Being that is similar to the function of intention of ego. One is so integrated into reality that it is reality that is the source of one's actions. As the Personal Essence, one becomes the spearhead of reality. Reality acts through one by one being the individual manifestation of it. In religious language this is called surrender to God's will, or flowing with the Tao.

So there is nothing in Being that is similar to the function of intention of ego. One is so integrated into reality that it is reality that is the source of one’s actions. As the Personal Essence, one becomes the spearhead of reality. Reality acts through one by one being the individual manifestation of it. In religious language this is called surrender to God’s will, or flowing with the Tao. The popular understanding of what it is to be spiritually realized conceives such realization as divorced from personal functioning. A common image is of the holy man not interested in the world and its ways, but also inefficient and unskillful in these ways. These days another idea of the spiritually realized person is the guru surrounded by his disciples and sheltered from the world and its concerns. But this is not the life of the Personal Essence. It might be the manifestation of some universal aspects, but then it is not the full realization of the human potential. The presence of the Personal Essence is equivalent to the presence of efficient, intelligent, integrated and mature functioning that is not split off from Being, but manifests and embodies it.

I think it is this intelligence, this Brilliancy—this core of all life, all existence—that is responsible for what we call evolution and development. I believe in evolution, that the species happened, that man evolved, and so forth. But the way I see it is that there is intelligence at the core of the underlying movement. Intelligence is manifesting itself so that in time it will show itself completely, consciously. So it is not like there is a set plan, a plan that God had: You are going to go do this, then that; first there will be crocodiles, then apes, then man. It’s not like that. It is more like there is an ocean of intelligence that is moving and coming out. It goes in one direction that either works or doesn’t work, and if one direction doesn’t work it weaves around in some other direction that does work. There is an intelligence that guides the movement, so in time the intelligence comes out in more intelligent life, a more intelligent existence. And people could call that God’s will. That is why Brilliancy is frequently related to God’s will.

This “choosing” on the part of the universe is not the same as predestination. Predestination implies that there is a plan spelled out somewhere in which everything that is going to happen has already been determined. Here, we are talking about a universe that is intelligent and creative, where what is going to happen in the next moment cannot have been planned because it’s going to come out of this moment, rather than out of some plan written at the time of creation. So from this perspective there is no predestination, but there is also no free will. Everything that happens is totally spontaneous. In non-theistic terms, everything is done through the will of the whole, or in theistic terms, through the will of God. But when most people think of God’s will, they conceive of Him as though He were a human being who has ideas about what is going to happen, as if He had a blueprint and was going to make everything conform to it. This is a very limited idea of God. Maybe God is so intelligent that He can create the universe moment to moment without any blueprint! This is not to say that there is no thread running through everything that happens. The thread is nothing but exactly what is happening now, where you are in this moment, and how this moment unfolds. As you understand what your state is right now, and follow it as it unfolds, you are following your thread. This is Holy Work, the Holy Idea of ennea-type Seven.

Surrendering to the Holy Will is freedom because then you are not placing any constraints, preferences, or conditions upon reality. Everything that happens is fine with you. This degree of surrender must happen at all levels. It cannot be a superficial surrender based on an idea of what is spiritually correct. You can’t simply say to yourself, “I surrender to this,” while in your heart you wish something else were happening, thereby rejecting your present experience. True surrender means not seeking or efforting. It means totally flowing with the unfolding of reality, “going with the flow,” as we used to say in the sixties. It means surrendering to God’s will, the flow of the Universal Mind. Whatever He wills is completely welcomed without resistance, without judgment, and without preference. So the understanding of the Holy Ideas of action, from the perspective of the triangle of Ideas we are working with, is that reality manifests according to its own inherent directionality, its own choice, its own will. Each of us is a part of that will; our very existence is part of this unfoldment. To completely surrender to it means accepting reality unconditionally, including our own states and our own actions. This does not mean resignation; it means acceptance and response out of that acceptance. Responding appropriately to whatever situation you find yourself in, or taking what is called in Buddhism “right action,” requires complete acceptance of any situation. So, to use our earlier example, if a truck is barreling toward you on the freeway, enlightened action is neither letting it hit you nor getting angry that the truck driver is endangering you in the first place, but moving out of its way! This moving out of the way, however, does not involve rejecting the situation or having an emotional reaction.

Just as Holy Transparency is grounded in Holy Omniscience, so Holy Freedom is grounded in Holy Will. Holy Freedom is basically experiencing Holy Will from the perspective of being a human being, which specifically means that you don’t have a separate will. Just as you see in Holy Transparency that you don’t exist as a separate entity, in Holy Freedom, you see that your will does not exist as a separate will. When you recognize that your will is part of the will of the whole, you are free. Being completely in harmony and completely merged with Holy Will is liberating. There is no opposition to what happens but rather, a complete welcoming of it, since your will and that of the universe are one. It is the sense that “My will is Thy will.” You are completely in harmony with God’s will, completely surrendered to it. A story is told about the Sufi saint, Rabia, that illustrates this understanding. Before she died, three of her fellow Sufis went to her to discuss some of the finer points of the teaching. The question they were pondering was: What is the best and most objective way of responding to God’s chastisement? The first said, “To be patient with it,” to which Rabia replied, “I smell ego there.” The second one said, “To completely welcome it,” and Rabia responded, “That’s better, but still not enough.” The third Sufi said, “To delight in it,” to which Rabia said, “Better, but God wouldn’t be satisfied with that.” So they asked her how she saw it, and she said, “When there is disharmony, I don’t see it because I am seeing God.” What Rabia meant is that there is complete forget-fulness of the chastisement because you are seeing the Holy Truth. So whatever you see or experience, even the chastisement, is the Holy Truth. The Holy Truth is everything, including all that happens—what we call good, what we call bad, what is painful or pleasurable to us—all is part of the Holy Truth.