~Franz Werfel
I was cruising the web using Stumbleupon and came across that quote on this site http://www.bemyastrologer.com.
Regardless of what one may think of Astrology this quote fits like a glove in my life. Many years ago a friend, inspired by my interest in Astrology, studied my chart. She told me, in greater length, based on her analysis I am like a mineral in fluid state that crystallises over a period of time only to be immersed in solution of extreme experiences, dissolved and then re-constituted again after a change in the inner and outer environment is complete. I found this to be both a pleasant and unpleasant thought.
It felt unpleasant because it smacked no choice. It presumed stability was out of reach. My life would continue to be disrupted and all I had built up over time would crumble at my feet leaving me with the task of rebuilding. (e.g. I've held over 40 distinctively different occupations.)
Pleasant because I will never be bored with an unchanging field of view. I would never be stuck in a pattern of waking sleep like an automatic line worker in a factory of repetitive behavior.
In all actuality, both are true. Further, I have learned to appreciate the radical changes and the periods of relative calm. The only painful quality is the absence of significant power over my material environment and the occasional difficulty in repeating an action or set of words, at my direction or that of another. To me no two moments are alike and the difference between this moment and the next is huge. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next. Boundaries are extrapolated from observing others expectations and psychically tuning to their willingness to engage. Mistakes are plentiful, of course.
I am continually amazed at the differences I see from one person to the next when it comes to creating stability. Some people are at ease with life following patterns that repeat day after day. A cookie cutter life. Others create periods of repetition followed by short bursts of chaos. Controlled chaos though. Too much is exactly that... too much.
Stability lends itself to the illusion of control. Most are comfortable when able to predict what will happen next. The comfort strengthens the illusion. Events viewed on a larger scale appear to follow our expectations. If we look closely though we will see that there are always subtle changes and nothing ever repeats itself exactly. The changes may appear to be insignificant, they're not. The changes point out the subtle references the Higher Self imposes on the moment to, over time, fulfill the need for experience. Souls need experience or they become fallow and eventually leave the form to it's mindless repetition. Experience is food for the soul and the soul starves if the attention is forced into a limited frame of reference long term.
This isn't an exhortation to call chaos into the life any more than a criticism of those who find comfort the illusion of control. I feel certain that we are getting what we need regardless of what that may be. I feel certain , absolutely certain I chose the life I've lived. I was only bored when, as a child, I didn't get to pursue the experience I thought was my choice. Here I had the illusion I COULD control if my mother would just let me go.
People who survive extremes in their search for new experience and feel comfortable with chaos reigning over their lives have fat souls, usually. They will understand, after many repeated shifts in their point of view, that life isn't constant anything. If those same people take the high road in their responses to these shifts there comes a moment when they get it... the only constant is Love.
Those whose lives appear to have regular, timed out events and a finely structured order over which they seem to have control come to Love through realizing devotion to principal or virtue. It often appears like a ray of sunlight through a crack in the structure. I am reminded of a vast cathedral, dark and somber with a crack in a great stained glass window high on the wall. A brilliant sunbeam piercing the veil of dogma, illuminating the body-mind.
What a wonderful life. The search for stability blown away by the light of Love only to reassert itself as the ego reforms to carry the seeker toward the greatest change of all: Death of the frame that holds the picture of life.
Control is an illusion.
