OPTIONAL LIFE

Wherever there have been forks in the road of life requiring decision and personal initiative there will often be, with hindsight, regret and remorse. Because we have free will and a need to use it within experience, we must view options and make choices. If we choose road A we have to have a vague idea of what lies (or lay) down road B. And that is all we need - a vague idea!

Perhaps we know this too well at heart, and it gives rise to vast emotionally barren areas where we can ponder the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘what might have beens’ in fits of nostalgic melancholia. Multiple choices however skilfully handled must involve regret, not because wrong decisions were made necessarily but because it is within our nature to want to know everything we possibly can about our own potential. So even when a seemingly bad choice is averted it becomes apparent at some stage later that within that rejected option there may have been something of value. It is not just a question of wanting to undo the present as much as being greedy about what we feel the past has denied us in terms of challenge. We thrive on challenge and on change and to some extent on danger, so the deftly avoided pitfalls are as much a mental pull, in hindsight , as the smooth and lush highways. Its always a matter of balance. If I have too much heaven I may require a little hell, and vice versa. Human curiosity is the thing which propels evolution and the weaving of events through the matrix of time and space.

The theory of multiple universe and parallel worlds is one which has haunted thinkers for as long as mankind has been able to conjure with abstract thought. The question of ‘if this, what of that?’ (so to speak) is the one query which defines the subject of contrasts existing both inside and outside our own minds. The fact that when something goes up it must come down, describes a dimension that can only exist by courtesy of duality and opposites.

But maybe a better word would be ‘alternatives’ - when something is concrete or manifest it must of its physical nature be part of a series of probable alternatives.

Movies such as ‘Sliding Doors’ and ‘Final Destination’ offer stimulating insight into the question of multiple reality resting on definitive personal choice. As do the writings of some classical dramatist. J.B. Priestly, for instance, in his aptly named ‘Time Plays’ where he experiments with the bending of time, so altering the perception of his characters through this medium. Since then the whole quantum theory of time and space has become the darling of film-producers and writers alike, not the least of the reasons being the depth it offers within the widening of plot and detail. But as our minds and thought processes deepen to appreciate such work so does our ability to scan our individual consciousness and to become more than we might otherwise be; less three dimensional and more multidimensional beings.

After a certain stage in life we look back - this is what we are meant to do, because intelligence tells us that we cannot make sense of the present unless by comparison to what lies behind it. Our past, however painful, is sacred to us, and to us alone. No two people share an identical personal history, not in every last detail. We are all unique in the blueprint which is our script for the unfoldment of who we are, what we will become and what effect that will have on the whole. The soul wishes to experience everything (though not necessarily in one lifetime) and therefore the analytical mind makes comparison, between what we chose, what we might have chosen and what we may choose again differently. Within that there has to be regret, there has to be doubt and there has to be an ability, however fleeting, to scan or sense with the higher mind the paths we left untrod and unchosen.

To regret is one of the most human qualities, without it we would become psychopathic or robotic. It develops and defines our conscience and tells us what to avoid and what to risk; it is the sensitive antenna towards future and growth. When a choice is made and a fork in the road becomes inevitable we feel the alternative turnings slipping away as we face forward. Some time down that road we may reach an almost imperceptible summit - maybe its called a learning curve - and then we have to look back. Unless we are insensitive, lacking in imagination or suffering from amnesia we have to take stock of where we’ve been, how we did and what we may have done differently. Its not even a case of ‘better’, its a case of ‘other’ - we are hungry for experience and knowledge and cannot see enough or get enough, usually, in one lifetime. We simply have to parse down, and in doing so we leave a gap in which the undeveloped part of the film can be stored and now and then scanned. Nostalgia and regret often lead to greater understanding, as the compassion for what was neglected forces back out sentient barriers to deeper meaning and feeling.

L.S.

www.Tarot-Online.net - the home on the web for Lyn Shea Online Tarot card readings

If you arrived at this page via a search engine, click here if you would like an online tarot reading from Lyn.