I Lived Like an Indian Sadhu. Here’s What It Cost Me. (1)

Do You Really Choose Your Family?

Do we choose our family, our sex, or our religion when we come into this world, or are we simply placed within a geographic and socio-cultural context in which we are tested to rise above the conditions given to us?

I believe you chose the circumstances into which you were born and, at the same time, you didn’t. Your arrival on this planet can be likened to any ordinary day in which, perhaps, 5% of your choices are conscious, while an overwhelming 95% are not.

In your life up until now, how many of your choices have been truly conscious? Not many, if you’re being honest. Most of your decisions were shaped by your parents, your culture, or the political system that existed while you were growing up. Many intentions played out frivolously and unconsciously, even when their very nature contradicted the norm.

So don’t ask me to believe that you chose your body and the world you live in, if on any given day you can barely stay away from toxic patterns or set a healthy boundary.

And yet, at a certain level of abstraction, YOU are the one who mapped out a destiny for yourself, even if it wasn’t a fully conscious choice. This is precisely where the question of free will enters the picture, a debate that remains wide open in both spirituality and science.

Karma… Again.

Your choices are your actions. Your actions are karma. That is, in fact, the most accurate translation we can work with. Your acts can be cognitive, impressions, thoughts, beliefs, the way you see the world and your place in it — or emotional, rooted in feelings and inner states, or tangible: attitudes, clear directions that show up in the real world through the words you speak, the people you spend your time with, the way you carry your life. All of this, taken together, generates the conditions of a future incarnation. Which means that in your present life, you are living the effects of past choices. In other words, you both chose and didn’t choose, simultaneously, the way reality has crystallized around you.

Sound Teaching.

In 2 Timothy, Chapter 4, the Apostle Paul warns that people, in the last days, will no longer endure sound teaching,  and will instead seek out teachers who tell them exactly what their egos want to hear: how wonderful and perfect they are. That is precisely how I see the belief that you consciously chose your family and the circumstances of your birth. A flattery. A noise that gives you nothing of real value, and only inflates you in your own eyes.

I believe your actions, and the degree to which they have been beneficial or harmful,  laid the foundation for your present incarnation. And I believe everything you do in this life matters. It matters enormously, because these are the causes of your return.

When I began working with the lunar nodes and allowed myself to understand where all those behavioral patterns came from, the drive to isolate myself from early childhood, the pull toward sacred texts, the tendency to step into spiritual roles, the conclusions were revealing. But that is a subject I’ll open up in the next article.

So until then, I’ll leave you with a reflective question, feel free to answer in the comments below:

If everything you do now becomes the seed of what you will be, what exactly are you planting?