The Grand Will and the Big Love

David Karchere

It is such a vital part of our life journey as human beings to learn to allow life to unfold. Another word that we sometimes use is let. As Paul McCartney said, “Let It Be.”

And what does “Mother Mary” sing to us when she sings “Let it be”? When we let, we are letting go of our hold on the flow of life. We are letting go of our human will. We are letting go of our human effort—our attempts to make happen what our human will tells us should happen. For life to really flow in our field of consciousness and energy, a person has to let go.

But there is more to it than that. I do not think any of us are willing to simply let go and let the forces of life take over, without participating in them. We do not just sit here and watch life go by and say, “I have to let go. This is going to be creative.” That is not going to work! Probably most of us have found that out. And the word letting means something more than that. It means something more than transcending human will and human effort. The word let has to do with allowing the world around us, at all levels, to do what it wants to do and to participate ourselves; to not only let go of human will and effort but allow a larger will, what Martin Buber calls the Grand Will, to work through us. And to let a larger power come into us and do its work through us, as us.

What a subtle shade of distinction between those two things. It is subtle in ourselves. When are we just full of human effort and will, and when are we allowing the Grand Will to work through us? When are we letting the Big Love move through us, and not just our own human love? It is a subtle distinction, yet in that subtlety is all the difference.

In offering an essential life teaching to other people, it seems almost impossible, at some stages of the process, for people not to be in a place of bringing their human effort to the project. In any kind of human development, spiritual development, or spiritual awakening and transformation, there has to be something done by a person, does there not? You do not just sit there and have it happen. You have to do something. And it is almost inevitable at stages along the way for a person that they are going to interpret what they have to do as human effort. How else are they supposed to understand it? They have yet to fully open up to the Grand Will and the Big Love. And yet they have to do something to let that Grand Will and the Big Love work through them. As that happens, at some point, they must let go of the human effort while still allowing the power of the universe to work through them and do its wonder.

The word let is so interesting. What are we letting? There is a creative urge within all of life, is there not? You only have to observe buds in the spring or the exuberance of a child to see it. It is the urge of all Creation. The urge originates in the Creator. The urge of the Creator and the urge of Creation is one urge. The Soul of Being expresses itself. And we are in the process of simply allowing that urge to express itself all around us and in and through us.

It is the urge of our physical bodies to live and thrive; it is the urge of our own human heart to love. It is our urge. It is not just the urge of the forms of life around us. It is not just the urge of our human body, mind, and heart. It is our urge as creators, as an expression of the one Creator. There is this great urge of Creation, this great flow of love and light, through us. It is the urge of the One Love, the One Light, and the One Life. It is the urge to be, express, and embody the wonder of Being.

Letting is allowing that urge to express itself through all without any kind of holding back and without any shame or embarrassment that we, as human beings, have the capacity of will. Another name for will is desire. The desire of the Creator and the Creation can be trapped in ego desire—a desire separate from other people, separate from the rest of Creation, and separate from what we might call God. Separate desire, and the effort that comes from it, keep us separate in our experience of ourselves from All That Is—at least in our own heads. It is actually impossible to be separate. But we can experience life that way. And we can create what comes out of that separateness.

The urge we feel is the urge of all Creation and the urge of the Creator, which is our urge and our desire. We find that the more transparently we open to it, and we let it work in ourselves, it is not an irrational compulsion. There is intelligence built into it. The more transparently we feel it and know it, the clearer the wisdom embedded in the urge is to us.

The more clearly we know the urge of life with other human beings, the more what is divinely ordained to occur occurs—the more the pattern of Being unfolds as a never-ending kaleidoscope of life. Through human effort, the patterns of human relationship become twisted. If you are in the romance game, you can get on a dating app, put up your profile and go looking for Miss or Mr. Right. And it is fraught with the possibility of great error, is it not? If there is human effort and will involved with no unfolding divine pattern, it is hit-and-miss. And mostly miss.

When we live in the unfolding pattern of reality, we have a different way of relating to other people. And I am not saying it might not involve a dating app; or, if you are looking for a work relationship, Craig’s List or LinkedIn. So, I am not putting down those things as possible tools for the Grand Will to work in our own human experience. But there is something else that is more primal in the field of human relationships.

When we participate in the Grand Will, we find that we slide into other people’s lives as if by magic. And the same thing happens with people who are meant to be with us—they just slide in. No human effort is involved. We may have to do something, but it is not human effort creating the magic. It is simply the unfolding pattern of what is meant to be. When we are in that pattern, we find that the people who are meant to be with us just slide in. Their presence comes on the wind to be with us. And why? Because that person is knowing the one Presence, and we are knowing the one Presence. We have been drawn to know that One Presence together. And so, we enter the presence of another.

This is the basis for the blog series, the Pulse of Spirit. I enter a heightened experience of the One Presence as I write it. Readers have the same experience as they read. Then easily and magically, we slide into each other’s lives and share One Presence.

This process apparently doesn’t require physical presence, though physical presence can heighten the experience. But it doesn’t guarantee it. We could be face to face with another person physically, but if this process is not happening, struggle as we will, we do not touch. It is frustrating as all get out, is it not? You are with a person—you feel their physical presence—yet there is a wall of separation if the person has never gotten the big idea that they could allow something bigger than themselves to come into them and know it as themselves. As they do that, there is a natural pattern of spiritual intimacy.

The experience is not random. And it is not the same level of spiritual intimacy with all people. There is an unfolding pattern of how we are meant to be in other people’s lives and how they are meant to be with us.

Following that unfolding pattern, there is wonder and joy. At every level of human experience, there is the possibility of one human being sowing a seed of creativity in another person’s life. Have there not been people who did that for you? Probably at every level of your human experience—spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Perhaps they came along and brought a seed of creativity, a seed for new birth in your life.

We have the potential to bring the seeds of spiritual rebirth to another person. We might like to think that those seeds just drop in from the Invisible. But practically speaking, so often that is not how it happens. There is a human being who sows a seed that comes from what is above us all as human beings, a seed of the Big Love.

We have that kind of potential, both the potential to receive such seeds and to sow them in the lives of others. Has anyone brought the seed of brilliant thoughts into your life? They did not think all the thoughts. You did that. But they came and dropped a seed into your awareness, and you ran with it. You gave birth to a whole body of wisdom and understanding based on somebody coming along and sowing that seed. I know there have been people who have done that for me. I am so thankful for them and thankful for what was born through me because of those seeds.

And how about seeds of the heart? There are certainly people who have saved my life at the level of the heart. I do not know what would have happened if somebody had not come along and sowed seeds of love, acceptance, and thankfulness in my heart.

When I think of my life up to this point, I might like to speak with great pride and tell you I did it all by myself. But that is not the way it goes for me or, I believe, for anyone. We do not do it all by ourselves. We get a lot of help. It is the help of the Divine through awake human beings who sow seeds of creativity in us.

We are then empowered to sow the seeds that we are carrying. That is how it works in the field of human procreation. A seed is sown, a child is born, and that child has more seeds to bring into the world for more children. That is at a basic biological level. But we are talking about so much more than that. We are talking about all levels of the human experience.

Of course, there are people sowing seeds that have no business being in our lives. There are some seeds that have no business being in our heart or mind.

More and more, when an advertisement plays on the television, I shout back, “I do not want it!” It is miserable what they say, and they are telling me to believe it is true. They are telling me I am bipolar; they are telling me I am sick, and I need their medicine. I do not have the disease that they are telling me I have, and I do not want their medicine.

That is a crude example of something. But there are seeds from people of all kinds that they want to sow in our lives. No thanks. Not if it isn’t in the divine pattern. It might be a good seed for somebody—somebody might need that medicine. But I do not.

When we are in a state of letting the divine pattern unfold, then we are welcoming the seeds for the creativity of our life. There are seeds that are no good for anybody. But there are seeds that are healthy and good for another person but not for me. And the seeds I have are not for everybody, nor should I be trying to force them on anyone. They are available. For people who know the Grand Will, the right seeds are sown. We slip into other people’s lives and offer those seeds. And people slip into our lives and offer creative seeds for us.

We could become frustrated by trying to sow seeds in a place where they are not welcome, or where they do not really belong. What does it take for us to open to the unfolding pattern of meaningful, creative relationship? It takes letting—not trying. We have to allow the Grand Will to work through us in the way that it wants to.

If you want to participate in that with me, and it is in the divine pattern, I am up for it. And we can do that together as a community. It won’t work on the basis of human will and effort; only by letting the urge of Creation work though us.

George Emery used to say that when he first came into the world, the doctor spanked his bottom, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “Let me find the people I need and the people who need me!” Wise words! He made it funny, but that is certainly where our attention has to be if we are going to allow the Grand Will to be done.