Preference

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To illustrate this, let’s say that you are feeling angry. If you reject your anger because you judge it as not being ultimate truth, you are reinforcing the egoic perspective by imposing your separatist will upon what is arising. Preferring one state or feeling over another one, deciding that what is arising in you is not right and should be different, even wanting to be enlightened instead of where you are right now, all indicate identification with the ego which keeps you imprisoned in your ideas about how things should be. If, instead, you recognize that the anger is how the Holy Truth is manifesting in this moment, you will let it be and not try to change it. This is the practice arising out of the understanding of Holy Will, and it will lead you to understanding Holy Freedom. You will see that freedom is not determined by what state you are in; rather, it is complete surrender to whatever state you find yourself in. Only then can you be really free, because then everything that happens is okay. But if you think that freedom means being in a certain state, then the moment you are not in that state, you will think that the universe is manifesting incorrectly because what is arising is not what you think should be happening, and you will have lost your freedom. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch.13

The way we ordinarily see the world is not the way it really is because we see it from the perspective of our judgments and preferences, our likes and dislikes, our fears and our ideas of how things should be. So to see things as they really are, which is to see things objectively, we have to put these aside—in other words, we have to let go of our minds. Seeing things objectively means that it doesn’t matter whether we think what we’re looking at is good or bad—it means just seeing it as it is. If a scientist is conducting an experiment, he doesn’t say, “I don’t like this so I’ll ignore it.” He may not personally care for the results because they don’t confirm his theory, but pure science means seeing things the way they really are. If he says he is not going to pay attention to the experiment because he doesn’t like it, that is not science. Yet, this is the way most of us deal with reality, inwardly and outwardly. – Facets of Unity: The Enneagram of Holy Ideas, ch. 14

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