Two Choices

Opportunities Masked as Challenges

By Tanis Helliwell

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost

We are in a new time in the history of humanity. It is a time of paradox where two choices exist and the way between them is filled with fog. The Buddhists say that at the gate to the temple of the inner self there are two guard dogs whose names are Paradox and Confusion. This is what we are facing currently.

We are awakening collectively to the reality that all humans are connected in a global web physically, economically, and even spiritually. With the seriousness of global warming, continuing violence and war in the world, the increasingly disparity between the have and have nots, and the plunging American dollar, individuals realize increasingly that there is nothing that they can count on. Buddha said that the cause of all pain is attachment to things of this world, but that has not stopped us from being attached to our comforts, has it? Now we are having an experience of this reality. This is progress for humanity as a race when this separation between the theory and the experience of the theory as reality comes together.

Yes, this has happened in a painful way, but a lot of this has to do with the pain of outgrowing an old way of being. Ten years ago we started this growth in North America when major companies and multinationals went through severe downsizing throwing many people into unemployment. These downsizings demonstrated to people that they were totally responsible for their lives and could not count on their employer to look after them. In other words, even if you were doing a good job for a company, there was no such thing as guaranteed employment.

At the same time as our security has been shaken at work, our spiritual foundations have also been shaken. Over the last decade or two the church and many other spiritual traditions have been shaken by scandal after scandal. Through this we have learned not to indiscriminately trust all religious and spiritual leaders just because of their role. Similarly we have learned that we cannot trust many of our political leaders in their personal ethics, which of course makes us wonder if we can trust them at all. So, what have we learned from the shattering of our old value system, which was that  our employers, and religious and political leaders knew more than we did and would take us to the promised land?

We have learned the necessity of not trusting in others to save us. And currently we are learning to examine our own values and to take responsibility for our own life and that each of us can make a difference. And this shift in consciousness has transpired in a very short period of time in human history. We have been able to do this with regards to our religious, political and organizational institutions and now it is time to undergo the next step in our own personal transformation. But this isn’t easy. I think that people are awakening and want to rise to the challenge and also want to make the right decision. However, it is extremely difficult to sort through the range of possible futures to select the appropriate one for our own lives, and for our country, and for the world. This is not because we are doing something wrong. It is because the unraveling of the old patterns, old beliefs and old ways of behaving is still occurring.

Presently, many people are going through major confusion about what to think, and what to do next in their lives. Often this will feel as if two—or even more—equally strong choices are available and it is hard to decide which one is the best choice. We are living in a time of incredible ambivalence. The old answers don’t serve and we know this. However, we do not have all the facts that clearly indicate the new path to take and we’re waiting for these new facts to present themselves. It’s as if we are now aware that we have free choice to create the future we want and we can’t choose which future seems the best. Why is this?

It’s because we are accessing higher vibrations of knowledge, and more subtle forms of truth than most of us have thought before. We no longer live in a black and white world where there are bad guys and good guys, black and white choices. We now are sifting through various shades of colours and we have to understand the function of those new colours before we can work these new concepts. These new colours could be called compassion, equanimity, equality for all, flexibility, tolerance, patience, forgiveness. I’m naming them to give a flavour of what I’m speaking of, but these words only point in the right direction, and don’t give a full experience of what these words mean when practiced by us. It is a deeper experience of what these words mean in practice that we are starting to grasp at this time.

While this shift in consciousness is occurring, we might have one foot in the old world that we are leaving behind, and another foot in the new world that is coming into existence. At any given moment we might feel great ambivalence about which of these worlds is best to commit our energy. Therefore, we swing back and forth between the two of them. The older world of black and white is known, comfortable and often feeds the more concrete needs of our personality. The newer world of colour is unknown, has unlimited potential, feels exciting and yet scary, and feeds the higher potential of what we can be.

Both of these realities co-exist presently and to deny it would be to do ourselves a disservice. It‘s very stressful and anxiety producing trying to establish a firm foundation in these shifting times. The best course of action is to surrender to the fact that none of us know all the variables in the situation. The best we can hope for is that we keep an open mind and open heart to listen to all points of views—both ours and others. We can learn to listen deeply to both ourselves and others to determine if we are coming from a place of fear or of love, of death or of life. In the end these are the two poles of choice facing us. And these energies are polar opposites. Let us not cling to fear and death when we can rise to love and life at this time in our history.

Tanis Helliwell, a mystic in the modern world, has brought spiritual consciousness into the mainstream for over 30 years. Since childhood, she has seen and heard elementals, angels, and master teachers in higher dimensions. Tanis is the founder of the International Institute for Transformation (IIT), which offers programs to assist individuals to become conscious creators to work with the spiritual laws that govern our world.

Tanis is the author of The High Beings of Hawaii, Summer with the Leprechauns, Pilgrimage with the Leprechauns, Embraced by Love, Manifest Your Soul’s Purpose, Hybrids: So You Think You Are Human and Decoding Your Destiny.

For information on Tanis’ courses, click here.