Marshall, Gene, The Enigma of Consciousness, Realistic Living Press, Bonham, TX, 2012. Chapter 14
Primal Merging (excerpts from Chapter 14 please read the original material for complete context)
1) When we view the I Am in its relation to the future, we discovery our intentionality, our initiative, our freedom to act beyond the boundaries of the ego or self image that we have constructed to tell ourselves who we are and what we can and cannot do.
2) Primal Merging is the name I am giving to the most solitary of the three aspects of what we often call freedom.
3) By Primal Merging I mean giving up the ego limitations and merging with the larger, more capable, more true-to-reality I.
4) The emptiness left by our departure from self-image or ego will fill with a quality we can call persistent initiative.
5) Prayer is a word we often use for this initiative as it appears in the context of religious practice, but I am not now describing a religious practice.
6) I am describing the appearance of the initiative aspect of the I Am.
7) By initiative I mean the capacity of the I Am to influence the future.
8) Though the I Am does not control the future (the future comes to us as a surprise), our profound initiatives do make a difference in what the future turns out to be.
9) It is as if our initiatives mingle with the massive forces beyond our control to form a future that is both a surprise to us and a result of our initiatives.
10) These initiatives can be of many types four types have dominated Christian devotions:
(1) confessing our unrealism,
(2) giving thanks for life, possibility, and forgiveness,
(3) making requests of Reality for our own temporal being and for further realization of being the I Am,
(4) making requests of Reality for specific others and for the general social conditions that care for whole groups of people.
11) Such initiatives involve more than thoughts in the mind; they are acts of will and proposals for body movement.
12) They are intentions to engage.
13) They are internal initiatives that change the course of history.
14) Such initiatives access the power of the I Am a power that is not an achievement or a possession of the ego or personality.
15) This power is a gift from the Power that posits us in being.
16) Our access of this power is not an accomplishment but a merging, an allowing of our awareness and action to merge with the essential capacity of freedom that characterizes our being.
17) Deep initiative is a capacity to create out of nothing responses that have no cause except our own initiative.
18) Our experience of this profound initiative can break through our personality habits as a state of being that happens to us from time to time.
19) And we can also come to recognize this Primal Merging as a permanent station of the I Am that we never need to leave.
Read one of the lines from this reading that caught your attention.
What do primal merging, freedom, and the ego have to do with one another (1-3)
What is persistent initiative Where have you experienced the power of persistent initiative in your life
When in your life have you taken an initiative that you believe was beyond the boundaries of your self-imposed ego limitations and perhaps against the odds of greater forces, but your intention nonetheless prevailed
Which of the 4 traditional types of internal initiative mentioned in sentence 10 do you find yourself practicing most regularly How would you talk about the role that any of these methods of dialogue with Reality play in your life
Are these dynamics (10) that only religious people do or that everyone does Why is this an important question about which to be clear
If the ego cannot access the power of the I Am how do I connect with it (14)
If this power is a gift what does this mean and how do I access it (16)
What other line or concept would you like to have the group explore with grounding experiences
What personal practices might be indicted from the encounter with this material
What do primal merging, freedom, and the ego have to do with one another (1-3)
What is persistent initiative Where have you experienced the power of persistent initiative in your life
When in your life have you taken an initiative that you believe was beyond the boundaries of your self-imposed ego limitations and perhaps against the odds of greater forces, but your intention nonetheless prevailed
Which of the 4 traditional types of internal initiative mentioned in sentence 10 do you find yourself practicing most regularly How would you talk about the role that any of these methods of dialogue with Reality play in your life
Are these dynamics (10) that only religious people do or that everyone does Why is this an important question about which to be clear
If the ego cannot access the power of the I Am how do I connect with it (14)
If this power is a gift what does this mean and how do I access it (16)
What other line or concept would you like to have the group explore with grounding experiences
What personal practices might be indicted from the encounter with this material