I’ve noted that there are those who are ignorant and don’t want to be, while others are proudly ignorant and resist all attempts at becoming more aware. The first group wants to learn, while the second group chooses to stay willfully ignorant. At every turn of life’s wheel, we make a choice to become aware or stay ignorant.

Ignorance is of 2 types: Innocent Ignorance and Willful Ignorance. Once we know how to throw off the chains of ignorance, not to do so becomes an act of will, where a person chooses to be clueless and wants to stay that way. This is the result of an undisciplined dull ego, with no curiosity beyond its learned appetites.

It has been said this life is about navigating between what we call “fate” and “free will.” In my observations of the past 52 years, I have found only two things are fated: 1) We were born at a certain time in a certain place to the parents we had, and 2) the timing on when we will have to make crucial life choices. All else is free will, either ours or another’s, including what choices we make and do not make. The timing is baked into our birth chart, but our choices are ours to make, for better or worse.

We all have the power to choose if, what, and how. We may not know why we’re making the choices we do, and of course there may be pressures affecting our choices, but regardless of what’s happening, we have the power to choose how we want to respond in that moment to whatever brings forth our need to choose in that circumstance.

What prompted this article is my life long observation and question as to why some people choose to abuse others (and often themselves!) even when they know better. Every single abuser has a choice not to be abusive, but it requires a conscious self-examination about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it so they can choose to heal that abusive tendency which victimizes themselves as well as others.

So why would some choose to remain unconscious when they could awaken to a better way to live and interact with others? I’ve been told some abusers “can’t help themselves” but that’s not true. Anyone can awaken at any time to their power to choose not to hurt themselves or others.

Sometimes an abuser denies that they have a choice, but that’s just ego being self-serving. All of us can exercise free will to become aware and turn destructive behavior to productive action. So how much choice does a person have to not be abusive? It’s the difference between innocent ignorance and willful ignorance.

Awakening From The Sleep of Unconsciousness

I gave you the "prelude" to some of these themes four years ago in Who Is Part of Our Soul Group and How To Forgive Abusive People - Pt. 1 and The Spiritual Dimension of our Soul Group and How to Forgive Abusive People Pt. 2. I believe all abusers choose to be abusive, even if some of it stems from being unconscious. How much ability an unconscious person has to control their behavior is the source of countless discussions.

We all suffered abuse and went through traumatic experiences at the hands of others when younger. So how much ability does an abusive person have to awaken from their abusive state of mind? Some would argue that if a person is incapable of "seeing things" another way, they are not really responsible for their behavior. Is a totally self-involved, egocentric, ego driven, egotistic and immature being capable of seeing themselves accurately or changing their behavior? If a being cannot see a different way to be, how can they change?

Innocent Ignorance vs Willful Ignorance

When we accept that others are incapable of seeing things differently, it gives more power to the illusion than it deserves, which is none. If we all have free will to choose our actions, feelings, and thoughts, how can anyone be trapped by the ego’s choice not to see or understand certain things? We all have an ability to change our behavior once we accept our power to choose different patterns of acting, feeling, and thinking.

This is the razor’s edge of the difference between innocent ignorance and willful ignorance. We all are innocently ignorant until we find ourselves having to choose whether we will be deliberately ignorant or become aware. When the Truth comes knocking on our door, we either open the door or we choose not to open the door because our subconscious mind knows a truth has come to visit and doesn’t want to face it.

While fully aware from the moment we were born, we’re all ignorant to some degree when we’re younger. We learn to act, feel, and think to conform to the rules of our family and cultural systems, and are encouraged from our youngest days to accept without question the values of the family and cultural matrix. However, as we grow we find ourselves exposed to countless value systems from a multitude of subcultures and from time to time confront a reality outside the default patterns in our subconscious mind.

As I explain in Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend, our family and cultural matrix keeps us comfortably ignorant until we start having questions which can’t be answering by the conventional wisdom of those systems. Then, like the Buddha, we “slip over the wall of the castle” and find ourselves in a world we never imagined. By stepping outside our own ignorance, through our own discoveries we get glimpses of Light, and by pushing the limits of the boundaries we feel heat, the “Fire by Friction” which keeps Life moving forward.

All of us are ignorant when we are young. However, through our encounters with the world, we hit points of awakening because we a) see the light or b) feel the heat. When we find ourselves in situations that offer the Light of awareness or the heat of necessity, ignorance gives way to a different perspective.

When we hit an experience involving the Light of Truth or the heat of necessity, then we all choose one of two responses. Either we choose to move into a greater understanding of that experience, or choose to believe we can ignore the important lessons that experience is showing us. Basically, when we see the Light or feel the heat, either we choose to grow or we choose not to grow.

When someone hasn’t had an experience leading them out of ignorance into awareness, they are innocent. When someone has an experience that forces them to choose how they want to be from that point on, they are no longer innocent. Their choices create karmas from that point on, whether they choose to be conscious or unconscious of their actions as their future unfolds.

Making Excuses for Abusive Behavior is A Sign of Willful Ignorance

Someone who has an awakening but deliberately chooses to be abusive to others is operating out of lower ego willfulness. This is where seeing which part of the mind is at work makes things very clear. When lower ego willfulness is present, so are rationalizations.

Rationalizations are explanations which justify abusive attitudes and behaviors. An abuser will always have a reason for being abusive. This is not the “innocent ignorance” of a child, but the deliberate willful ignorance of an adult. The lower ego is heavily invested in refusing to grow beyond itself.

Those who are willfully abusive have chosen the way of fractured ego separateness, and are refusing to "join the human race." We are here to learn to BE the Loving Wise Intelligence of our eternal nature, but beings who are willfully ignorant have chosen the way of separation, fear, and exploitation. They are capable of giving up this misguided attitude any time they want, but have decided they just don't want to.

The paradox is the moment anyone chooses to grow, their entire lives change instantly for the better. They may or may not recognize these changes for the better, since to be human is “not to know” many things until we can pierce the veil between the known and unknown without fear. It is as though part of the human journey is to awaken to “the dream within the dream” so we may see clearly our most natural way to BE our loving, wise, intelligent Self.

While we're all living our lives in the dream of this apparent material reality, there are different levels of dreaming. While some will awaken through a life altering event, there are many who will experience such events but refuse to awaken, believing the dream is real, and the reality of awakening was a dream. Their mental defaults require that they rationalize why their previous state of mind is the only reality they’ll accept.

We All Awaken To Accepting or Rejecting A Greater Truth

Anyone can awaken at any time, but the quality of that awakening is determined by the imagery and symbols of the one who is awakened. In this sense, those who are awakened only do so within their metaphors. There is the possibility of awakening into good, truth, and beauty, and there is the possibility of awakening into evil, untruth, and ugliness. Each chooses in each moment.

Awakening to the good we could accomplish is a blessing beyond description, and fills the life with promise and a sense of boundless possibilities. However, our ego mind is the gatekeeper of whether we embrace the adventure or cling to old ways, frustrating our Higher Self from externalizing our Love, Wisdom, and Intelligence in the world of activity.

Those who cling to willful destructive behavior have allowed their ego-mind to fall prey to one or more of the four primal emotions of fear, desire, attachment to experiencing strong sensations, and vanity, in various combinations. These are hardwired into the human condition, and we all feel these. However, throughout our lives we make choices to embrace, reject, or modify these emotional responses as we move through various experiences.

That’s why when someone chooses to act out abusive behaviors it is entirely their choice to behave that way. From one point of view, there is nothing unconscious about it, though there may be unconscious factors present. A default to destructive behavior is always a choice.

In one of the most ancient and venerable books in the world, Light on the Path, we find there are three "Eternal Truths" for humanity:

"Regard the three truths. They are equal. These written above are the first of the rules which are written on the walls of the Hall of Learning. Those that ask shall have. Those that desire to read shall read. Those who desire to learn shall learn."

"There are Three Truths which are absolute, and cannot be lost, but yet may remain silent for lack of speech.

"The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour has no limit.

"The principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard, or seen, or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires perception.

"Each man is his own absolute law-giver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself; the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.

"These Truths, which are as great as is life itself, are as simple as the simplest mind of man. Feed the hungry with them."

The Third Truth, that each is the decreer of their own life, rewards, and punishments, stands as an affirmation of the Law of Karma. Each chooses to awaken or sleep, to progress or regress, to abuse or to serve the afflicted.

Any being, no matter how ignorant, can choose to become more aware of better actions, feelings, and thoughts. Any being who wants to learn can learn. If a being won't learn from the example of good people, then it's willful ignorance, and makes them entirely responsible for all choices and actions that follow.

In part 2 we'll continue by examining how intention relates to karma, whether free will can override ignorance, and how an unconscious being can choose to become more aware.

Reprinted on crystalwind.ca with written permission from Robert Wilkinson. Copying this article to other blogs is strictly prohibited. It is copyright protected. 

© Copyright 2023 Robert Wilkinson

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