Anyone have thoughts re expression 'God's plan'

[lorenzop]

Due to some medical challenges my wife is enduring . . . we're hearing lots of We'll pray for you, and, It's part of God's plan, or, God is walking with you and etc.
This is becoming mildly irritating as these expressions don't mean anything to us - and folks who utter them tend to not offer any actual support or assistance.
Putting the above aside, anyone here believe that God has a Plan . . . and what this means?

[Federica]

Due to some medical challenges my wife is enduring . . . we're hearing lots of We'll pray for you, and, It's part of God's plan, or, God is walking with you and etc.
This is becoming mildly irritating as these expressions don't mean anything to us - and folks who utter them tend to not offer any actual support or assistance.
Putting the above aside, anyone here believe that God has a Plan . . . and what this means?

Lorenzo,
The meaning is that, in the grand scheme of things, events do not reflect pure hazard, but karma. Because everything in the whole Cosmos happens for a reason, one can also call it a cosmic plan. God's plan is another way to refer to that. Through the endurance of suffering, we take steps in the direction of realigning our contribution to the fulfillment of that collective plan we all participate in. We balance out some deviations we had previously effected - maybe in a previous life, maybe in shared responsibility as member of a group of individuals - and we reestablish a more beneficial trajectory for the future. In other words, we get some necessary work done. When we realize that, it actually amounts to an additional good work done, which comes accompanied by some relief. I hope you both will soon find relief in relation to these events.

[Jim Cross]

Due to some medical challenges my wife is enduring . . . we're hearing lots of We'll pray for you, and, It's part of God's plan, or, God is walking with you and etc.
This is becoming mildly irritating as these expressions don't mean anything to us - and folks who utter them tend to not offer any actual support or assistance.
Putting the above aside, anyone here believe that God has a Plan . . . and what this means?

Yes, there is a plan. The plan is we are born, we live, we get sick, we die.

I couldn't resist commenting on this.

[AshvinP]

Due to some medical challenges my wife is enduring . . . we're hearing lots of We'll pray for you, and, It's part of God's plan, or, God is walking with you and etc.
This is becoming mildly irritating as these expressions don't mean anything to us - and folks who utter them tend to not offer any actual support or assistance.
Putting the above aside, anyone here believe that God has a Plan . . . and what this means?

Lorenzo,

A question we could ask here is, "if I assume for the moment there is a God with a plan and that plan entails humanity becoming Godlike i.e. rediscovering its essential nature, what would that actually entail?" Could it be that humanity, in this scenario, could not really understand the plan until it lives into the plan? Of course, we are assuming the only reasonable thing to assume here, which is that God is ideational activity as opposed to some unimaginable mindless/instinctive substance or being. In that case, understanding the plan at the conceptual level comes at the expense of fulfilling the plan. Because conceptualizing the plan does very little to strengthen our ideational forces - it's the least common denominator of understanding where we start out due to our natural and cultural inheritance (nature and nurture), with little original or creative effort on our part. And if it becomes an end-in-itself, it is positively harmful to fulfilling the plan. To move further towards fulfilling the plan, we need to move beyond that inheritance into the sphere of creative and moral ideation.

If we start to take such ideas seriously and concretely, then the existence and endurance of evil/suffering, along with the role of faith in all World religions, begins to make more sense. They are means by which we inwardly perfect ourselves to fulfill the plan. Anything that stands in the way of that inner perfection, such as abstract theorizing and modeling of the plan on internet forums, must leave us dissatisfied and longing for something better, something more perfect. The superficial sentiments and abstract arguments should leave us feeling irritated because that irritation is a Divine prompt towards looking inwardly for communion with the beings who are administering the plan. It only remains a thorn in our side, or in the worst case a sense of nihilism, as long as we remain unconscious of what it is prompting us to do in terms of our inner perfection. Otherwise, such feelings and thoughts begin to bring us immense peace and relief, as Federica says. That is how they are redeemed through self-awareness and selfless striving.

[lorenzop]

Thanks for this . . . re 'ideational activity' . . . if one is an idealist of any flavor, one has to admit to reality being an ideation, the movement\transformation of consciousness. For me it is a leap to get from abstract ideational activity to a Plan. Perhaps I could admit to reality having a 'bias'.
On an intellectual level, world events appear haphazard - and I can't imagine anyone having sufficient intelligence to perceive any pattern. I would suggest 'seeing' any Plan is more of an intuition.

[Federica]

On an intellectual level, world events appear haphazard

They do, indeed, as long as one tries to make sense of the events at the intellectual level alone.

and I can't imagine anyone having sufficient intelligence to perceive any pattern.

Some people do perceive the patterns. But not because they have an extraordinary 'intelligence'. As Steiner said, anyone with normal intelligence (and good dedication) can progressively come to perceive the patterns. What these people do is, they develop additional thinking capacities that go beyond the intellectual mind. They start for example from making analogies, and they start getting some broad indications that suggest how the patterns go.
For example, they notice how reality always unfolds in cycles, at many different levels - the cycles that we perceive in nature (seasons, day-night,..) the cycles of our habits during the day, the week cycle, the year... and many more cycles - and so they wonder, because we are ourselves part of reality, could it be that some sort of cyclical pattern can be discerned from within the experience of the big events of our life also? They ask themselves if by any chance there are any analogies to be noticed. They expand the scope and creativity of their look, so they can lift the head above the level at which we perceive world events as haphazard. Then they keep going and they search for analogies even beyond the cycle of their present lifespan... and they start seeing clearer and clearer patterns...

I would suggest 'seeing' any Plan is more of an intuition.

It starts with an intuition, but when one trains cognition beyond the intellectual mode, the intuition starts to acquire a more and more defined character, until one can discern clear patterns, or even the outline of a cosmic plan. That requires years of patient development of thinking potential, but even before getting started, one can intuit that there is more to reality to understand, beyond the "inherently uncertain" appearance of the sequence of events, as Cleric called it (the following applies to the event of Big Bang or to any other sequence of events, for instance those of our life):

No matter whether we’re a materialist or an idealist, the event of the Big Bang – whether physical or spiritual – is only conceived as a mental picture of some past event long gone by. Is there any surprise then that we feel these questions about past and future to be inherently uncertain and only preventing us to find reality in the here and now?

[AshvinP]

Thanks for this . . . re 'ideational activity' . . . if one is an idealist of any flavor, one has to admit to reality being an ideation, the movement\transformation of consciousness. For me it is a leap to get from abstract ideational activity to a Plan. Perhaps I could admit to reality having a 'bias'.
On an intellectual level, world events appear haphazard - and I can't imagine anyone having sufficient intelligence to perceive any pattern. I would suggest 'seeing' any Plan is more of an intuition.

Lorenzo,

We should differentiate between our personal feelings about the ideational patterns, which we may feel are bad or unhelpful for some reason, and our ability to discern the logical progression of the patterns themselves, independently of our feelings. Plenty of idealistic thinkers (without any reliance on occult research) have done the latter over the last few hundred years, such as Goethe, Schiller, Emerson, Hegel, Schelling, Lessing, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Gebser, Barfield, and many others. And practically all of Steiner's spiritual science is an extensive discernment of these patterns that repeat themselves at higher and higher (more morally perfect) stages in nature, culture, and our individual lives as ideational beings. We know for a fact that our own lives consist of a stream of intentional plans, which are first those of the family and culture we are raised into and then become our own individual intentions to some greater or lesser extent. We are also continually steered around by forces of Nature and, if we regard these as ideational in character, then they must also be intentional. Our normal sense of intuition of a 'Plan' is nothing other than a dim resonance with these higher-order intentions of the Cosmos and Nature. It is true, however, that the details of this Plan intuition are still being worked out through our own ideational activity - every little detail isn't predetermined by the Plan - and we generally experience evil or suffering when the details we have worked out don't resonate very well with the overarching intentions. 

The main problem is, to begin with, we have stopped paying attention to the course of our own lives and how our decisions influence our states of being over various time frames. That is what our ideational capacity allows us to do - and it is presupposed in all domains of therapeutic significance such as nutritional science, psychology, stress management, and all similar fields - but the average person simply doesn't take advantage of this attentional capacity in any holistic way. We rely on the piecemeal research of other people and fail to lay hold of our own inner creative potential. If we start paying more attention to various daily decisions like what we eat, how much eat, when we eat, what we do before sleeping, what we do when awakening, what we expose ourselves to, how much screen time we have, what patterns of thinking and feeling and desiring that we indulge in, how we interact with other people in speech and deed, and a million other such factors, then we have the basis to start discerning patterns that are relevant to our states of being. Our intuitive organism is highly sensitive to these patterns if we give it the proper 'dataset' to work with. We will notice that many states of being throughout our day that we previously felt were determined by nature or random bad luck - up to and including states of physical illness - are actually directly related to our own intentions and manifestations of those intentions. Again, none of this requires heightened cognitive capacities to begin with, as Federica also said above, although the development of such capacities will awaken us even further to these rhythmic patterns that are always there.

When we speak of the 'rhythms' of the Cosmos, of the Earth's seasons and the plant kingdom, of the migrations in the animal kingdom, of human culture in the domains of economics, politics, science, and so forth, these are all pointing us towards the patterns of ideational activity at various scales of existence. When we learn to heighten our intuitive resonance with the ideational patterns in our own life, through our attentional capacity, we will naturally start to discern them clearly in the outspread World around us as well. What we call "instincts" In the animal and human kingdoms are also ideational patterns that have been encrusted into automatic rhythms which have minimal creative potential since they remain within a narrow scope of self-interest, oriented only towards past forms of pleasure and pain. Intuition is simply instinct that has consciously expanded its scope of interest to encompass all beings and their harmonious development, oriented towards future potential qualities and capacities that can work creatively in the World. All instinct is in the intentional process of being transmuted to intuition, which is a re-awakening to its original essence, just as surely as the past flows into the present and future. The only question is how conscious of this flow we will be as it happens.

Seeing. We might say that the whole Omega Point of life lies in that verb - if not ultimately, at least essentially. Fuller being is closer union: such is the kernel and conclusion of this book. But let us emphasize the point: union increases only through an increase in consciousness, that is to say in vision. And that, doubtless, is why the history of the living world can be summarized as the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there is always something more to be seen. After all, do we not judge the perfection of an animal, or the supremacy of a thinking being, by the penetration and synthetic power of their gaze? To try to see more and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe, by reason of the mysterious gift of existence. And this, in superior measure, is man's condition.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1930)

We have only one option: in examining the manifestations of our age, we must penetrate them with sufficient breadth and depth that we do not come under their demonic and destructive spell. We must not focus our view merely on these phenomena, but rather on the humus of the decaying world beneath, where the seedlings of the future are growing, immeasurable in their potential and vigor. Since our insight into the energies pressing towards development aids their unfolding, the seedlings and inceptive beginnings must be made visible and comprehensible.

- Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (1949)


The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance... This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not blind and deaf; “Can these things be, And overcome us like a summer’s cloud, Without our special wonder?” for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the Brahmins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Bacon, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his fortune at reading her riddle.

There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms; and day and night, river and storm, beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are what they are by virtue of preceding affections, in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)