Choice and Purpose

Although the question contained below came from a reader, the answer is to myself. As to why, I'll let you figure that out.
The following question presented was slightly rephrased for readability:

"I read in one of your articles that God didn't just throw us on this plane, but that we chose to be here. Whether we chose to come here by free will, or we asked God to put us here on the physical plane, I do knot know. But why are animals here? Did they have the same free will to be placed here too? And why can't other entities have the free will to be sent here too?"

Around and around I go on this topic, but this question is all about separation. First, "us and God" are the same. So we ourselves sent us here and we ourselves will ascend at the perfect moment. Plants and animals are not mere decoration for the human experience. They too chose to come here and experience themselves on this plane. You might ask, "How can something that doesn't speak a known language possibly express a desire to come to the physical plane!?" Well, the language spoken at the level where decisions to incarnate into this plane (and all other planes) are not any we know or can understand now (so get the picture out of your head of a cat on a higher plane meowing to God for permission to come here!) Even if I yanked you out of your physical body and took you to that vibrational energy state, you could not (or barely) comprehend it, nor could you explain it to another human being who had not experienced it repeatedly for themselves. Ịt is wordless and without form (note my word here-- without FORM-- that includes human or animal form, etc.) It is beyond known human expression. So until you go to this plane and experience this CONSCIOUSLY for yourself you will never understand what I'm saying. You will continue seeing animals and trees as "things" that are separate and lower than you and God, both without choice or higher reason, and you will continue seeing that you are "built in the likeness of God-- but not God" and your life will keep going on in separation and duality.
 Energy can chose to come here as a dog. Energy, such as a sub earth entity (gnome for example) can and does chose to exist in that sub plane, yet may someday chose to come to this plane in human form. Now, please note that these decisions are not made in the lower bodies. Yes, you have "choices" in the lower bodies but you also have Divine Choice. Your Divine Choice selects where you will be born, what era, to what parents and siblings, the mates you will come across, and the selected lessons you would like to learn. When you are born, you have no clue about this (nor does the dog, rock or tree), but your higher self does. You list a bevy of beings that seemingly have no choice, but they ALL have choice! Why? Because we are all part of God, and every single thing that you can and can't see is part of that sea of energy. And all of this energy, though it doesn't seem like this to you, has purpose.
We think of God as only the Almighty and All Knowing but God is also the rock, the leaf and the bird. We need to get over our image of God as a separate entity with a flowing white robe and beard. God is all things and manifests itself in ways we cannot fathom. God did make man in the likeness of itself, but it also did this with everything else! We just don't "get" it! Until you get this principle, it will boggle your mind that It made all these other planets in our solar system that don't host human life! I mean, what a waste, right!? Why all those silly rocks and moons floating around out there in space? Why too do they exist? If we humans don't think and know about them, then why possibly could they exist? Religions of old used to believe that Earth was the center of the universe because they thought it HAD to be! What a ridiculous notion to think God would place we humans, in the likeness of God, somewhere in a galaxy among trillions! To even question this thinking meant certain death or banishment (as was the case with Galileo, whose work--proving the Copernicus theory that the earth was not the center of our solar system--was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church.) Well, we now know that we are not the center of our solar system, our galaxy or our universe, which is why Pope John Paul II called for its reversal in 1979, and the Vatican's error was acknowledged in October of 1992 by a papal commission...
Broaden your consciousness. There is more to God's experience than we humans running around on Earth. There is more to God's experience than the physical plane. There is more to God's experience than the sub planes and higher planes. God is infinite and all encompassing. It can manifest itself as a burning bush that talks to a feeble minded woman, a man who can part seas, or a speck of space dust that you'll never see.
Think of all mass as energy, and all energy as God. Slice it or dice it how you want, but that's how it is.

Culled from the internet