Where Choosing Comes From
De dónde viene el elegir
A student describes struggling to make a major life decision, and the teacher suggests a precise meditation practice to investigate the nature of choosing itself.
Where Choosing Comes From
A student describes struggling to make a major life decision, and the teacher suggests a precise meditation practice to investigate the nature of choosing itself.
I'm in the process of determining whether or not to continue my relationship. In couples therapy I mentioned that I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this decision with the tools and the consciousness that I have, that maybe I need to go on a journey or something. It just so happened that some friends were organizing a medicine ceremony, so that's what I did this weekend. The guide was a Chilean man who had studied with various people and held really beautiful space.
The question of what I want is still tricky for me. But I started to understand something about being the alpha and the omega, and how being tapped into a sense of connection, into life itself, really loves clarifying. It feels a lot easier to flow. Maybe that's just a practice.
I think I sometimes try to make decisions from a highly structured place, a place of heavy conditioning and habitual thinking. It's almost like I'm trying to solve a programming challenge, working my way through the options with the tools I have, trying to deduce something. Being on the medicine, and afterwards as well, I could really feel the futility of that. If I just make space and listen and move and feel, if I operate from a place of instinct, it feels a lot cleaner, easier, and clearer.
I'd say one thing there: instinct is as conditioned as thought. When you say "instinct," you might be using the word more generally or metaphorically to mean an intuition, or what I would call a true spontaneity. There are things that feel spontaneous but are actually automatic and reactive. And then there's a spontaneity that is this true listening. Be careful with even using the word "instinct" as the way you interpret that decision-making, because we do have instincts, and instincts are very conditioned.
I think that's what I was referring to when I said it feels like a practice. There were moments where it felt very much like not only knowing, but channeling or just feeling.
The meditation of one finger
I think you need to look at where choices come from. Literally. As a meditation practice.
Have one finger out and decide to move it. Stop moving it. Do that for quite a few minutes. Do it really attentively as a meditation, and look at the decision, where it's coming from, when the finger moves, when it doesn't. The assumption is, "Well, I decide to move it, and I move it. I decide not to, and I don't." Look more closely. Look past that. Look underneath that. Look behind that. Look with a lot more attention, a lot more sensitivity, and precise, scientific focus.
Look at all the assumptions. Look at what it seems like: it appears as if I choose, I have the thought, the finger moves. But then, where did the thought come from? "Well, there's an impulse. I have the impulse to move the finger, and then I move the finger." Where does that impulse come from? Is that you creating it, or is it just happening? Is it just appearing?
I'd like you, and anybody else who wants to, to actually do this. It could be something you do thirty minutes a day for a week. Just one finger.
Seeing through the illusion of the chooser
I think for you to unravel the kind of knot you're in around choosing, you need to understand choosing. You need to look at what you consider choosing to be and see through what we might call illusions around decisions. To know where choosing comes from, we need to create an entity that's the chooser, and then to say "I'm choosing," we need to identify with that entity. Whenever we do that and operate from there, it's conditioned, it's limited, and it's the opposite of what I'm describing as choosing from a deeper want, a deeper desire.
These are all words, so it's hard to be very precise. I try to be precise, but the more precise you go with words, the more you create a very clear map of only half of things.
You're welcome to try it or not, but I think it could be helpful. You're blocked, you're stuck on choosing, and I think you need to look closely at who you are, who is choosing.