The Art of Unconditioned Choice
El Arte de la Elección Incondicionada
A reflection on how certainty can signal conditioning, and how genuine freedom involves risk, openness, and a willingness to be wrong.
The Art of Unconditioned Choice
A reflection on how certainty can signal conditioning, and how genuine freedom involves risk, openness, and a willingness to be wrong.
It's a belief system. It's a pattern system. And so it is, by definition, not free. If whenever you have a sensation it means "go left," you are conditioned.
Certainty as a sign of conditioning
Whenever there is a certain kind of certainty about what is right, the more certain you are, the more conditioned it likely is. This is very different from saying, "I really don't know, but I really feel like this is what I want, and I'm going to take the risk. If I'm wrong, I will learn." There has to be that kind of openness. There is a sense of risk: "I'm listening to something that seems deeper, but I'm not sure." That is more likely to be unconditioned and free.
The endless craft of fine-tuning
But there is always the artistic process, the craft of fine-tuning this and learning. And that is endless. It never arrives at doing this right or well. We get better at flowing. We get better at being aligned, connected. Something happens over time where the deep negative consequences of mistakes lose their grip, so that we are less bound or terrified of the outcome of pain.
Non-attachment to the outcome
That is the Buddhist pointer of non-attachment to the outcome of our actions. You could simply say: be okay with the pain if you make a mistake.