The Fear Inside Every Decision
El miedo dentro de cada decisión
A student describes feeling lost and overwhelmed when facing decisions, and the teacher explores how conditioned fear drives us to choose too early or too late, and how alignment emerges when we learn to sit with uncertainty.
The Fear Inside Every Decision
A student describes feeling lost and overwhelmed when facing decisions, and the teacher explores how conditioned fear drives us to choose too early or too late, and how alignment emerges when we learn to sit with uncertainty.
I feel validated in my being terrible at making decisions.
I love that. Whether you mean "terrible" because you make decisions and things often don't work out, that is still a sign of conditioned functioning. If you want, we can look into that. We can talk about it some more. But it's up to you.
I don't have very much time, but yes, a little bit would be good. It's a feeling of being lost with decision-making, that uncertainty. Sometimes that can actually feel like a good place to be, but it can also be overwhelming. Lost is just uncomfortable.
Paralysis, impulsiveness, and the avoidance of fear
Exactly. And that's what happens. For some people more naturally, and for some through this work of waking up and seeing through thought, there is a sense of, "This is very confusing. How do I make a choice?" There is so much uncertainty. What can happen is not necessarily a paralysis, a freezing, but the uncertainty brings up fear, so we go to the mind to bring the fear down. "Just tell me this is the way."
Or, because we can't trust the mind anymore, because we see through it, we become impulsive. We make choices more reactively. This is still conditioned thought, but it functions differently. It is less like "I've thought this out and this is the way." It is more like "I can't do it, I'm just going to jump." That is still a conditioned reaction.
It's almost like a reactive type of thing.
Yes. It is still reactivity, and it is still conditioned. It just functions differently.
Choosing too early or too late
What we can do is recognize: this is how I operate. Look at the fear. Look at the discomfort. Look at what the choice is starting to bring up. Learn to sit with it. Another thing we do is we often choose too early or too late. When we choose too late, we need to jump, we need to be impulsive. When we choose too early, we didn't actually need to choose yet. We couldn't sit with the uncertainty, we couldn't sit with the fear.
There is a habit at work: "I can't contemplate this because the anxiety and uncertainty are too scary." Or: "I can't sit with the uncertainty, so I'm going to figure this out and decide." And it would have actually been better to wait a week, to have more information. Or we choose too late because we left it to the last minute, and then we force ourselves to be impulsive.
But the core of it is our inability to be with the reality of the uncertainty and the anxiety and fear it brings up, and the responsibility it requires.
When decisions become spontaneous
A sign that things are starting to work out is that we become more settled with the uncertainty. The decision becomes almost what I would call spontaneous, versus impulsive. It just arises. It feels right, and it works. More often than not there is an alignment. Even when things don't work out as we thought they would, it ends up being okay. "I would have wanted it differently," or "this didn't go the way I hoped," but it actually worked, or I learned something. There is much more of a non-doing and ease. But it is important to note: things start to work out.
There is an alignment with the universe, with life. The choice is actually what I would say is life, the universe, choosing. We are just listening and allowing, getting out of the way. It is operating through us.
Yes, I'm familiar with that occasionally too, and that always feels really great.
That taste of it is great. And it is a sign of something that is possible. It is possible for that to be our normal state.
That's what feels right and true and best. And alive. Really alive. It also feels quite connected to what you were just saying about thought and the story of "I know."
The big "no" to things as they are
Exactly, because it is the same problem. We don't allow, because we can't sit with the uncertainty, because we have a problem with what is happening. We have a big "no" to things being how they are. And then we are operating in a fight against the universe: "I know how it should be, how it is."
And also, in decision-making, there is a mind that says, "I should know."
Yes. And that's where we get into the particular flavors of how it works for any particular person. For you, it seems like that is something that comes up: "You should know. You need to know. So figure it out." But it is actually coming from conditioning. You heard it a million times. You were made to feel pain when you didn't get things right. And now you are on a mission to know, and it is an avoidance of the pain of not getting things right.
Meeting the old wounds
We start to discover the old woundings. We can call them old, but they are very much alive now. And the healing starts to happen as we learn to sit with that and drop the judgments. We come to understand: I was just a child, and my caretaker was a confused person. Then there is an embracing and an owning of the pain that is here, and a holding of it. You could call that reparenting. You become the parent of your own inner child, your own pain, your own fears. But it is a path of owning and responsibility, not self-blame. It is just: this is me. This is my heart that is broken.
It feels like that's what we want, as a person, at the deepest level. What the universe wants to be, what the universe wants through us.
The crucifixion of the illusion
And at a level, it is a crucifixion. It is a crucifixion of the illusion of being only human. Metaphorically, that is what it requires. It is a surrendering that happens, not something we do. It happens through listening to what is deepest. The personal self is crucified, and the universe then gets what it wants.
And it is never not what I want. There isn't the universe wanting one thing while I want another. My deepest want is the universal want. The issue is what I call myself, what I interpret "I" to be.
I say this so it is not misinterpreted. If something feels like it is wanting something you don't truly want, that is not the universal desire. That is why I ask: what do you, as the universe, want? Because it is my deepest desire. And I am not talking about "I want a coffee right now," or "I want to get married," or "I want to travel the world," or "I want to create music." Those are infinite possibilities for infinite beings.
It is a desire that has a very deep energy, a power: this is what I want the most. And when we start listening to that, things start to synchronize.
What we most want is what we most fear
I think it is also common that we know what we are avoiding, what we want, what we are afraid of. It is always a blur, but it is also like, "I kind of know." And for someone I know a little bit, I can start to tell: you really just want this. It is no secret, generally. It is just a general direction: how to live, what matters, what brings you joy. And you are afraid of it. It is often the thing you are most terrified of, because it is the crucifixion, metaphorically.
I know that what I am speaking of can bring a lot of thoughts and confusion, but I think it is important to contemplate and have that confusion appear and shake things up a bit.
That has been a really powerful and constant thing for me ever since I first came across you and started coming to these meetings. The strongest pull in my life has been to find out what the universe wants, what I am doing here, and what wants to be done through me. And to have a big passion for every individual to be able to discover that and be that.
That's beautiful.
I feel quite fortunate. Some of the time it is really difficult, challenging and heartbreaking and frustrating. But a lot of the time it is very wonderful. Over the last year, going into that question much more deeply, there have been a lot of crucifixion elements coming up, just discomfort and being with the discomfort of it. It is confusing and uncomfortable, and there is loss. But I can also see that it is helping in some way.
Disassembling and realigning
That's great. At first it is this kind of disassembling, and then things start to realign in a deeper place. Disassembling all of the conditions, meeting the fears and the pains, all of the stuff we are to some degree running away from and avoiding. We often run so hard that it creates such a mess in our lives that it becomes the only reason we start looking into it.
I am speaking of myself. Fifteen years ago, I knew what I wanted, but I was avoiding it and running away, in a lot of conflict. At one point I literally ran so hard that I broke several bones. I ended up awake all night with a cast after being in the hospital all evening. Suddenly this terror appeared, and I realized: this is what I have been avoiding. There was a terror of a decision I needed to make, and I was avoiding it.
I sat through the terror, through the night, and the decision was obvious. I just looked at it and thought, "I know what I want, and I am terrified to go this way." That is how I managed to get to it: after being in the hospital all night, on painkillers. I was literally running as hard as I could away from that choice, which was creeping up on me because it had a deadline. I had also gotten myself drunk first, and then I ran. All kinds of bad.
I wonder about that, because I have also been quite ill this year. I have had a lot of chronic pain, migraines, and other pains on top of that. Being in physical pain can also teach you a lot. Sometimes I look for answers in that as well, what it is trying to tell me.
The physical dimension
There could obviously be medical reasons and conditions that can be addressed, and you do what you can with that. What is left, some of it maybe you can't do anything about, and some of it might be an energetic process. More alternative things can work. I have been in that place, and all kinds of things helped.
Once, very strangely, a dentist helped. He unlocked an energetic process. He was also a healer, secretly. He had set up a dental practice as a front for his healing work and trained some dentists to detect people who needed his help. I was one of them. I went to the dentist for a very specific procedure, and he said, "No, don't do it. I need to refer you to another doctor." I went to see this other doctor, and after months the healer explained it all to me. A lot happened. He had two whole floors in a medical building and was the owner of the entire thing. You would never know coming in.
He did some very unusual practices that really helped. One of them was removing molars to unlock a problem I had in my jaw. Then he did energetic work. I had been sleeping two hours a night with insomnia, and I thought it was psychological. One morning he told me, "Buckle your seatbelt. Today it changes." I went through a huge energetic process that day, and then I started sleeping eight hours a night.
That sounds like something that life brought you to, exactly what you were talking about before: just being open.
Exactly. I was exploring very actively. I was in a lot of physical pain, insomnia, chronic pain. I saw all kinds of bodyworkers and healers, and a lot of it helped. Something would shift, and then it would get to a next thing, and then something else would help with that. Very active in that process as well, not just meditating. It is a very physical process.
For anyone who has migraines, I would always say: get all the medical checks and explore. But there is a lot more going on than we can imagine.
I feel like it's a big, big old mix. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Nice to see you.