The Freedom of Choosing
La libertad de elegir
A question about what disidentification really is, whether it implies a separate agent that needs to become free, and why we sometimes prefer to remain in illusion.
The Freedom of Choosing
A question about what disidentification really is, whether it implies a separate agent that needs to become free, and why we sometimes prefer to remain in illusion.
I was following up on this conversation. I seem to have a problem, or not a problem, but I'm not sure what this disidentification is. What is it that disidentifies? It seems as if it's just seeing how things are and noticing that we are already free, that we are already not identified, but we haven't seen it so completely. When you were asking earlier, "What is it that sees what appears?", to me the answer points to the I-am, the I-amness that is also not separate from the scene. When I see it directly, there's something about this identification that seems to imply there is something that needs to disidentify. But that something already has to be free, already has to be disidentified.
Yes, that's where it's a choice. At that level, I would say it's a choice. In a sense, you're right that it's incorrect to state it as "there needs to be disidentification, and then something will happen," as if you were identified and then you're not identified anymore.
The choice at every moment
This is closer to what I was describing in the meditation: at any moment you decide to know and define what you are, you're not in meditation. At any moment you don't know what you are, you're in mystery. You are free. You're not identified.
So it's more accurate to say it's a choice at any moment: to define what you are or not, to believe you know what you are or not. That is a movement that is free. It's a choice of noticing that you're already free. It's also a choice to decide to believe you're not free, to experience this experience from the perspective that you're limited, or from the perspective that you are free. All of that is a choice, and you can make it either way at any time.
The pull toward illusion
What happens is that there's, for some reason, an attachment that tends to carry a certain level of pull toward illusion, toward being identified. It is sticky until something happens where we generally come to prefer being free over being stuck in illusion. Then that becomes more normally our way of experiencing, a preferred perspective: the one that is free.
This is normally what happens. It's not typical that we grow up in illusion, spend five years completely free, then five years completely back in illusion, and then twenty more years in illusion. That's not the usual pattern. Normally we go into illusion very young and stay there until at some point we decide to be free. And then the decision is normally to be free from then on, to a large degree, and it is generally preferred.
It's very interesting, putting it in those words.
And then you could ask, and I have asked myself: why is it that there seemed to be so many years of the preference to live through identification and delusion?
Wanting to taste suffering
My experience, my own taste of why that was chosen, why I preferred it, is that I simply wanted to know what that experience was like. I wanted to taste it, the way you might want to try a certain wine or a certain ice cream. I wanted to know the experience of the depth of suffering and pain. I just wanted to taste it, to experience it, until I didn't.
What became very clear to me, and what was very surprising, was how much I could see in retrospect that it was chosen. I did have glimpses in those years. I had that knowing through subtle moments of "I'm choosing this," a sense of "I really do want to know what this is like." Being in a truly hellish place and having this flash of recognition: "I feel like I'm actually wanting to taste this. There's a deep reason, a deep meaning behind my need to know it." And then back into the torment. When the whole veil finally collapsed, I saw the entire thing and thought, "I really was choosing that. I really wanted to know." And there was absolutely nothing wrong about it. Completely perfect and beautiful. Difficult, but perfect.
It is being chosen
This is why, when I hear these conversations where the experience is "I want to be free, I want to disidentify, but I'm stuck and it's happening to me," I recognize it, because that's how it was for me. But I know the reality is that it's being chosen at the deepest level.
In a sense, if I intuit that I'm still choosing illusion rather than freedom, I have to be very compassionate with myself, not judge that.
I don't think you have to be compassionate and not judge. I think that's unnecessary. That would be necessary only if you believed you were choosing it because it's wrong, because you're doing something wrong. If you can really see that you're choosing it, savor it, commit to it fully. Otherwise there's this sense of "I'm choosing it, but it's because I'm doing the wrong thing, there's something wrong with me, and I shouldn't be doing this," and then you need to compensate for that misinterpretation by telling yourself "I have to be compassionate with myself." No. You're fully free. You're choosing. Enjoy.