Monthly Archives: April 2013

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Choice

Choice is a beautiful thing. It’s also a real toughie, because if you believe that it exists, your life is your choice, and if you believe that you don’t have a choice, then someone else is choosing for you. In either case, not easy.

I choose to believe that we have choice. About everything, every moment of our lives. No exceptions. As a matter of fact, this really showed up for me in the book towards the end during an exchange between the bird and the protagonist, where they discuss that everything is made up:

“”…I can make up anything I want about anything then.”

“Absolutely.”

“So I am made up as well?”

“Continuously. As long as you choose to.””

It’s such a short little line with incredible implications. This basically says that we choose to make up ourselves, or in other words, we choose to exist. Now, I have heard something of this nature before, but never in that context. Think about this, we choose to exist. As long as we choose to exist, we continue to have this human experience. When we choose not to, it’s done. What happens after, well, who knows. The point is that by and through our choice, we exist every moment of our lives. If and when I choose to end my life, it ends in its current form. Now, this is where an interesting conundrum arises, because this concept makes sense when we actively choose to end our life: we can jump off a building, drown ourselves, take pills, shoot ourselves, set ourselves on fire, drive off a cliff, jump into a volcano, in short there are a lot of ways that we could do this. It makes sense that this is our choice. But what happens to that choice when we die of natural causes or through a tragic accident or event? Is that still our choice or is this the point where we say that someone or something else is choosing that for us? We like to believe that, because who would ever choose an untimely or horrible death, right? But this is where we have to make a very fundamental decision about our take on choice. If I believe that I can choose my existence to end, than this is how it is, no matter how that choice shows up or plays itself out.

I either choose me or not. If I do, than this happens all the time, under all circumstances, always, and in all ways. The kinds and number of choices available to us depend on two things – whether we believe we have a choice and our awareness of it. In the past few years this has become increasingly visible to me. I have been experiencing my own life as a result of my choices more and more. It begins with the mood I find myself in, moves through the circumstance I am part of at any moment, and ends with my place in the universe. It’s my choice. I choose every thought I have at any moment in my life, and when I am aware of this, I choose and thus create a kind of thinking that is clearer rather than confusing, that produces calm rather than agitation, and puts me in charge of the experience I am having. This is very empowering and also freeing. The choice is mine. All the time. To believe this changes our lives.

How far does this choice thing go then? As far as I can tell, all the way, and I am not sure what this means exactly, but I can feel it. This goes as far as believing that even if I was murdered today, that this was my choice. That I chose to find myself in that circumstance, to act the way I did, and to end up getting killed. I truly believe this at this point, and with this I also believe that we choose our lives at different levels of awareness, some of which are not visible to us in our current state of humanness, but are nonetheless ‘there’ and real. I believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and that we may only be aware of different aspects of this at any time. Including the choices we make at different levels about this human life we are having. By choosing to believe this, the horrors we create, the trespasses we commit against each other, look different. When we dare to believe that we are the creators of our experience at different levels, obvious and hidden, at all times, then the possibility comes into view that we also choose all the horrible things mentioned. We choose this outside of our human view, but we still choose this, and we choose from a place where the duality of good and evil, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, have no meaning. Because limitless, all inclusive beingness is all there is ‘there.’

Told you this was a toughie. It still is for me, and I could be completely wrong, of course. All I know is that choosing to believe in choice this way has made my life more spacious, peaceful and fun. I choose my life at any moment, and am grateful for that. How about you? As always, I invite you to play with this in your life. Will you or won’t you? What’s your choice?

Cheers,

Ralf

 

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Control

Control is everywhere in the ego identified world. It really likes to hang out with need. It’s like this: Control and Need walk into a bar. They go up to to the bartender and Need says: “I need a drink now!” Control says: “Yes, but make that three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

Control is as important as need in ego identification, and one of them tends to be behind the actions we undertake out of that state. They are the foundations of ego identification. Because in an ego id world, control is an essential tool in making the ego more real. If I can control something or someone, then I exist. Only someone that is real and has some measure of control over the world, exists. This is the basis from which the ego operates. So it finds things to control. Our own thinking is where it begins, if I cannot be in control of my own thinking after all, where else is there to go? Once that is established, we go forth and establish all kinds of domains under our control, no matter how limited that may be. It’s not about the ‘amount’ of control that the ego seeks, it’s about control. That is why having control over the oddest or sometimes seemingly most insignificant things can be so important to people. And then we go ahead and laugh at those people, because they get so bent out of shape over nothing, they should see our lives, and the really important things we are in control of… Ego identification abounds.

The tough part with this control addiction of the ego is that in good times, when things are ‘under control,’ we get to feel good somewhat, while always having to make sure that things stay that way of course. We have to check on people, make sure tasks are done correctly, always demonstrating to ourselves that everything is just so. Have you ever caught yourself on a morning, and things were off somehow? Your mood was bad, your spouse was difficult, your kids were a nightmare, your car was old, your job sucked, etc.? Almost inevitably at some point during a mental shitstorm like that, the thought that we really don’t have control over our own life shows up. We then either keep going with it, and end up feeling worse and worse, until that moment when we have to throw up our hands and say ‘I don’t have control over anything in my life!’ or we commit an act of control. Make a decision that affects us and (even better) someone else as well. We make the kids do what we want them to, we tell our spouse or coworker that we need them to do something for us, and they do it, and bingo, we feel more in control again. Taken to the utmost extreme, our minds go completely out-of-control, we succumb to every thought we have, and we end up in varying degrees of mental illness. The ego after all says (to quote the bird from Flying Leap): “…that control is the measure of a certain life, and that knowing what is real is the test of your existence.”

Thus is the story that comes with control, it’s one or the other, I am in control or out-of-control or somewhere in between. It’s a game of duality, and a game that only works in duality. Outside of duality, it has no existence or meaning. Outside of ego identification, that is. That is the other possibility.

What if control was of no issue? What is we simply showed up in our lives and control was literally of no interest to us? This is not about being for or against it, it’s about living a life beyond control, where it does not matter in our experience of life. What does matter to us, is that we have choice. We choose (our) life, moment-to-moment. No one does this for us, and thus no one or no thing controls what we experience. We create our experience. If you can entertain this as a possibility, your life will change dramatically, and control will go right with it. If we live in a world where we alone create our experience, and we know this about others as well, control makes no sense. I create, you create, whatever we wish. This does not mean that we cannot have clarity around what works and doesn’t work for us, quite to the contrary, we are more clear on these matters. But we do not express this by means of controlling the other, but simply by expressing our view. It’s not about control, it’s about choice. It’s about all of us choosing our life circumstances. They are not imposed on us, which would mean someone or something is in control of it.

Most of our human systems on the planet are built around control, beginning with our own personal ego identified worlds, extending out to groups, nations, and any and all belief systems that tell us how to be. But it only works as long as we believe that we need to be in control to be real, once we choose not to believe this, the world is a different place. Starting with our own.

As always, check this out for yourself. The next time you think that something in your life is out-of-control, and you notice this, stop for a moment, and see how it feels. Then notice how your mind is trying to find a controllable action, something to get you back in control, and how you need this to feel better. Then don’t. Choose to not engage in this, choose to say that you have a choice, and see what happens. You may just find yourself creating something entirely different.

Cheers,

Ralf