I’ve heard it suggested that more options are available when I am fully present and aware in each moment – more possibilities spread out like a tantalising platter of tasty snacks or fertile seeds of choice waiting to be impregnated by my response. The unfolding of creation?
So I wonder: what is the relationship between awareness and choice? Choosing seems to be a decision making process that engages the mind – a thinking process that weighs options to determine best action. What I’ve come to understand in the practice of meditation is that there can be awareness of thinking but little awareness in thinking. Being ‘in my head’ I find myself temporarily removed from the present reality and, if not disciplined, can easily get lost in loop of that thinking.
Being aware, with my eyes and ears open, I notice options and alternatives to choose from. If I don’t see the fork in the path I cannot know it is an option to me. I get that! However, it’s the choosing I feel uneasy with.
From what I’ve heard, read and experienced, when I am calm, centred, balanced and focused with full conscious awareness there is no thinking and no choosing. I am simply ‘in a zone’ and know what to do. It’s the closest I know to intuitive action – responding with a deeply felt impulse and complete clarity. Thinking is inadequate: too slow.
In this intuitive no-thinking mode of responding, where are the options and where is the choice? Do I have an option or must I follow this intuition?
Not follow would require incredible effort to ignore, cover, hide, pretend, distract myself or make excuses like sticking my head in the sand or keeping very, very busy with distractions.
It would be as though I don’t want to know what I simply must do.
That it feels easier not to know because what is required to know is more than I believe I can face.
As though my unconscious responses demand less of me.
That I’m choosing to be happy with less of me.
Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
So it seems my choice is first to take notice of what I absolutely have to do, and second to go with that flow without fighting or resisting it. That my response in each moment is different when I pay attention to what’s going on and listen for the only response. That I don’t choose from options, but choose to be aware and unveil the direction I am compelled to follow. Choice, in relation to awareness, is not the cart but the horse.