Driving to work one morning I thought, can I choose to go north vs. south (towards work). But I didn't go north because I had to go to work. Our choices are very much dependent on our desires, wants and needs. In a day to day life we don't really exercise our choice. There are probably a few times in our life when we stopped for a moment and made a conscious choice.
There is another level of choice that most people don't even realize they have. I believe this choice is more important than the material one. The choice to react in a peaceful way when someone yells at you. We have a choice to not react in anger or frustration. But we don't really choose consciously, because the choice is often made subconsciously based on the "Program". So it seems choice is an illusion until one can take control of the "Program"
5 comments:
The illusion of choice.
Seeing that we live in a civilized society and have been raised by our programmers (i.e. parents, teachers, religion, friends) to believe certain things often on faith and trust alone set us up to make "decisions" that are not necessarily our own.
Responsibility to others and the risk of standing out as an individual are often what make us choose the paths we do.
I don't believe, other than simple day-to-day decisions, that we have choice. The basic need, and really the only need, is to survive. Whether it's to just live or to pass on our genes or to avoid getting eaten by a mountain lion. We work to make money to have a house or possessions, a family.
Yes, we make the decision to take this job over that job or this route over that but do we really have true choice? I don't think so. I think you are right that we have to learn to take control of the "Program" or begin to reprogram ourselves to be able to have true choice. But is that really possible?
I think the word i'm looking for is discipline or more precisely self-discipline.
One can and should train oneself to exercise control over one's behaviour or emotions.
The socialization processes that we experience as children teach us some of the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.
My 'indoctrination' into my parent society was corrupted by my exposures to other cultures and systems of boundaries.
I grew up with friends whose history books were the opposite of mine, their victories, my defeats etc.
This taught me to question my own boundaries as well as theirs and try to uncover what seems to be universal or in common.
So the 'programming' is fortunately buggy and so we manage to evolve and act and react in more thoughtful ways.
We do have a choice and finally I excercised mine by choosing to put my thoughts on the blog vs checking the markets. But to make that choice was hard. The emails and reinforcements helped.But more than making the choice, keeping at it would be a hard task. As my grand father often said 'Sathsangathve Nithsangathvam, Nithsangathve Nirmohathvam, Nirmohathve Nichalathatvam, Nichalathatve JeevanMukthi'. Atleast we have Satsang...
Thanks Saurabh for the blog...
According to one school of thought - you might think that you chose, but its all "written". You are just an instrument to make that choice happen. On the other hand our duty is still to do our "Karma", and be in that illusive state of control, which makes us (feel) free to make choices that we want to make. Reality is that the "program" is complex. The permutations and combinations that affect the program are infinite. So there must be some scope of uncertain results due to the program execution. Did intelligence/Power/God/Spirit really had Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing planned (and we just chose that to happen); Were the tsunamies, wars etc. all planned? Was beginning of life from a blue-green algae planned or was it a result of the infinitesimally small probability of something happening? At this stage I am more inclined to think that we do have choices - choices that we should hold ourselves accountable for; And choices that come from experience and knowledge of life. More on this later. I am still thinking.
I think we can categorize the various schools of thoughts into 3 levels of freedom to make a choice.
1. Everything is pre-written and we almost have no choice
2. Consciously we don’t make a choice and most choices are made sub-consciously (driven by the "Human Program")
3. Making choices consciously every day and every moment
I believe most of us just go with the flow i.e. most often let the program choose. But I also believe that it’s possible to live life with complete freedom based on readings about Buddha.
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