Choice: It’s Nature

Test and Cut

There are two phases to choice: The first is choosing, the second is deciding. The first is picking a path to try. Here we are testing a possiblity – a fit. With the second we are picking a path to follow. In doing so, we are cutting off other possibilities and leaving ourselves one to lead us on.

Choice is how we test for the reality we want because through our choices, we cross through a “doorway” into the “landscape” of the path a given choice lies in. It gives us a chance to get a taste of what we can / could expect if we follow through with a given choice. A decision is created when we cut off other possibilities or avenues at a given point. When we decide that a choice is one that is wanted, the path becomes foundational. It is in choosing and deciding that we lay the foundation of the reality we are going to experience.

Response VS React

However, true choice is only available to us in the space between response and pressure; whether from ourselves – inside – or from others – outside. We even have choice in this: We can allow the pressure to be there and simply react as in a reflex, or we can respond from the only real place available to us to do that – from our center which is never perturbed. The greater the gap between ourselves and the pressure, even if it is from within, the more choices we have available to us. The more choices we have the greater the possibilities for creating what we truly want.

Some choices have short term consequences, other choices have long term ones. We cannot always readily tell one from the other when we reach these points, since we can only see until the first bend in the trail. However, as we gain experience, we learn the weather of circumstance and the terrain of situations and as we do, we begin to recognize patterns for experiences and it is in the patterns that we learn the art of foresight. However, even then we cannot know the full length of the particular trails that lie before us in this moment, although we time and again try to force the objective experience into the time frame we believe something ought to take.