Choice is an act of Spirit

Thank you Dad, for replying to my post. I especially like your mirror example! Its interesting what you can discover when you really look at a mirror! In answer to your comment, I've expanded more on what choice versus decision would look like if we truly gave up mediocrity. There's nothing wrong with mediocrity per se. It just very common, and has specific predictable outcomes. I think there's value in looking at this further.

"Ray: And as I look at my life, I can see that my choices had to expose my weaknesses and display the avoidance of taking responsibility for ... decisions I have been dealing with daily."

Very well put - the choices/possibilities that one chooses automatically expose that which has to be dealt with to restore integrity so that the choice/possibility may be realized. What shows up is usually a list of things one has to give up or drop so that room can be made for the possibility to live.

An authentic choice is like a mirror that shows everything that obstructs the possibility from truly being. If the vision is compelling enough, the avoidance to take responsibility for manifesting it tends to take a back seat. A great example of choice versus decision is Gandhi's life. He made a choice and not a decision. Its amazing what we can overcome when the vision is compelling enough. Often, however, we limit our own visions, so that we can hide out in safe status quo. If the vision is small and does not touch, move, and inspire us - then there's nothing compelling to take responsibility for. We can thus avoid doing anything of substance.

Once a possibility/choice is made, the question is then always - what must I give up holding onto in order to have what I truly desire? Am I willing to give it up? If so, when will I give it up?

"Ray: What struggles within me is grasping and living the alignment of words and actions."

The struggle is nothing more than the resistance to the illusion that the actions one has to take to restore integrity are hard, or impossible, or having terrible consequences. The vision engendered by unsubstantiated fear of ridicule, or fear of failure is often more compelling if our visions are so small that they don't call us into action to deal with the resistance. Sometimes what is more compelling is how good we feel when we're victims, when we feel justified, self-righteous, or are getting our way. If we're getting any of those, then the payoff we get is what is actually causing the resistance to get in the way of authentic action. If we feel so good in mediocrity, why change it?

The resistance itself is fear - illusion of a bear that doesn't actually exist, or a feeling of loss of no longer being able to stand in a position of self-righteousness. The actions one must take are also never hard to take - they are only unpleasant, because we have to give up looking good and feeling self-righteously victimized by our circumstances. We resist doing unpleasant things because it means getting our hands dirty and putting in the work it takes to get the results.

Again, there's nothing wrong with any of this. There's nothing wrong with being lazy, a victim, or being self-righteous. Inaction due to fear or complacency just like any other decision, simply has its own specific consequences and results. The results are mediocrity. Its a lot simpler to decide on a life of mediocrity because to do what it takes to have full power, freedom, and self-expression is not always pleasant. It means being unreasonable (meaning, we're not going to let people talk us out of doing it by providing to us how impossible it is), and unstoppable in the face of circumstances and adversity. It means having to battle against hardship with the status quo. It means needing to have an unwavering and unbroken commitment to a possibility that is so compelling, that temptations and trapping of mediocrity cannot shake you. It makes taking risk.

Play it safe. You might get crucified...

But why should I risk my well established position in the community, my social circle, my company, my family, my friends. Why the hell should I actually create something amazing when I can sit and bitch about life and make people agree with me about how terrible my life is? The more people I can get to agree with me, the less I actually have to do to transform my life. Instead, I'm just recruiting them to agree with me on my life being terrible, and collude with me on inaction. Then I can feel safe and continue to bitch and sit in comfortable self-righteous indignance and fool myself believing life is great as I accept and resign myself to less and less.

The problem is that I've done such a good job convincing everyone that nothing is possible, and they've done such a good job convincing me that nothing is possible, that is particularly pisses me off when I see someone actually doing something great in their lives, because they're showing me up for being the fraud that I am in sitting in my own self-righteous feces. Lets kill them, before they show me up too much.

And when confronted with the possibility of actually doing something great myself, I see just how many people and circumstances disagree with my possibility (because of how well I've trained them to be resigned and cynical about anything great being possible), that I'm daunted and afraid by what it will take to not be sucked in by their cynicism, and stand in the face of all of it and raise an authentic voice against mediocrity. After all, I may be crucified myself for not participating in being part of the fan club for their own complacency, and rationalized self-righteous existence. Then they might call me names, and call out all my faults, and cut me down a peg or two, and drag me back into the gutter with them, and if that fails, beat me, withhold their affection, shun me, and cast me out of their circle. If I'm back in the gutter with them, then we can all roll around in our self-righteous muck of how harmed we've been by the world. At least we'll all agree with one another.

The Japanese have a saying - the nail that sticks out will be hammered down.

"Ray: Sometimes we hear: I made a wrong choice. Does that ever work?"

There are no wrong choices, and there are no wrong decisions. A choice is an act of free will. The choice then starts a choice-informed decision making process. The decision making process generates opportunities for action. A decision is an act of logic, and irrespective of the logic being faulty or flawless (in who's eyes can this be judge?), the output of the decision has actions which in turn have consequences.

What people do (and as far as I know, you and I are people) is judge the consequence, and not the decision or choice. In judging the consequence, people try to find the culprit who engineered the change in the universe by way of executing an action which was informed by a specific decision. This is done so that people can throw stones at the culprit if in their eyes the consequence of the action didn't meet with their approval. We're always looking for someone or something to blame to deflect from our own responsibility (ability to respond) to any given situation.

The issue here is that people engineer actions and changes in the universe all the time. We also have our own plan of action. These changes in the universe may not be aligned with our plan of action, and when circumstances collide, we are thrown off and then have to do a course correction. Either we do this gracefully, or we throw a temper tantrum and hang the schmuck who inadvertently stepped into our perfectly-constructed universe.

When someone determines that a decision was 'wrong', its simply that they don't like the consequences that have resulted from the decision. It may have resulted from poor judgment which occurs either due to faulty reason, an absence of facts, or a misperception of reality being a certain way, or simply events turning out in an unforeseen way. A decision being wrong is simply someone else's judgment. Have you ever made a decision and known it was wrong at the same time as you were executing the decision? If so, did you judge the decision to be wrong yourself, or was it a judgment coming from outside? If you made the decision, then you acted on it because it was right for you at the time you made it, regardless of external opinion. If I do drugs, its not a wrong decision. It is a decision I judge as right at the time (justified by the personal result I will temporarily feel), even while it may be wrong in someone else's eyes. Regardless of right or wrong, there are simply consequences.

When something happens, and then I create a story about it, I'm creating an interpretation of reality. I then choose to act on 'facts' of my story. This is an example of where decisions may appear wrong, only in hind sight. The fact is that we decided to act on a misperception, which they resulted in a consequence that we didn't like. The most common event, however is that we simply were not able to predict the outcome of a decision. Since we cannot see into the future or examine all possible outcomes, we can be surprised by the results of our decisions, and those results may have consequences we don't like. It doesn't necessarily mean that there was anything at fault with the decision. There will always be decisions I make which will have undesirable consequences. Its not just because I'm not omniscient (I know, its a pity. I'd like that, but I'm not going to make God wrong for it :). Its also because some of my decisions will be made as a result of my ego wanting to stay small, or to be immediately gratified, or because I'll want to avoid doing things which are unpleasant in the name of the choice.

I can only do my best in any circumstance, and accept responsibility for the consequences of every action, and not make myself wrong or blame anyone else. Blaming myself or another robs me of my power to transcend, my freedom to act, and my fully self-expression choice. I simply have to own my life and my circumstances, whether created purely by me, or impacted by another human being, and make my integrally-informed decision for the next action I can take to manifest my choice. The results achieved over time then sum up to the realization of my choice.

As far as a choice is concerned, a choice also cannot be wrong. A choice may, however be inauthentic. Anything that was chosen authentically cannot even be perceived as wrong because it arises out of integrity. Choosing someone else's possibility is simply not authentic to that person, unless the possibility touches, moves, and inspires the the other person also. In fact, the choosing of someone else's possibility is more of a decision based on not listening to authentically to ourselves, but needing to fill the void to look good, or not feel left out. My choosing a certain path may be an authentic choice for me, but it may not be an authentic choice for you. It does not make the choice wrong.

Because choosing is not an action, but is a state of being from which decisions are informed - choosing a path doesn't mean that the decisions that follow will have the consequences I expected them to. It doesn't mean that the decisions were wrong. In fact, there is no meaning in the decision itself. What happens, happens. There is always an element of risk associated with every decision. Should I eat cake, or should I eat salad? There could be life or death consequences, after all!!

The only thing that is important is to acknowledge our responsibility for any given situation. Not like "I made a decision, it didn't turn out like I thought it would, and I'm therefore to blame for this outcome". You can't always predict or know the outcome. The nature of responsibility is therefore simply acknowledging our ability to respond to any given situation, without making the situation or ourselves wrong.

In any given moment, there's never anything wrong. There's only what is, and our response to it. The response comes either out of authentic choice, rooted in integrity, or it comes out of a decision making process which attempts to judge and evaluate the situation based on stories, likes, dislikes, people's feelings, etc. The decision making process is therefore inherently limited to its power to transform a situation, as it is always seeking to constrain possibilities to a single, most congenial outcome. A decision always cares about the political impact and impact to our ego's ability to look good and feel safe - and to mitigate the fallout based on our limited understanding of what's so. Choice doesn't care less about impact.

If the choice is present, the decision making process is informed by that choice more powerfully than it is informed by circumstances and ego. A choice is therefore always a more powerful place to stand, because the choice is the vision of what is possible regardless of interpretation, circumstances, or consideration for other people's feelings, personal recognition, or our own ego's safety.