Did you choose to read this text? Or was the choice taken by me when I decided to write it and publish it?
Could you have chosen to read this text, if I had not chosen to write it?
If you now consider to stop reading this text, does that mean that you made a wrong choice to begin with?
Maybe you think that the content of this text does not live up to your expectations, but can you know that, if you stop reading it now?
On the other hand, If you now continue to read this text, is that then because of what I just told you?
If it was, then you continue to read this text, as a result of my choice.
Do you get the picture?
I am often emphasizing the importance of being able to ask the right questions. Awakening is all about asking the right questions. Asking the right questions exposes the habitual assumptions that are directing all of our doings.
A master once said that the unaware life is not worth living. It’s true. In the unaware life, there are no free choices.
The conditioned mind is choosing, and it is always choosing in accordance with its preconceptions. It has a strong confirmation bias, and seeks to reinforce its own world view. All of this is happening without any awareness of it.
That is why it is important to ask the right questions, but unfortunately that is the exact thing that the conditioned mind tries to avoid.
That is why awakening so far seems to be a rare event.
However, the more people that are awakening, the more difficult it becomes for the conditioned mind to avoid being confronted with its own ignorance. For that is what it is. Ignorance. The conditioned mind tries to protect its own ignorance. Actually it feels embarrassed about it, so that is another reason why it tries to avoid being confronted.
So there you have it.
Awakening is simple. Start asking questions to everything you have taken to be real. Don’t hurry. Just one question at a time is fine. But don’t be satisfied until you have uncovered the true and final answer to the question.
Ohh yeah, you will also need to be 100% honest towards yourself. 99.9% honesty is not enough. That will leave a room for self deception. But mind you, 100% honesty towards yourself is often painful. Painful when you have to acknowledge that you were wrong before. But then you will discover that that honesty is the healing balm that you have been longing for.
So do you actually have a free choice?
Let’s find out.
You cannot ever choose anything that you are not already offered as an option. Every single moment, the Universe is presenting you with a plethora of options that you can choose between. Are you free to choose between these options?
It seems like you are, but how do you choose? Is it habitual? Or we could also ask the question: Who is choosing? Your choosing is based upon what? Upon your decisions? Upon your thinking? If so, then we must ask the question: Do you have the free choice to think whatever you want?
Ponder that question for a moment.
Do you have the free choice to think whatever you want?
Well if you think you have, then you must also have a free choice to decide not to think at all. So if you think that you have this sort of free choice, then exert it right now.
Stop thinking for 10 minutes. for 5 minutes?
Let’s make it super easy, stop thinking for 1 minute. Can you do that?
Oups.
Why can’t you stop thinking? It’s your conditioning that is thinking habitually. And that means that in almost every single instance, it is also your conditioning that is choosing for you!
No you do not have a free choice to stop thinking, and thus you do not have a free choice in general. All of this can be a hard pill to swallow. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is the light of consciousness.
Our conditioning is running the game, and is what drives us around, but that is only as long as we identify with thinking. That is, as long as we find a sense of self in our thinking.
When we awaken, we awaken out of this identification with thoughts. Awakening means disidentifying with the thinking process, and by that we become aware of our own conditioning. When that happens we start to experience a free choice, but we don’t call it free choice, but rather we call it just freedom.
Freedom from the conditioned mind.
You who are listening to this, are in the process of awakening, for if you were not, you would not be able to listen to what I am talking about.
You are on your way towards freedom.
Keep moving.