The Freedom to Choose
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A group of us were chatting after the writing part of Writing Club, and we were really getting into it on different spiritual ideas. Someone asked, "What is the fundamental unit of spirituality?" He explained that with coding, printing a statement like "Hello world." is the fundamental unit of writing software: compiling code and displaying the results. A friend suggested that witness consciousness is the fundamental unit of spirituality. This is the state of noticing thoughts and emotions without identifying with them, a recognition that someone is not their fleeting internal state. Witness consciousness is quite evocative to me (I discuss my take on it here) but the idea didn't resonate as the fundamental unit with the man who asked the question. To him, witness consciousness felt more weighty and advanced than what he was looking for. I then proposed that the fundamental unit of spirituality could be noticing the space that is available between stimulus and response. The question asker liked that idea more, though it is a sort of rephrasing of witness consciousness, and I was glad in the moment to have provided a satisfactory answer. Since I said that two days ago, I've reflected on how I don't actually live it out. I have a tendency to go along with my impulses, good and bad. This way of living is great for enjoying my life in the moment, but this enjoyment can come at the expense of future me when for example I scroll too much or stay up too late. Mentally, I know that I have the freedom to choose whether to indulge in any inclination that arises, but I don't live that out in an embodied way. I don't pause to decide whether I truly want to do whatever my mind has suggested. I lecture on it better than I live it, and I want more congruence between my words and my actions. Fortunately, I have gotten really good at loving myself through the process of noticing my stumbles. My inner tyrant doesn't help in any circumstance, whereas my inner collaborator more neutrally assesses situations and looks for ways to do something different. I love that I always have the freedom to choose how I respond. I see it as a form of abundance available to all of us, and I want to more intentionally enjoy that abundance. I would love to read about a recent experience where you exercised your freedom to choose how to respond. Please reply with whatever comes to mind there. Thank you for your time and attention. Programming Note: I am shifting this newsletter to go out three times per month. I have advertised it as a monthly newsletter, so I want to explicitly acknowledge this change and wish you well if this new frequency is not aligned with your freedom to choose how you spend your time :^) |
@strangestloop
I am an addict. At the festival a priestess asked us to write our sins on a slip of paper, fold it up and place it in a spherical glass bowl. I wrote: I habitually overeat and undersleep and overscroll. I don't want you to know these things about me for various egoic reasons, but allowing myself to be seen and known has been wonderful medicine for me lately, so now you know. An addiction means that someone knows that the thing is harmful, but they do the thing anyway. I know. I know as I do...
On a recent neighborhood walk I noticed and appreciated what I looked at as though it were an art gallery and that got me thinking about how I can appreciate the details in my awareness in all moments and that got me thinking about the importance of paying attention to what I pay attention to. I continue to pull on the red Kabbalah string and its lessons continue to be comforting and clarifying and inspiring. There is an emphasis on noticing the tendency to unconsciously react and instead...
I have been really enjoying loving presence lately. I believe it is an underutilized and underappreciated orientation towards any situation in life, but especially those where there is resistance or discomfort. But what is loving presence? It is simply to be both loving and present with whatever is in front of you. It is not partial presence, distracted by a screen or thoughts of the past or the future. It is not partial love, insisting that someone needs to be different than how they are. If...