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
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