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Choose the Best You Can Until You Can No Longer Choose

| Nirmala | Practical Pointers

Choose the Best You Can Until You Can No Longer Choose

Published on
22 October 2013
Topic:
Practical Pointers
Author:
Nirmala

Q: If god is the doer and the person is not the doer, then every condition of my life is fixed. So which thought should i put in my mind and which actions should I do with my body?

A: It is a little more complicated than that. First of all, in an un-evolved state of consciousness like an animal or a human acting out of their animal nature, there is no real free will or choice as everything happens according to instinct and conditioning. Then as we evolve as humans, there is more and more free will and choice, as our self-awareness means that we can choose to act opposite to our conditioning. At first, most of us use this free will to try and get what we want out of life. Of course we succeed sometimes and do not get what we want at other times. But in the process of exercising our conscious free will, we develop our intellect, skills, discrimination, strength and power.

As our discrimination increases, we start to notice how acting out of self-interest is actually a place of suffering, and so we question our own choices and even our own identity on a deeper level. When we find our way to spiritual teachings and also gain a sense of our own intuition and wisdom, we can even start to choose to act in accordance with this inner wisdom. At that point, we experience more and more of this inner knowing, and so more and more of our choices come from there. This inner knowing is the wisdom of the Divine, so more of our choices come from the innate wisdom of the Divine.

Ultimately, all of our actions come from this deeper place within us when we realize that is who and what we really are. Then there is no longer any free will or choice in the sense that similar to how at the beginning of our evolution we could not choose to act except in accordance with our instincts and conditioning, now we cannot act except in accordance with our inner Divine wisdom. I sometimes call this choiceless choice. You just know what is true to do and do it without any possibility of acting otherwise. When I met my teacher, Neelam, I suddenly knew I was going to follow her to India even though I had no desire to go to India at the time. I would not normally have chosen it, and yet deep down I simply knew I was going.

So, first there is no choice, then gradually there are more and more choices to be made, and then gradually there are fewer and fewer choices that you "make" as life and Being just make them through you.

Therefore the simplist answer for now to your question is to choose to think and do whatever seems the truest and the most aligned with your essence. This can move you further into alignment with the wisest part of you. As long as you experience that you have a choice, then you might as well use it in the most effective way to align with essence, and thereby complete your evolution in spiritual understanding and growth. You can use your choices to bring you to the place where you truly realize you no longer have any choices!

To act as if there are no choices before this is fully realized is a kind of spiritual bypassing that usually does not work out too well, and yet in the meantime you can make your choices from the deepest and wisest place within you that you are aware of. For an exploration of how to know what is true and so to be able to make wiser choices, I would suggest you download my free ebook, Living from the Heart, and read part two which is about the heart's wisdom.

Download the entire book for free.

When we reach a bigger perspective, we realize that all along it was all God's doing and all God's choices. But practically speaking, we get to that realization not just by intellectually grasping the concept, but by also grappling with the many different levels of motivation and action until our own discrimination, motivation and action comes only from the depth of our Being. You choose the best you can until you can no longer choose any differently than the way your innermost heart knows to act.

I hope this helps.

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