You Are Not Your Thoughts

[Dreamtimer]

Losing someone you love is not the same as losing love.

I've personally experienced the phenomenon of loving something/one and letting them go. That's a scary thing. And it works.

I'm not sure love itself can really be lost. I hear this choice being discussed: love or fear? I can't quite embrace it as a choice.

The love is always there. The fear gets in the way and can cause people to turn their backs on love. And it's still there, right behind them.

I believe it was Buddah who said that suffering teaches compassion. Compassion is good friends with love.

[Aianawa]

For myself the each moment choice of fear or love, came to me as a spiritual foundation to start with through Conversations With God series ( books ), so that is where I am coming from experiencially. Every decision comes from love or fear.

[lcam88]

I'm put forth this thesis on more than one occasion: we actually make very few real choices in life.

We always choose in accordance with our preferences, whatever other option we may be faced with is never selected. Our organism and its ability to calculate and adapt has already made the choice, we merely follow through with the routine accepting (through some type of flawed logic) that a choice was made through our own free will.

Absolutely nobody will choose to eat spinach if they don't like it while they have the option of selecting something else they do like. They will only choose to eat the spinach if they are coerced, The forcing function that overrides their personal preferences is powered perhaps by fear (You will not grow big and strong...), sometimes out of love. (oh try some, you may find you like it as much as I do...)

The only time we actually make a choice is when we find ourselves completely undecided about the options, when there is a 50/50 chance of choosing one option over the other. A state where our ego and our preconceptions do not drowning out that moment when our higher self may whisper ever so gently the higher desire or choosing.

...unless we are mistaken and we think that surviving is living. That is the problem with the common notions of God, what we need be fearful of it; thus believing in that type of god, we would be condemned to living a life of survival, which is indeed the ego's domain.

The fear gets in the way and can cause people to turn their backs on love.

Perhaps better said as, "they lose sight of love". Which is to lose the state of "connectedness".

[Aianawa]

Hi lcam88, I feel maybe I am talking about one percentage of humanity and yourself another.

[lcam88]

I'm pretty sure we are talking about the same thing.

We seem to agree that choices are made from a position of love or from a position of fear (ego fighting to survive at some level).

The only difference is that I go so far as to say the decision to survive is not a real choice (choices appear as relating to fear at whatever level, or personal ego related preferences).

[Dreamtimer]

lcam88, that was really well said.

Aianawa, thank you for your clarification. I'm not familiar with that work, though I've heard of it.

This life is so short. We're like sparks, in our brevity and in our light. I personally believe that's how we were made in the likeness of our Creator.

It's said that when we die we wake from the dream and return to 'reality'. We can connect to and experience the 'real world' in the Dreamtime or Dreamworld.

Our drive to survive this physical life is massive. Choices are limited and/or driven.

The perception of choice is nice while we're here. We can seek happiness, comraderie, pleasure, love...

As a kid I heard several different sources say that to overcome fear you have to face it. I decided that's what I'd do. I did it in dreams and in waking life.

The final challenge is to fully realize the power available in life and use it, responsibly. It's scary to take full responsibility for our actions. People come up with all kinds of reasons that someone/thing else is responsible.

I used to be shy/reserved and it was sometimes scary just to do normal things in front of other people. I feel pretty confident it was my own will that moved me beyond that. There's no one else that gets credit.

[Aianawa]

I'm pretty sure we are talking about the same thing.

We seem to agree that choices are made from a position of love or from a position of fear (ego fighting to survive at some level).

The only difference is that I go so far as to say the decision to survive is not a real choice (choices appear as relating to fear at whatever level, or personal ego related preferences).

Why would one be here if one has no choices ?.

[lcam88]

Why would one be here if one has no choices ?.

hmmmm. I did phrase it as "we actually make very few real choices in life".

Perhaps because, out of love, we choose to be here.

Deciding not to suicide is different from deciding to survive. Survival is the goal of the ego, once you start analyzing and deciding everything in terms of survival, really are you making an actual choice? Is deciding to survive actually even a choice, no, it is the status quo. Behavior, habit and almost all the preferences we have innately have survival value; decisions based on that set of characteristics are fulfilling the role of survival.

That said, preferences in art, in "refined" taste of some kind, perhaps those preferences can be said to be based on something besides survival... Maybe?

[Lansing]

Why would one be here if one has no choices ?.

Perhaps to experience?

[Aianawa]

Experience/ing is a choice.

[lcam88]

Experience/ing is a choice.

It that were true, Aianawa, we would be able to turn off our reality, we would be able to choose not to experience (torture for example).

That said, when we daydream or shift the focus of our reality, we do make a choice about what we experience. But that we cannot choose not to experience being the point I would like to make above.

[Dreamtimer]

I think you're right, lcam88. We have subtle choices. I took Aianawa's phrase to mean that we chose to be here having the experience. Once we're here it plays out.

I made a choice as a child to trust my instincts. They saved my life. If I had chosen to ignore them, I'd be maimed or dead. It was a simple choice. It had huge consequences. There was no perceptible danger. My instincts warned me.

If this choosing is delusion it's very convincing and consistent.

We can't recall our higher selves or last lives while here. We can't recall the future, though we've likely seen it. This lack of knowing leads us to the state of experiencing and choice making. It's part of this life experience. IMO.

[lcam88]

I think you're right, lcam88. We have subtle choices. I took Aianawa's phrase to mean that we chose to be here having the experience. Once we're here it plays out.

I can see what you mean by that. Fundamentally that requires that you believe (but no evidence to actually support it) that you also have an alternative.

I made a choice as a child to trust my instincts. They saved my life. If I had chosen to ignore them, I'd be maimed or dead. It was a simple choice. It had huge consequences. There was no perceptible danger. My instincts warned me.

If this choosing is delusion it's very convincing and consistent.

We can't recall our higher selves or last lives while here. We can't recall the future, though we've likely seen it. This lack of knowing leads us to the state of experiencing and choice making. It's part of this life experience. IMO.

Well said indeed.

I don't disagree with Aianawa necessarily, but rather out of trying to be consistent in the nuances.

We may accept that we are our thoughts (we have choice) we may also view that we are not our thoughts (we make very few actual choices).

Perhaps the only choice we cannot have, ever, is a choice about whether to experience or not. That boils down to an observance that Nothing is not part of the Universe. Everything is part of the Universe.

His point that we actually have a choice to experience would be like saying Everything else is a part of the Universe. That would imply that Nothing is indeed Something.

Or did I get that backwards?

I don't think so because experience is essentially about existence. Not to experience would be about Nothing. So then, experience could only be like having the freedom not to choose.

[Dreamtimer]

I can only speculate about what the alternative would be. Another experience maybe.

Proof? Could I prove I was in the Matrix? Neo had to have help to even be able to make his choice. The Oracle didn't know or understand a lot about her own choices.

So much of experience can't be proven.

Perhaps the vastness of possibility that is always before us is proof of choice.

[lcam88]

I can only speculate about what the alternative would be. Another experience maybe.

Indeed.

Proof? Could I prove I was in the Matrix? Neo had to have help to even be able to make his choice. The Oracle didn't know or understand a lot about her own choices.

Hence the term belief; noone can really be 100% sure.

So much of experience can't be proven.

But interestingly, you are absolutely certain of your experience at this moment. I can draw attention to the sensations you may feel in your toes, right now, and in your experience you will _know_ how they feel. There is no need to appeal to believing, theorising or examining a presentation of evidence beyond simply noticing.

And in this exercise, however small, of noticing, perhaps I've also encouraged you to make a choice, to try, this moment become immersed in a "love" with those toes. Hence an experience you may not have had in the same way is now a part of who you are.

Perhaps the vastness of possibility that is always before us is proof of choice.

This view of vastness, perhaps incomprehensible and all encompassing is the way the universe is taught to us. But we only imagine as much. The universe of our experience and our life is very different.

Many a day we may feel that our lives are routine and mundane even as we may recognize possibilities we would never take, because of unbearable consequences. The possible choices are then only imagined, not experienced.

For example, it is easy to imagine being in a peterbilt dump truck with a car-plow mounted in front. To accelerate and clear a path through traffic and put an end to the seemingly unbearable mundane of the modern traffic jam. And indeed it may be possible to rent, or steal a truck, the plow would require a few weld beads over some scrap 1/4 inch steel, reenforcing structures and a hydraulic cylinder, and then show -time.

But really, I will never do such a thing even if I manage to swallow a lie of my own making in thinking it is a real choice.