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Archive for the ‘No Particular Path’ Category

Choosing and Creating Our Reality

In No Particular Path on August 24, 2012 at 8:29 pm

I believe in the existence of free will.  For me, nothing about life makes any sense without it.  But belief in free will isn’t necessary in order to understand about human choices.  Whether we are free to choose or not; whether there is some biological or spiritual imperative that compels us to choose a particular way, or whether each new choice is a surprise to both human and God; we nonetheless experience our actions as choices.  When I order my cup of coffee in the morning, and I decide whether to get a medium or a large; whether to get a decaf, a regular, or a blend; whether to add a pastry to the order; I am not able to feel the distinction between a free choice and a predetermined outcome.  I am only conscious of the choice I make as a choice.

More importantly, I am conscious that my choices have consequences.  If I get some caffeine in my coffee, I am aware that I may feel somewhat enervated afterwards; if I go with the pastry, I know that my blood sugar level may be affected, and in a family with a history of diabetes, it’s not a good idea to overdo that.  I take these risks because I choose to.  If I don’t feel as well as I would like later on, I can look back at my choices and understand something about why that is, and how I might want to choose in the future.

I am also conscious of possible meanings, evaluations, and judgments that I and others might make about my choices.  Do I feel good about my choices, or bad?  Perhaps I have a quick inner dialogue with myself in which I might tell me I am drinking too much coffee, that I need to eat fewer pastries and lose some weight; that I shouldn’t spend my money on such frivolities.  Perhaps I defend myself: I’m pretty healthy for a man my age; I have to die of something, after all; all things in moderation, you know.  Am I weak, courageous, foolish, wise, healthy or unhealthy?  Even these possibilities require choices.
There are, of course, some things that we do not choose.  Although there is evidence that I might learn how to become self-aware enough to consciously affect my breathing, my heartbeat, my brain waves; there is no evidence to suggest that each pulse is a deliberate choice, each firing of a synapse something I decide about, each breath preceded by a choice to breath or not.  It is also true that some things outside of ourselves have an impact on us.  If it rains, it is not because I have chosen the rain.  At the very least, I cannot experience these things as choices.

On the other hand, the things I do not choose create the necessity for choice.  Have I dressed for the weather?  Do I pay attention to my heart so that I can avoid problems or know when to seek medical treatment?  Where do I place the blame or credit for the things that happen to me?  Suppose, for instance, a tree limb falls on me and I’m injured.  I could take the blame or credit myself: I shouldn’t have walked this way; I should have heard the sound and ducked out of the way; or if I hadn’t reacted as quickly as I did, it could have been much worse.  I could blame or credit God or fate:  God must be trying to tell me something; God is punishing me for some sin, known or unknown; I’m just unlucky; or I’m fortunate it didn’t land on my head and kill me; God must have been watching out for me.  I could find others to blame or credit: I need to find out who owns this tree and sue them for negligence; this place ought to have signs warning people that there might be falling tree limbs; I will have to thank the instructor of that course I took on emergency preparation and first aid, because she taught me how to respond appropriately in this situation.

My response to the situation, moreover, is not just a choice about how to respond, it is also a choice about the meaning I create from what has happened; and a choice about the language I use to express that meaning.  And these choices build on one another, overlap, fold back into layers of choice and meaning and more choice and more meaning.  And the process continues long after the event itself has passed.  Every time I remember what happened, every time I tell the story, I will recreate the event and the meaning of it.  Memory is creative, not static.  Meaning is fluid, not fixed.  Underlying it all is choice, both conscious and unconscious.

In his 1968 book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, Harry Browne describes freedom not in absolute terms, nor in terms of forces acting upon the individual, but in terms of the choices the  individual makes regardless of the forces acting upon him.  Paraphrasing Browne, we can define freedom as action based on our understanding of three aspects of our choices.  First there is the understanding that we can choose, that choices are always available to us.  Some of those choices may be undesirable or dangerous or ineffective.  Some may seem reasonable or desirable or better in some way than other choices.  We may be able, in any situation, to see a great many possible choices, or only a few, but there will always be the possibility – and the necessity — of choice.  After the recognition that choices exist, there is the understanding of possible consequences.  We can look at each choice (or as many as we choose to look at) and make guesses about possible outcomes for each choice.  What is the worst that I can imagine happening if I choose this way; what is the best?  The third step is to accept responsibility for my choices and the reasonable consequences of those choices.  If I can effectively negotiate these stages of choosing, then I can choose in ways that will more often lead me to the things I need and desire.  But these stages are neither simple nor obvious.

The fact that choices are always possible is not an indication that all choices are always possible.  Actually the opposite is true.  Each of us is always limited to the available choices at any moment, and those choices may be limited by our own prior choices, the actions (and choices) of others, and the circumstances of the present situation.  If I am a prisoner, I cannot simply choose to open the cell door and walk out of prison.  If I am poor, I cannot choose to buy a million-dollar mansion to live in.  If I am physically unable to walk, I cannot choose to run in a marathon.  But a prisoner can choose to act in ways that might eventually lead to his release (unless his sentence disallows that), or in ways that make his imprisonment more bearable; someone living in poverty can choose to act in ways that might lead her out of poverty; and someone who can’t walk might have the choice to enter a marathon as a wheelchair participant.  If I am a prisoner, then I have made choices that have led me here.  There is no need to judge these decisions at this point, however.  I may be a political prisoner, incarcerated for acts of conscience; or I may, in fact, be guilty of some act of criminal violence; the point is still the same:  I am a prisoner because I have made choices which led me here.  And my choices have interacted with the choices of others – the dictator who has chosen to oppress his people and outlaw dissent, the legislators who have passed the laws that I have violated.  And all these things are subject to perception, interpretation and judgment.  The dictator and the rebel may each feel that his actions are necessary for the good of the country.

My choices may be limited, also, by my knowledge or understanding, by my perceptions and judgments.  I cannot consider choices I cannot know or imagine.  Ignorance and naiveté interfere with choice.  I cannot apply for a job I don’t know exists, for example.  I may believe some choices are unavailable to me because I have learned that they are unavailable.  If I am continually told, as a child, that I am not smart enough or not attractive enough, or not strong enough, then it will take a great deal of risk on my part to choose things that would require intelligence, or attractiveness, or strength.

This combination of choosing, experiencing the consequences of our choices, creating meaning from those consequences, and choosing again is the way in which we create our reality, our personal truth about who we are, about what the world is like, and about how we should act in that world.  It is the way in which we create, define, and manage our relationships with others.  And in any moment it is everything we bring to that moment.

No Particular Path

In No Particular Path on August 17, 2012 at 5:29 pm

No Particular Path

There is no particular path to any particular end. There is no particular end to any particular path. Rather, we create the path with every step we take, and each new step is both ending and beginning.

Perhaps the most fundamentally human activity is choosing. In every human endeavor — as distinguished from our instinctual, biological, reactive, genetically programmed behaviors — there is an element of choice. It is that element of choice that allows us to be creative and adaptive. It is the consciousness with which we choose that allows us to see meaning in our experiences, to make judgments about our lives, to develop morality and ethics, to be individually unique, and to respond to stimuli in ever changing, ever evolving ways.

Each new choice generates consequences that require another choice that generates new consequences that requires another new choice and so on ad infinitum. It is this endless series of choices and more choices that, step by step, builds the path of our lives and, moment to moment, makes and remakes us and the individual perceptual universe in which we live. Each new choice is predicated on the past and carried into the future; and both past and future are changed in the process. Each present moment exists only in the reality of our choices as they rush along, both carrying us and carried by us.

Perhaps the second most fundamentally human activity is the creation of meaning. We are rhetorical beings. Everything we are, everything we do and everything we experience has meaning for us and others. We create and express this meaning through language, both verbal and nonverbal. We choose words and actions that both create and express the meanings we have for our experiences. Thus, meaning is the first consequence of choosing, and the basis for subsequent choices. In addition, it is our awareness of choice that helps create meaning. Since I know, at some level, that you choose the messages you are sending me, then I can interpret those messages and create meaning for them that is accurate to the extent that I can understand the choices you have made. I will misunderstand you to the extent that I cannot accurately assess those choices.

Consider the present moment. Where are you? What are you doing? Whom are you with? What is happening about you? And how are all these things affecting you? Whatever answers you come up with to these questions, they will be incomplete. You may be able to recognize that you are physically in a specific place at a specific time, but where is that place? What is its relationship to other spaces? What is its latitude and longitude? What is the time of year and so where is the Earth relative to the sun, and where is this spot on the Earth relative to the sun? Or the moon? Or the whole solar system? The galaxy? Keep extending the space, and location and time become less and less clear. And in any case, these things are all arbitrarily determined by language. “The United States of America” is simply a name we have given to a location, “the western hemisphere” names a relationship to other places on the planet, but what does “western” really mean on a sphere? Similarly, you may be able to name the person you are with, but how much of who that person is do you really know, understand, even have language for? You may be able to say that certain events are occurring, even say something about your relevant feelings and responses to those events, but this will be selective, because all you observations and experiences are being filtered through the perceptions you have already formed over the entire course of your life.

Now try to consider how it is that you have arrived in this place, at this time, under these specific conditions. Can you walk yourself backwards through your life, reconstruct your choices and say how or why they have brought you here? Can you even identify just one or two choices which, if you had made them differently, would have changed your life so that you would now be somewhere else, under different circumstances? Can you say whether things would, as a result, be better or worse? It’s a hopeless, impossible task. There have been too many choices, too many changes, too many consequences on consequences. And even trying to remember the past requires us to reconstruct it anew each time; and the reconstruction changes the memory, is selective about the details, and is filtered through our perceptions as they are now, not as they were in the past we are trying to recall.

And yet, that is the process by which we construct our lives. It is not simply a process of accumulation, however. We are more than simply the sum of our experiences. Because we are constantly creating meaning, we are also constantly reconstructing our lives. We are creatures of perception; No two people are ever having precisely the same experience. The events swirling around them may be objectively the same, but each is having his or her unique experience of them, and each will leave the experience changed in unique ways.

Life is a continuous process. There are no end results, only the process itself. All consequences are consequences of the moment, followed immediately by new consequences. Suppose that you are walking along a fence rail and you fall off and break your arm. Was breaking your arm the consequence of choosing to walk the rail? What was that choice a consequence of? Perhaps you took a dare. What led you to take the dare? Perhaps you felt you had to prove something to someone else. What led you to think that way? And is the broken arm the final consequence of that chain of causality? What if you then become fearful of taking risks? What if the cast becomes a sign of pride, a symbol of your courage? What if the bone never really heals properly and the arm remains forever weak? What if surgery is required and you are left with a visible scar? Whether you look to the past or the future, there is an unending and ever changing sequence and pattern of events. At every moment we carry with us the totality of who we are at that moment, all of our experiences and perceptions — physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. At every moment we carry with us the infinite potential for whatever future we might create out of choices not yet made. At every moment we have only that present moment in which to choose.

Of course, this is not a simple process. These are no simple choices or simple consequences. We are physical creatures, emotional and psychological beings, and (most of us would agree) spiritual entities. As we live the process of our lives, we are choosing at all these levels, experiencing consequences in all these ways, creating meanings that are formed by all these influences, and all of this is happening simultaneously, continuously, and mostly unconsciously. I recently saw a magazine cover with the teaser headline “Happiness is a Choice.” I want to be clear that this is not what I mean when I talk about choosing one’s path. We cannot simply choose happiness, or choose wealth or power and have it magically appear for us. Happiness is one possible outcome of many paths. We can, however become conscious enough of our own choices so that we can more often make choices which help us meet our needs, and thereby make us happy in the present.

This is what I mean by the “no particular path” statement.  Life is a process of making choices in an attempt to meet our needs (which may, of course involve helping others meet their needs).  How consciously make those choices, how much awareness and presence we bring to them, the better able we will be to choose well, and the more satisfied we will be with the path we are creating.