The Power of Choice

There is a subtle but critical difference between intellectual and personal acceptance. It took me a lot of years to reach the place where I felt I had to go one way or the other, the conventional reality view or Seth’s. When that time came, my choice was to consciously, intentionally, choose to create a situation in which the only thing that could save me was my own intent to move on, and the magic. There was no “practical” solution, and I did nothing to obtain one. I just climbed into the back seat of the vehicle of my life, and let the magic drive.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done to get to that point, a surprisingly easy thing to make the choice, and amazingly easy once I was in the back seat. And guess what? It worked. The magic came through, and a new era began.

Now make no mistake, this new edition of my life was not born 7 feet tall with a lifetime contract with the Lakers. Hardly. But it is solid. Somewhere deep inside there has been a shift in my personal center of gravity. Now when the minions of fear threaten to invade my conscious mind, and I debate whether to take them seriously as I’m “supposed” to, or to trust the magic, trust myself, to create something beautiful out of it, I always slide smoothly to the side that smiles and says, “It’s all working fine, because that’s how I want it, and I am the creator.” So far, every time that has happened, I let the magic work, and always something–often in the form of just the right thought–has come out of nowhere and given me an answer in a timely way.

I have been trying to collect my thoughts about what exactly changed to permit this new round of growth of being. The best I can say right now (I’m not through reviewing it yet) is that I took back some very important choices. By “took back” I mean that they had been on auto-pilot for a very long time, always responding to similar circumstances in similar ways. Now I have taken back my conscious choices in those areas.

It is important to understand that I’m talking about choices that were so automatic, they didn’t seem like choices at all. They seemed rather to be “facts,” “the way I am,” “the way people are,” etc. So what really started to break things loose was when I decided to admit the truth: that I and only I choose what my answers to those questions are, and I’ve been making those choices the same (and I now believe wrongly) for nearly my whole life, and that I and only I can change that by insisting on making those choices consciously again. And I meant it!

Once I did that, I began changing choices about what is true, who I am, and what I will do about it. These changes brought up new questions and drew me into new thought patterns. Priorities changed and powerful new choices emerged. The fear subsided, because I trusted myself not to hurt me, and I found it easier to spend time imagining the kind of person I wanted to be, the kind of life he would have, and the kind of reality he would create, just because of who he was.

These are the choices we make every moment of our lives. Many of them are still on auto-pilot. That’s not a problem. In fact, it’s pretty handy much of the time. The problems come from putting a choice on auto-pilot, forgetting you did it, then finding later that the quality of your life is impaired because of it and feeling powerless to change it. That’s when you need to wake up and remember that it is still, and always has been, a conscious choice. Then and only then can you change it. At that moment, it is as easy as changing your mind. Getting to that point may, however, be somewhat more challenging. 🙂

The resistance to taking back manual control usually comes from a fear of making things worse. Our beliefs tell us that, according to their version of who we are and the way life works, this is the only logical thing to expect, so we’d better get used to it. Any thought of changing the choices involved is seen as a threat to an already tenuous status quo. The result? Paralysis. We continue to default to yesterday’s choices, and we stay pretty much in the same rut.

We all have the choice at every moment to take back conscious control of ourselves and our lives. We make those choices who knows how many times a second. And these are the choices that must be changed to produce meaningful growth. There are an unlimited number of ways to go about this, but one thing is always required: intent, conscious or unconscious. Intent is the result of a decision to apply your will to change your way of thinking. Without that, no permanent change is possible. With it, even the sky is no limit.

Notice that I said that the intent doesn’t have to be conscious, though it certainly can be. We sometimes manipulate our intentions at a deeper level. The intent to be born is such a case. The intent to die in a certain way at a certain time usually is, too. These are not ordinarily conscious, but they clearly have their impact.

So nowadays, I ask myself the question “Who do you want to be?” countless times a day. I then ask, “What would he do in this situation?” And then, as best I can, I do that.

So, who do you want to be? Get to know that person. Get inside their head and see what makes them tick. Then ask yourself what they would do if they woke up right where you are. Don’t ask YOU, ask THEM! Then do the best you can with the answer. And make no mistake, it builds, layer on layer, until it changes everything. Use the exercise mentioned earlier, read books, do whatever you think might help. But at the end of the day, it is your choices, moment by moment, about who you are, who you want to be, and how life works that form the palette from which your life is magically created. Your thoughts give it shape, and your feelings give it substance. They are, as Seth put it, “The gift of gods.” And don’t forget to trust yourself in doing so. That, too, is a choice you are already making.

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