Dynamics of Choice: an excerpt

In the midst of making a series of major interconnected decisions that could dramatically alter the shape of my life, I scribbled this in my (other) journal:

To dwell in the wake of decision—delicious. To feel the ripples and impact of the entire ‘being’s’ attempt to shape reality, even while accepting the pieces of it which are fixed.

A particular quality and sensation is evoked by walking through a specific doorway of decision. Not any other doorway: this doorway, which leads to this course of specific (and initially unknowable) experience. How incredibly luscious, that we get to be cleaved into Time this way. Broken by Time (it’s clock) into Time (its quality). The chosen path given substance and weight—a palpable viscosity which comes with commitment—by the exclusion of alternatives. There is something deeply sensuous in the act of choosing—exerting one’s preferences. Moving internal desire into external action. Choice seems to be the seam wherein reality is sewn together.

If I attempt to reach back further even, behind the moment of decision, then I might encounter the push and pull of sensations which themselves are not of my own choosing. They walk in and out of me, often leaving deep imprints in their wake.; leading me into what feels more and more like a plot unfolding through me.

From the perspective of Vedic Astrology, it is these karmas in the form of sensation which are truly the ‘deciders..’ They create an internal environment (in the form of sensation) which tends to lead to a certain type of thought and then behavior. So we are all predisposed to act in certain ways at certain times based on the alignment of the stars and planets at our moment of birth. But to be present for the fructification of a moment and its concomitant quality of time is truly a gift.

We can move closer and closer to this form of presence by understanding, deeply, our predispositions. As the gap between your image of who you are and who you actually are closes, the experience of life moves from that of a violent roller coaster to a scenic drive through the mountains. The question of free will, of who is deciding, becomes irrelevant, because the taste of presence in the sensations as the path unfolds is so overwhelmingly delicious.