(This is Part 2 of a series. Go back to Part 1.)
Recently I talked with someone who said that he could not use affirmations concerning a certain area of life because he was a follower of choiceless awareness as advocated by J. Krishnamurti. I'd like to discuss that.
It's true that some of the greatest masters in history, from Krishnamurti to Chuang-Tzu to many of the great Zen masters, have talked about "choiceless awareness" as an approach to life that allows one to experience reality as it is, free of the distorting filters of grasping and attachment.
Attachment to what? Ultimately, attachment is always about attachment to our thoughts. If we see a Mercedes in a car dealer's window it's just a hunk of metal. But we tell a story about what it represents and then we lust after it.
We humans tend to spend our lives grasping and clutching after what we want. In doing so, we often miss the beauty and majesty of reality-as-it-is. We often want reality, and especially our personal version of it, to be different in some way. This is like closing the blinds to reality's light.
"Choiceless awareness" opens the blinds and lets the light come in. When we cease buying-in to the mind's endless grasping and clutching, we see reality as if for the first time. And what we see is heart-stopping in its purity, innocence and brilliance.
However, this "choiceless awareness" does not mean that we have no preferences.
If we go to the ice cream store it doesn't mean that we have to ask someone to choose a flavor for us. Rather, we make a "choice"—chocolate, vanilla, whatever—but we hold that choice very lightly. If we choose chocolate and that flavor isn't available we're willing to go with vanilla or strawberry or something else.
That's a trivial example, but it reveals a deep meaning. Choiceless awareness doesn't mean that we dispense with plans or creativity, though these involves "choices." If we're going to build a house, for instance, it's still a good idea to draw up a blueprint, a plan, first. Or if we create something, we still make "choices" in that process.
Choiceless awareness simply means that we're not insisting on some particular outcome when engaged in life. It doesn't mean that we retreat to a mountaintop. It doesn't mean that we never make "choices" in life. Indeed, we do so everytime we turn left or right at an intersection.
Choiceless awareness is something that's happening deep down. It's about a deep willingness for life to go wherever it's going to go—knowing that it's going there anyway, whether we agree with it or not.
On the surface, where we appear to make "choices," it's perfectly good to have plans, blueprints, preferences and so on. Similarly, it's perfectly okay to use affirmations. It's just that we hold it all lightly, ready to follow life and trust it wherever it happens to go.
Everything we're doing here is just playing with energy, like playing with toys in a sandbox. To use a metaphor, I think that existence is quite pleased when we play with creating things—including the "choices" and judgments involved with every kind of creative activity.
Using plans, affirmations, blueprints and so on is not incompatible with experiencing choiceless awareness. We have our preferences and make our "choices," but deep down we've let go of the outcome. We're flowing, we're willing to be in love with reality however it shows up.
(This is the end of Part 2. Go to Part 3.)
—jim sloman, 6.7.04 for Aug 31
|
