*whew*
Good noticing, Art!
It's kinda weird. I am catching myself doing things before 'deciding.'
Yes! Weird is exactly right. It will probably get weirder.
Continue to sit back & notice. Are you doing, deciding, controlling or choosing *anything at all*?
Try this:
Drink Exercise
The aim of the following exercise is to discover whether the function of choice can really be found or confirmed in actual experience. The idea of making ‘choices‘ is a very clear example of a function that we wrongly identify as the basis of our identity.
Here's what’s needed - a chair, a table and two different drinks. Any two drinks you like are okay for this: coffee, tea, milk, water, juices, smoothies, beer, wine, etc.
Preparation - Place the two drinks side by side on the table in front of you, sit comfortably on the chair and mentally label them as drink A and drink B.
Experiment - Finding the function of choice
Sit for a few moments, take a few relaxed breaths and let the dust settle. When you feel ready:
1. Look at drink A and at drink B. Think about their respective qualities, the things you like about them, compare and weigh the pros and cons of each. See if a preference is manifesting for one or the other.
2. Count to 5.
3. Choose one of the drinks. Pick it up and take a sip.
Questions:
Remember that we’re looking for some kind of function, a something, an ‘I’ which is doing the ‘choosing’.
In step 1 when thinking about their respective qualities, did you ‘choose’ the qualities? Or did they kind of appear by themselves? If some preferences manifested, did you ‘choose’ these preferences? Or did they just pop up by themselves?
In step 2 when you counted to 5, if the preferences took the back seat while the numbers took the front seat, did you ‘choose’ this sequence of event? Did you ‘choose’ to shut down the preferences to give way to the counting? Did you directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Have you seen this function in action?
In step 3 where you made a choice, did you actually witness or directly experience a mental function or faculty doing the ‘choosing’? Did anything arise that announced, ‘I am the chooser’? If so, what does this function look like?
Sometimes we describe this sense of choosing as a ‘feeling’: It feels like ‘I’ did the ‘choosing’. But the question is, can a feeling ‘choose’? Is it in the nature of a feeling to ‘choose’?
Quote each question with the quote function & reply underneath, please.
Relax & have fun with it.
Loving,
