hahaha I tried to trick my hand. Through thoughts I gave an impulse to turn the hand, but the hand did not turn. Another impulse. No turning. At some point the hand HAS turned around and I could tell that the movement was there first and THEN the thought. But to be honest again: It's VERY hard for me to say what comes first.
Excellent looking. This one is very difficult. I looked again myself and it feels like it all happens at the same time, but when you really look, you see that the thought comes after, and sometimes not at all.
WOW! This worked really fine! I told the hand to turn (thought) and the hand turned. Then I didn't thought anything and the hand turn anyway!!!
Very good!
Now let's 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’?
If anything is unclear, let me know.
Enjoy! :)
