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Whoever brought up the notion that we chose everything that is occurring in our life, even our past and . . future, our parents and probably a life in poverty etc. may want to re-consider what ‘choice’ means and what it doesn’t mean. Sometimes it appears that those people could at least make the slim effort of looking up a word, its meaning and use. Wrong use of words creates wrong thinking.

First of all, choice is a conscious process. There are no unconscious choices. Whatever is happening in our unconsciousness – and indeed lots of unconscious processes influence our lives – has to be lifted out of obscurity into the light of consciousness to become a matter of choice. Whatever unconscious information does to us, it will continue doing so exactly because it is unconscious.

Actually the idea of ‘becoming conscious’ about something is that you may choose between different options. For example, the goal of advertisement is not to give you ‘information’ so you can make a choice. They want to appeal to one’s unconscious feelings of lack inside oneself or that something is wrong with you in order to have you buy their product as a solution for this miserable feeling or thought pattern. No company wants you to choose except among their own products/services.

It is not a story of choice if people lack basic food and shelter: this is about human beings needing material help and internal support. It is compassionate people who help others first with those basic needs – including feelings like love and compassion – and then also support them in looking at their options/talents etc so that those people may be able to respond in a conscious way. When the bare survival stress overwhelms humans, it is hard to take initial time out to start a process of becoming conscious. As we know, it is even hard to do so in the Western World. Only unconscious fears keep up the rat race.

Social pressure of people in one’s surrounding (also unconscious and lack-driven) add to the difficulty to break out and question one’s usual parameter. Lack and need plus the cynicism of the downlooking rich is already enough to bare. Nobody deserves to be told in those conditions ‘Oh, this is because you chose this . . ‘.

I wonder if people who propagate this kind of ‘global’ choice might have an immense problem with being compassionate themselves. After all, isn’t it easy to keep your heart closed to the fact that 1.000.000.000 (one billion) people are going hungry every day, and dump the responsibility of choice on those fellow humans? How cynical is it for somebody to judge other people’s existential problems from an arrogant consumer point of view with a myriad illusionary choices (at least in supermarkets). People suffering from poverty and hunger is not a victim story but an acknowledgement of something that has become ACCEPTED reality.

True, only to become aware and awake, to become conscious about one’s options can lead you out of misery. The more questions the more options the more choices. Seeing and seizing your options by making choices is taking on responsibility instead of continued functioning in un-questioned territory. But who is the judge when and why somebody is able to do so?  There is no hint at the fact that people of the rich Western World are more conscious than humans in other parts of the world. In fact, the opposite might be true.

Maybe we could choose nurturing instead of judging and compassion instead of cynicism?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.