Who Chooses
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A question about liberated action, decision, and responsibility: what it means to say a choice happens spontaneously, "not I and not not I," and why locating the chooser in either the self or something external is a misinterpretation.
Who Chooses
A question about liberated action, decision, and responsibility: what it means to say a choice happens spontaneously, "not I and not not I," and why locating the chooser in either the self or something external is a misinterpretation.
I'm not sure what my question is, but I notice there is still some confusion. I was reading something you apparently said. We were talking about liberated action, and you were talking about decisions and how a decision seems freer when there is no entity attached to it, no sense that this body-mind, or this consciousness however I imagine it, is deciding. If I recall well, you said something like: when the decision that this body-mind is taking feels the same as the decision of a bird singing. I'm not sure I remember it well.
I don't remember either, but I think I know what you're talking about.
Something around that, and around taking responsibility. What is taking responsibility, when I'm not even sure where decisions come from? In that kind of place, they seem to happen spontaneously.
Making the decision external
The trap is in the interpretation. When you say the decision is made by consciousness or by an entity, the risk is that you make it external. There is a teaching that says the decision is not made by a separated entity, but this has to do with interpretation. By interpretation, I mean the mental belief system operating in the moment. If the belief system is "all decisions are made by the universe, but right now my experience is that I and the universe are two," then the decisions are not made by me, and so they are not my problem, and there is no responsibility. But all of that is a belief system. It is not truth. It is not reality. It is mind.
If you know, even for a moment, the experience of the decision appearing in a way that is not personal, it is as if a bird sings. Your hand moves, the words are spoken. But it is not some other entity called the universe, or consciousness, or something other than I. It is not I, and it is not not I. "I" and "not I" make no sense from that place.
The confusion is around there. Responsibility, to me, carries the implication that it can't be something spontaneous. It has to be something where I decide, "This is the best thing." I don't know how to explain it.
Responsibility as interpretation
The lack of responsibility is also an interpretation. It comes from a belief system, and it has to do with externalizing the decision in some way. Even if I made the choice, if there is an interpretation that I made it because of something external that caused me or forced me, then I am not responsible.
What I am describing is tricky to put in words, because of the ways it can be misinterpreted. What I am describing is that you are also responsible for the bird singing.
Then responsibility loses its point.
No, it becomes total.
So I understand that I am responsible for everything, for everything that happens in the universe through this body-mind.
Yes, but you can only do what you can. And you also know that you are not just this body-mind. This is where it is hard to put more words to it. For example, if something happening now, something being witnessed now, is wrong, that knowing can only happen through a perspective that appears to be separate. And then that knowing is known by that which is the source.
Divinity, humanity, and their relationship
The best description of this is Carl Jung's Answer to Job, where the learning between God and human goes both ways. It is that non-separation, that relationship, in which we are both. What we are is represented by the Trinity: divinity, humanity, and the relationship. The three are one, the one that is three and the three that are one. The problem is believing I am, and only am, the human.
The problem in what?
The problem is in interpreting that teaching as if it speaks to me as a separate entity, a separate being that is human and only human.
I don't know if I'm less confused, but it helps.
This is something you will come to know more intuitively, not through thinking. It can happen through many subtle glimpses. You can notice, for example, where a choice comes from, and see that the sense that it is me, and only me, and me separately who made that choice, is actually an interpretation.
Two mistaken interpretations
The mistaken interpretations are of two kinds. One is: the decision and the will are mine, separate, and only mine. The other is: the cause and origin are not me, they are outside of me, but there is still a separation, so it is because of God, or another person, or the government, or a relationship. If you use neither type of interpretation, then where is the choice coming from? Who is choosing? What is choosing?
That you can know directly, through a more intuitive sense. When you are playing guitar, improvising live, and some flow is happening, you taste it more directly. It is not you playing, but it is not not you. The playing is happening. The playing is playing itself.
Yes, I have felt that.
If you know that, that is a place where you are more likely to touch this.
So what would responsibility be there?
Responsibility is the process that allows you not to fall into either of those two misinterpretations. When you are not misinterpreting in either way, you are deciding from the deepest, truest place, the most responsible and wise. And from there, it is experienced more like decisions happening. Not I, and not not I.
Now it makes a bit more sense. I think my confusion was around my previous ideas of what "responsible" meant.
Correcting an imbalance
Possibly. The difficulty is that if we are in the habit of falling toward one side most of the time, then balance requires leaning the other way. If the problem is always "it wasn't me, it was the government; it wasn't me, it was my partner," then one cure is "it's me, it's me, it's always me and only me." At some point you see it is not that either. That is not the deepest truth. There is a middle way, an in-between.
Or it can go the other way. Some people live in "it's all me, me, me," paralyzed with guilt and fear of action. Then it can be seen that no, there is a world, there is a universe. Other people have effects, and there are causes in what is known as the external. Then it becomes much more a moment-to-moment seeing.
There is still some confusion, but it will settle.
An exercise with a moving finger
Just keep looking, and look at simple choices, because some of the misinterpretations are rooted in deep beliefs. For example, the sense that every movement in my body is chosen by me, as an "I" that is separate.
I often propose a little exercise. I probably got it from somewhere. Look at a movement, and experience it. Isolate just the movement of a finger. You need to actually do it. Make a simple movement back and forth, but try not to let it become mechanical, like a clock just moving. Then look very closely as you are moving: where did that choice come from? If you trace, with very open attention, to the origin of that choice, you will be very confused, because it will become clear that it is not I, not the separate one. Something is happening that is more similar to a bird singing. And from there, all thoughts, all choices, all experience.
Now, you mean?
No, later. But take your time. Part of us doesn't want to see this, because it is very unsettling. It can challenge a very deep belief system: the sense of control.
I am also asking because I am seeing it in simple decisions. I observe that I really don't know where they come from. I take an action, and that action was preceded by the thought to take it, and I notice that thought appeared, or was triggered by something else. So I had nothing to do with it.
The observer as hiding place
The trick is right there. You see that those choices are not happening as you thought, not decided by an "I" that is separate, with a separate will and a separate identity. But you still interpret the choice from the position of that "I," which is imagined and separate. So now you see the choice is not happening within this "I"; it is happening elsewhere. But you still interpret from the position of this separate "I," which is a thought, and so there is confusion.
This separate "I" now has nothing to do with the decision, but that is still an interpretation. It externalizes the decision, making it belong to the body and the universe, which are "not I." What needs to be seen, more deeply, is that this "I" that is observing and witnessing is not real. It is a thought, and it is not what you are. Otherwise there will be great confusion, and it could create real problems, because that is where a lot of irresponsibility comes from.
I think many people who have awakened to that level, seeing "these decisions are not happening through me, they are universal decisions happening," still hold "but I am separate." That creates distortions and irresponsibility. I think this has happened to several teachers. It is still a misinterpretation, and it has to do with still objectifying and identifying an observing entity.
Even if it is not the body-mind. "Now I am not the doer, but I am the observer. And the observer has no responsibility."
But the observer is still a hiding place for identification. There is no observer in that sense. There is no separate observing entity. The seen and the seer are one.
Why the observer arises
The difficulty is that this is often realized progressively. The techniques work like this: if I am identified with an image or thought of myself, I can see that if I am aware of the thought, I cannot be the thought. I cannot be the image, I cannot be the body, since I am aware of them. But this then creates the image of an observing entity. So if I am observing the choices happening, and observing that I am not making them, then the observing entity is not responsible for the choices. What then needs to be seen is that the observing entity is also a thought. If you look for an observer, you will not find it. You will realize it is imagination. It is the spaceless, dimensionless space of awareness observing itself.
Those are all words used to point to it, but trying to find the answer in thought, as you just did, is more of the same. What you just said are thoughts again. It has been said in many ways, and that is one way, but the words are not the reality.
The screen and the movie
Another way it has been said: there is an empty screen. When the movie stops, what is left is the screen, and what you are is the screen, not the movie projected on it. Everything on the screen, which you think you are, is made of the screen. In the metaphor of an image projected on a screen, the story happening in the movie is not real, other than as the screen. If there is no screen, there is no movie. Without the movie, there is still a screen.
But even that metaphor is not fully correct, because it still creates the sense of some object that you are. You could say the movie is the screen. When the movie stops, there is no movie and no screen. There is emptiness. And still, there is reality. Reality is the only correct word.
Beingness or consciousness can give the mind a sense of something there, some thing. But consciousness is spaceless, timeless, tasteless, soundless, sightless.