You Always Have a Choice (you’re just not always conscious of it)

A major part of the awakening process is recognizing that we have a choice in determining the world we perceive. Prior to realizing this, it feels as if the world we perceive dictates the thoughts we have about it.

We get passed over for a promotion, so we feel unworthy.

Our car breaks down and we feel as if the world is out to get us.

A friend chooses to hang out with someone else instead of us and we feel jealous and hurt.

A romantic partner decides to end the relationship, leaving us feeling vulnerable, hurt and sad.

We pursue a dream we’re passionate about, but no “in the world traction” appears to happen, so we feel frustrated, not special like the ones “who made it” doing similar things…maybe even like a victim to God’s plan for us.

In a nutshell, the events seem to dictate our perception of them. We don’t, at all, feel as if we actually have a choice in how we perceive these events. They just seem to happen to us.

The things that occur in our life appear to cause us to have a particular thought about them. There does not appear to be a prior relationship with the events, situations and experiences that are occurring in our world….something seems to occur and, “voila!”, we spontaneously have a thought about it.

This is a very powerful misconception, regarding the way our perception works, that ego hides from us…for to see this as a misconception is to see through ego.

Ego doesn’t want us to see that we’re actually in relationship with everything that happens in our experience prior to it happening—for to see this, means that we have a choice in what we perceive…

Everything that occurs in our experience is perceived through a relationship with either fear or love. This root-relationship, to either fear or love, is the source of our perception. Being the source of our perception it is that which creates our relationship prior to anything that happens in our experience.

When we relate through fear, we feel as if we are a victim to the things that occur in our experience…

It’s why we feel unworthy when we’re passed over for a promotion. Being passed over for the promotion didn’t cause us to feel unworthy; our relationship with fear caused us to perceive ourselves as unworthy when we were passed over for the promotion. Do you see the difference?

When we relate through fear, we perceive the car breaking down as the world out to get us. If we, instead, related through love, the car breaking down wouldn’t result in a negative perception of the situation. It would just be something that occurred in our experience…not necessarily good or bad, just neutral.

And for that friend who chooses to hang with someone else, the lover who chooses to move on and the dream that doesn’t seem to come to fruition—the hurt, jealously, frustration and vulnerability—well, it all occurred out of relating to those events through fear, as well…fear that something could actually be taken from you through those events taking place.

Fear occurs through ego’s belief that something can be taken from you. So, of course, if we’re identified with this belief as the truth of who we are, we’re gonna perceive these events as hurtful. This is where we’ve got to put on our big girl (and big boy) pants and see that this, too, goes back to our root-relationship with either fear or love as the source of our perception.

Ego wants to forever obscure this choice between fear and love from us, so that we go on abiding in the world that we’ve allowed ego to create in our awareness…

It wants you to only see that you’re a victim to the things that occur in your life, because in doing so, it forces you to project outward (i.e., play the blame game), further obscuring that it’s the source of what you’re perceiving.

As long as it has us fooled into believing we’re a victim to our own perception, we’ll never know we have the power to change it…

In the words of Oprah, “Now that you know, you can’t pretend that you don’t.” 😉

You have the power to consciously change how you perceive the world…

Choose fear as the source of your perception and witnesses for that choice will be returned to you. We each know this state all too well.

However, if you make the radical choice to have love as the source of your perception, witnesses for that choice will be returned to you.

Most of humanity is caught in a fear-based relationship with the things that occur in their experience, which makes it feel as if this is reality. Instead of using this as a reason to prove fear’s perception, let it prove the power of perception itself.

Then, make the radical choice for love…and watch a whole new world rise before your eyes. A world filled with witnesses for love, instead of fear.

To help facilitate this process begin by acknowledging that you don’t know what a particular experience, situation or thought that you’re struggling with is for and hand it over in prayer asking that it be reinterpreted in the light of truth/love.

This effectively takes you out of your past conditioning (the reference point that you’ve become accustomed to using to assess situations) and opens up a space for your perception to be shifted from fear to love.

Make a habit of doing this with as much consistency as you can muster: acknowledge that you don’t know what a thing is for, hand it over in prayer and repeat as often as needed (i.e. every time a fear-based emotion “spontaneously” appears).

Results may vary in the beginning, but when done with consistency, you’ll feel as if you’re being uprooted from one world and anchored in another…one where fear is no longer present and love reigns strong.

To making the radical choice for love,

Shanna