Another Choice

Our personality appears to us as a fictitious assemblage of separate parts, each pulling its own way and only consenting to some minimal common order.

We observe how our decisions, choices and positions are determined by various conditionings, habits of thought, attachments, desires and interests – and how far we are subjected to the others’ opinion: even in revolt, it is still this opinion held by the others that governs us.

How in all this messy pile can we sort out the innate, the received and the acquired?

How to identify the part played by the new, the pure and the disinterested?

We are neither free nor whole.

And the very fact of our mortality and frailty haunts each one of our acts.

***

This inner pressure, which seems like a bountiful and serene wake behind the heart, this immanent gaze behind every instant – this pressure, it is one: it is sure and whole and yet it never insists, never Imposes itself. Little by little we understand that it is for us – for these tied up fragments and bits that we are – to rally to its place of transparency and of listening, for us to come into the peace of its presence. We watch our own movements and learn which of them can take us to a state of even receptivity: it may be a sustained physical effort of a certain quality, a continued concentration in a specific activity, or a withdrawal from any external participation, or else the contemplation of a physical and material harmony.

***

We also learn by default.

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