Enlightening the Choosing Faculty

Enlightening the Choosing Faculty How do we make the profound shift from ego to Authentic Self? For most of us, it does not occur simply as a result of one flash of insight or revelation. On the contrary, making this shift usually requires inspired intention and consistent, diligent effort. And the way this is achieved is through using the greatest gift that evolution has given us: the power of choice. The power of conscious choice, or free agency, is unique to human beings as far as we know. You and I are highly evolved individuated selves who have been blessed with the extraordinary capacity for self-reflective awareness and the freedom to choose. In fact, these are the very faculties that make it possible for us to consciously evolve. Think about it: You, whoever you are, at least to some degree have the power to choose. How much do you really appreciate the significance of this extraordinary birthright? It is surprising how few people consider the deeper implications of possessing the freedom to choose. Just imagine—without free agency, who would you be? Little more than a robot, unconsciously responding and reacting to conditioned egoic fears and desires, cultural triggers, biological impulses, and external stimuli, with no control over your own destiny. But while it is true that we are all profoundly influenced by many of these forces, both inner and outer, at the same time, it is equally true that we always have at least some measure of freedom to choose how we respond. If you aspire to become an evolutionarily enlightened human being, your ability to do so depends upon accepting the simple fact that independent of external circumstances, you always have a measure of freedom to choose. That sounds like a simple statement, but it's amazing how many intelligent people will deny it. When you look honestly for yourself, however, you will see that it is true: you are always choosing. Sometimes your choices are conscious; sometimes they are unconscious. Sometimes they are inspired by the best parts of yourself; other times they are motivated by lower impulses and instincts. But the bottom line is that every time you act or react, at some level a choice is being made. And you, whoever you are, are the one who is making that choice. After all, who else could it be? What I'm bringing to light here is an all-important function of the self that I call the "choosing faculty." This faculty is central to who and what each one of us is as a human being. In fact, when people ask me what the self is, I say that the self is the one who is making the choices. You, whoever you are, are always choosing. And what you choose to identify with, consciously or unconsciously, is always who and what you will become. The path of Evolutionary Enlightenment is about consistently choosing to identify with your Authentic Self, rather than your ego. It's a simple concept to grasp, but not quite as simple to put into practice. Our freedom to choose is not unlimited. We each have some measure of freedom. Not complete freedom, but a measure, and that measure is greater for some people than it is for others. But as long as there is some it's enough to begin. If there is a measure of freedom then there is freedom to choose. And it is very important to understand that this choosing faculty alone is what makes conscious evolution possible. You begin the path and practice of Evolutionary Enlightenment with the life-changing recognition of the power of your own choices. What that means is that in relationship to the important choices you make, you are never completely unconscious. There is always some degree of awareness, however small, which gives you the freedom to choose. And the path of conscious evolution is about increasing that degree of awareness, increasing that measure of freedom, until you are living as the enlightened self that you consciously choose to be, rather than the unenlightened self you have unconsciously and habitually identified with your entire life. I believe that it is possible to take responsibility for the entirety of who you are in such a profound way that you can consciously choose who you want to be. But that doesn't mean it will be easy. The human self is by nature a complex multidimensional process, and within that process are many factors that limit our freedom and obscure our awareness. There are powerful biological instincts that still drive us on a deep level to act in ways that challenge our higher rational inclinations. There are all the karmic consequences of our personal history, the emotional and psychological tendencies that have formed in response to our particular life experience. There are layers of cultural conditioning, values and assumptions about how things should be that color our perspectives without us even knowing it. And many people believe that within our psyches we also carry the unresolved stories of previous lifetimes. All these factors play a part in the complex web of motives and impulses that makes up your sense of self. All of this is you. And yet it is possible to take responsibility for all of these dimensions of who you are, through the transformative recognition that you are always the one who is choosing. * * * One of the greatest challenges of the evolutionary process at all levels—from matter to life to consciousness—has to do with changing what have been called cosmic habits. A cosmic habit is simply a pattern formed by the way something has occurred many times in the past—at the level of matter, at the level of biology, or at the level of consciousness. For example, when matter has coalesced in a particular form over and over again, that form becomes a habit, that eventually contributes to determining the physical structures of our cosmos. When human beings take action in particular ways time and time again, those actions become habits that define the cultural structures of a tribe or nation. Similarly, when you as an individual repeat the same choices in relationship to your own mind and emotions, those choices also form habits that define your personality and your psychological self-sense. The gradual formation and accumulation of habits is the process through which evolution unfolds and integrates at all levels. When something new is endeavoring to emerge, however, the old habits have to be broken. This is why, when you are trying to evolve at the level of consciousness, you have to deal with an enormous number of biological, emotional, psychological, and culturally inherited habits. These habitual responses and ways of feeling and thinking about yourself and the world are what you have to first and foremost make conscious, and when necessary, transcend, in order to make way for a higher expression of your own self to emerge. Until you make them conscious, those historical habits will inevitably determine who you identify yourself to be, and they will continue to drive the choices you make. Enormous effort, will-power, and intention will be required, especially at the beginning of the path, to break through these accumulated habits at all levels of your being. That's understandable—after all, they are the familiar ways that you have been responding to and engaging with the life process for your entire lifetime, and beyond. The ego is, from a certain point of view, nothing more than a conglomeration of habits. There are emotional and psychological habits that create the personal ego, and there are cultural habits that create what I sometimes call the collective or cultural ego. They are all habits that have been useful for one reason or another in the past, but now, because you want to evolve, some of these ingrained tendencies can be recognized as obstacles to your higher development. If you aspire to evolve, if you intend to become a conscious vehicle for the evolutionary impulse, you have to use the God-given powers of awareness and conscious choice to navigate between your new and higher spiritual aspirations, and all of the conditioned impulses and habits that are embedded in your self-system. You need to become so conscious that you can make choices that move you, consistently, in an evolutionary direction. And it is only through the wholehearted embrace of your power of choice that it becomes possible for you to do this. This is what I often call "enlightening the choosing faculty"—bringing the light of consciousness, conscience, and higher purpose to bear on the unique and extraordinary capacity within that can define your destiny. * * * Eventually, if you go far enough in your spiritual development, the self-generated momentum of your own evolutionary choices will become the driving force of your life, rather than the unconscious habits of the past. And that's when something very profound occurs. Your capacity to choose will become more and more aligned with the creative freedom of the First Cause, the energy and intelligence behind the initial choice to become. When free agency, the greatest gift of the evolved human, is liberated from unconscious and habitual patterns and becomes identified with a higher or cosmic will, the individual becomes a conscious agent of evolution. When your power of choice aligns itself with the evolutionary impulse in this way, your own deepest, heartfelt, spiritual aspiration becomes one with the original cosmic intention to create the universe. That's what Evolutionary Enlightenment is pointing to. To the degree to which you make conscious and transcend those outdated biological, psychological, and cultural habits within yourself that are inhibiting your higher development, you become an ever-more-powerful agent for conscious evolution. Remember, we are all part of a deep-time developmental unfolding—each and every one of us, as awakening human beings. Our capacity for greater and greater consciousness and self-reflective awareness is the expression of a process that is perpetually awakening to itself. The capacity for freedom of choice is a relatively recent emergence in this process, and it grows and develops and increases according to how conscious and self-aware we become. As we evolve and develop and mature, as we liberate ourselves from our lower and more primitive impulses and habits, we become more and more conscious. And the more liberated our consciousness becomes, the more freedom we have to choose. Transcending ego, in the way I've defined it, is critical for those of us at the leading edge of this vast process. Our psychological ego, by definition, keeps the context for our experience very small, fundamentally oriented around its personal fears and desires. Our culturally conditioned self-sense rarely sees beyond its own beliefs and values. If we refuse to authentically embrace a context that is bigger than the individual and collective ego, the true power inherent in the miraculous gift of choice is stifled by that narrow context. But when our free agency is liberated from the grip of ego, when the context for our choices expands to embrace the infinite depths of our cosmic identity, the choosing faculty becomes informed and enlightened by the limitless passion of the energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process. Then its transformative power is startling and profound. That's when you discover that free agency is potentially the most evolutionarily and spiritually significant aspect of your experience. In this way, your power to choose becomes a function of the First Cause itself, endeavoring to create the universe at higher and higher levels, reaching for the very edge of the possible. And if you have the courage to go that far, you will begin to define what that edge actually is. When you get to that point where you are intentionally, deliberately, and actively participating in the process of evolution, you will find yourself pushing forward the creative potential of the interior of the cosmos, as a direct result of your very own choices. What could be a more sacred endeavor? Your choices enable consciousness to evolve. And when you are dedicated to that possibility, you are actually compelling it to do so. What an audacious thought: compelling consciousness to evolve. Remember—evolution isn't just happening by itself. We are a very big part of that process. You are a very big part of that process. When you truly understand this, the liberation of the power of choice becomes the essence of the spiritual endeavor. You realize that the more awake you become, the more enlightened you become, the more responsible you are and the more profoundly significant are the choices that you make. In Evolutionary Enlightenment, we no longer ask God to save us; we step forward in the realization that God is depending on us. That's a very bold statement. But it's true. Hold up your hands. Whose hands are they? If you are identified primarily with ego, they are the hands of the ego, but if your purpose is fundamentally aligned with the creative principle, your hands become God's hands.