You choose, no matter if you choose to choose or not

Tämä teksti on kirjoitettu Colin Sissonin uutiskirjeessä julkaistavaksi, ja se on olemassa vain englanniksi. – Originally written for Colin Sissons newsletter. And I have no idea why this Blogger wants to add an empty space above these first lines.

"Being present is about waking up to our unconsciousness." This expression sums up beautifully how the process of consciousness is an effortless one, which unfolds itself when we choose to give it an opportunity. Be or be not, there is no do, there is no try. No technique. Though I myself am such a struggler and fixer that if I don't remind myself of it, I drift away from being into trying. And that's why I love that expression: it is a great reminder.

Our personal point of power is always now. It is in making a conscious choice and decision to fully be with our emotions and our resisting to emotions. Fully be with our experience. Whatever we feel and sense. However we like it. However it is.

Sometimes when I practice this choice-making I look forward to the next moment: I ask myself "How do I like my current experience and what I feel?", and I expect the intuitive answer to arrive in the next moment. It is not there simultaneously (just because I judge my present experience as bad, want to escape it and wait for it to change for a better). Then again, I know that my feelings are already here and now. If I am not fully aware of them, it is not because they have "not yet arrived" to the Now. It is simply because I haven't chosen to feel them.

Conscious choice and decision to... Wait a second – a choice over what? If I don't choose to be with my experience, it must mean I have already made some other choice instead. But I haven't noticed myself making any! So does it mean that I have made it unconsciously?

Unconscious choice and decision not to be aware of my feelings.

Unconscious choice and decision not to be with my feelings and resistings.

When I go about my days, I have a chance to make a choice in each and every moment. What a great opportunity! I'll simplify for the sake of an example. If I'm going somewhere by walking down an old route which I already know, and I just walk, I either unconsciously choose to be mostly aware only of the outer world around me, or I can consciously choose to shift my focus also on my inner world and on how it feels to be in that moment. And if I don't like it, I unconsciously choose to judge and resist it and block it out, or I can consciously choose to be with my feelings, judgings and resistings. Or if I happen to be full of joy I can consciously choose to fully feel it deep in my bones and cells, as well as high in my vibes!

I can choose my exper... Wait a second...  – I do choose my experience in every moment. If it's not a conscious choice, then it's unconscious. Most of the time I personally am drifting in my thoughts about past and future and I am not present, which means I choose my experience unconsciously, but that's okay. Every now and then I wake up to it and remember myself again, and I can be aware of my experience and feelings. Great! But while that makes me more conscious of myself, I suspect that I'm not fully conscious – and when it comes to choices and decisions, the unconscious part of me is still doing it's share. But that's okay too, and I can always observe it!

As to the question "conscious choice and decision over what?" one of my answers is "Over my unconscious conditioning and my unconscious relation to this present feeling – over the unconscious choosing which is there all the time even if I haven't noticed it".

My supressions are result of earlier unconcious choices to not allow some experiences and feelings to be felt. I have resisted them and thus stored them in my psyche. My chronic physical tensions are result of unconcious choices to not feel them. I have chosen to have them all as part of my whole being. I've chosen it all in my life.

I also love questions that help us to observe different aspects of our unconsiousness, thus help us to wake up to it. At the moment questions such as have arisen to me:

What is the way that I have chosen, and still am choosing, to be here and now?

What are the feelings that I have unconsciously chosen to have as part of me, but do not want to acknowledge?

What may be the resistances that I am choosing to have as part of me?

What is it that I have chosen?

It takes to feel yourself to know yourself

There is something curious about the Finnish word 'tuntea': it translates both to 'know' and to 'feel'. When we say "tuntea itsensä" we talk about knowing myself or knowing about myself, but it could also be interpreted as feeling myself. Yet I don't think anyone thinks about that. Tell me if I'm wrong.

This came to my mind, again, during an inner observation practise, where I was laying down on my back, being with my breath as it happened and focusing my awareness on my feelings, as well as physical or energetic sensations - and whatever I was experiencing anyway (though I'd rather call it imperiencing since experience takes place in one's inner world, doesn't it?).

As usual, I became aware of stuff that I did not like and did not want to feel, but there it was. And there was no denying that all of it was part of me, even though most of the time I was / am not aware of them.

It was happening mainly on emotional level: fear and it's sideproducts, which are meant to cover and hide it, such as anger and just resistance. As you know, you feel emotions physically too, and I was feeling the fear in my stomach. Uhh, very unpleasant. I was also very aware of other physical and energetic sensations too: I was feeling my body and energies.

So I went: "Oh well, I suppose that if I want to know myself I can not choose what parts I want to know. If I want to get to know myself deeply and thoroughly, I takes a choice and a decision to know all sides and aspects of me, and of my whole being."

I was thinking - in Finnish of course - and all of a sudden understood the other meaning of the word 'tuntea'. I realised it would take a decision to feel it all as well! It only made perfect sense because in the end they are the same.

So I chose to be with whatever I was feeling, including the resistance to what I was feeling. Feeling my body combined with feeling my feelings. Most of the time we think that intellect, feelings and body are separate functions but that is not true. And now I was just feeling what I was feeling, without caring if it was physical or emotional. I wasn't even interested.

We also have a tendency to rely mainly on our intellect, so we automatically analyze our emotional and physical feelings. We process them through a "thought machine". That doesn't help us to know our selves, for the only purpose of feelings is that they are to be felt. We don't need any intellectual information about them.

The best thing that can come out from this all is that when analyzing loosens it's grip –and at the same time there is more just pure feeling of our body and feelings– our three functions (intellect, emotions, body) start to regain their natural balance. When that happens, we start to know and feel ourselves intuitively.

Self-knowledge is not knowing our thoughts and thinking, nor knowing about ourselves. It is experiencing ourselves through being with all sides and aspects of ourselves.