Diebert:
BO1:
We are discussing a state of being. When you introduce being - choice arises. To say anything else is denial .....When we look at philosophy form one side, we do not make a choice because we are caused. On the flip side, we choose the path to enlightenment.
Diebert:
It's more like a path of realization. Choice is a perception of the moment ("I now decide") but upon examination it's not a moment without causes. Things are leading up to it. Many things. Where's the moment gone?
Thank you for addressing the issue. Wow - post after post with evasion and sidestepping and so, I appreciate the direct response.
Now to ypur post.
You can say the quantum soup that started before the big bang is making up my mind but that is you making that statement.
Intelligence as well as counsciousness are fluid in definition. Its a moving target and so the conlusions reached can be misleading.
You cannot have another reality because there is only one, yours. The fundamental fabric of reality is you.
All speech, action, and behavior are fluctuations of consciousness. All life emerges from, and is sustained in, consciousness. The whole universe is the expression of consciousness. The reality of the universe is one unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion.
It requires an infinite amount of energy to animate your consciousness. I say this because you are in a state of eternal flux. If the state of the universe as well as your state of being is never ending change - you experience an infinite amount of energy at all times.
If you do the math the choice then becomes not finite but infinite and therefore; transcends linear choice dictated by cause and effect. This is just hard logic with no wiggle room.
Now you can say cause and effect stretch back and forward to the infinite but you cannot then say consciousness is extricated and deprived of choice. That would not be logical at all.
David quinn once said:
It's not a matter of "telling" yourself that everything is causally-created and illusory, like a religious chant. Rather, it's a matter of correcting the habitual delusion of regarding objects as seperate, independent entities with the aid of a consciously-understood truth.
Personally I prefer to talk about responsibility, which is the ability to respond as fully as possible to whatever is occurring. This ability varies with nature.
I agree. I would much rather be competent than confident especially when parachuting.
The need for the idea of choice seems quite similar to the need for the idea of a chooser or a controller. Control and power over life needs to be asserted with this simple ritual of "me". It's quite powerful and certainly understandable!
You are right of course and on this idea the ego gathers its strength. That is not what I am saying however.
I am saying when you choose it is the Totality making a choice.
The universe and reality are not a subset of consciousness. Equally true is that consciousness is not a subset of the totality. They are one and the same.
To believe they are somehow separate is to try to divide awareness from itself.
This is the great trap of comparisons and duality.
The absolute sense of universal Being is realized only when consciousness, void of all that it makes conscious, loses itself in the Self, being purified of all relation to personality.
-- Yoga Vasishtha