Choosing Ourselves

This choosing is a subtle thing. We certainly don’t have the freedom to choose to do or be whatever we want. The liberation we talk about in Zen is not about being masters of the universe. We humans are fragile and limited creatures. And when we begin to pay attention, we can see that most of the important things that have happened to us in our lives have been partially or wholly caused by factors and synchronicities beyond our control.

A psychologist friend of mine once told me that the goal of therapy is to choose to be who you already are.

You might wish you were taller or shorter—wiser or less anxious. You might wish your parents had been different or that someone else had won the last presidential election. You might wish that you didn’t have to wear a mask and gloves when you went to the grocery store. Most of the universe is beyond our control. Everything that has happened in your life and in the universe has already happened. You cannot go back and change it. In this exact moment, you simply are who you are. No amount of wishing you were different or ‘things’ were different will change what is already here.

Byron Katie once wrote “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.” So perhaps the path to freedom and ease lies acceptance—in giving up our ancient argument with reality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “There is a time in every man’s [or woman’s] education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe if full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. (Self-Reliance)

Emerson speaks of self-acceptance–to take ourselves ‘for better, for worse’ as we are. Our ‘nourishment’, our freedom, comes from cultivating the ‘plot of ground’ which has been given to us. The plot of ground is you, exactly as you are, and the circumstances of your life, exactly as they are. In Zen sometimes we say that the precise situation of your life right now is just what you need to wake up. No need to wait for more favorable conditions or some other time. Right here. Right now. Everything you need is already present.

This is perhaps one of the most incomprehensible perspectives on life, that we, as we are, are enough and that this moment, whatever it is, contains everything we need. Most of us are firmly believers in the inadequacy ourselves and our circumstances. The billion dollar self-help industry is powered by this sense that we could and should be better than we are. The deeper truth of the self-help movement is that cultivation is required, but the real work required can only start from this basic ground of acceptance of what is already here. (This acceptance, of course, includes the acceptance of realizing that sometimes I just really wish things were different than they are.)

Ursula K. LeGuin had this to say about choice: “You thought, as a boy [or girl], that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought once. So did we all. And the truth is at as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.”  (The Wizard of Earthsea)

Our essential choice is whether or not we align with what is already true. This truth is subtle and ever changing. It’s the truth of what is deepest in our hearts.   It’s the truth of the current circumstances of the world around us, whether we ‘approve’ or not. As we slowly give up our ancient addiction to objection, we can begin to see what is really here and to work in skillful ways with ourselves and everything we encounter.

Daily Practice: Can you notice the objections as they arise within you today? Notice when you wish it were different or when things seem ‘wrong’ or when you don’t get your way. Can you just observe what it is like to object? No need to change or even analyze. The practice is not objecting to objection. Just observe and observe. Be curious about what is really going on.