The courage to choose

Most of us forget who we really are, and what we really are, the moment we enter the physical world. Whatever we were before entering this body, before we were given a name and delivered into the tangle of family, culture and circumstance, gets erased the moment we land here.

What follows - if we are lucky - is a long, deliberate remembering of our true origin disguised as the seemingly finite period we call ‘life’. And contrary to new-age fluff, the terrain for that remembering is not comfort, it is choice in the face of adversity.

Freedom from suffering

Buddhist tradition identifies Dukkha - translated as suffering - as the first noble truth. Buddhists see suffering not as a flaw to be eradicated but - if it occurs - as a necessary condition to experience; a thing to be moved through, not around.

In Chinese spiritual traditions, the Taoist values the turning of the seasons in a similar way: nothing blooms without first having been buried. Christianity more literally tells of death before resurrection; the rising from the tomb. The prayer attributed to St Francis ends: it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Liberation is not the absence of struggle, it waits on the other side of it. Having gone through it, you have the opportunity to become aware and awake to what it made possible.

However, suffering is not liberating in itself, it’s what you do with it that matters. Playing out the same patterns over and over, and being defined by it is not the path to liberation - it’s merely a holding pattern. It can even become a safety blanket in some cases. Identifying with the suffering feels familiar; it becomes a ragged curtain of miserable certainty to hide behind, when change seems even more frightening.

Because change is scary for most people.

The freedom of choice

Two people can suffer the same wound - abandonment, betrayal, heart-break - but while one moves through it, the other is stunted by it. What sets them apart?

I feel a sense of pride for anyone who has fought free of an addiction. The serenity prayer talks of the courage to change. And this is the crux of the addiction paradox: someone who has never needed to resist a substance, behaviour or compulsion, has never needed to build the muscle of choosing themselves over the pull of the addiction. Their freedom is untested, their resilience still lies dormant. The person who has stood inside the grip of addiction, and chosen over and over to walk back out, has a solid foundation. They literally have the freedom of choice - and they have earned it.

I’d say that the good times - love, true connection, moments on a higher plane - are felt differently by someone who has been to darker places. They know what those highs cost, because they have paid it. The innocent haven’t, and so can’t quite know what they’re worth. Experience teaches you the cost of living. Choosing to do it again anyway is what sets you free.

Falling in love is another example. The person who loves fully, having never lost anything, loves from innocence. It is sweet, and it is real, but it has not yet understood the cost of heartbreak. The person who has had their heart split open, and knows precisely what the loss will feel like if it happens again, yet chooses to love completely and without restraint anyway, has the courage of a lion. Cynics might say they are naive, but there is immense strength in such chosen vulnerability.

Innocence doesn’t yet know the price. Courage knows the huge cost and still pays it willingly.

Liberation comes with choosing to change - deciding, again and again, to move through suffering rather than identify with it.

The modern world is a huge initiation test

I often think about this in the broader context of ‘the state of the world’ and the plight of younger generations. Despite seemingly bleak times, I have great hope. At this moment in history the world seems like a testing ground ripe for mass initiation.

For example, there is strong evidence that a child raised from infancy in front of a screen is starting life with a deficit - their tiny brain is overstimulated; neural pathways are stunted, and there is real social damage being done. Their attention is being harvested before the child even has language for what is being taken.

But such neural overwriting is not the whole story. Somewhere down the line, their tiny, over-stimulated, weakened brain may glimpse that the easy way isn’t the best way. They may notice the programming, feel the pull of screen addiction, and choose to disentangle from it. This would require a miraculous stepping away from comfort, ease and all they have ever known.

It is a hard road to take, and many never will, of course. In these cases the conditioning simply runs the program uninterrupted. But if they can take the road less travelled, they have an opportunity to become truly immune to propaganda. Having seen it for what it is and walked away, they gain true sovereignty. The corruption the modern world is built on no longer has a hold on them.

You have always had the knowledge

Let me suggest a way of seeing reality for you to ponder. Imagine that nothing that has unfolded in your life has been random. The conditioning you came to this life with was chosen - not by the small and forgetting ‘human’ self, but by a higher intelligence within you.

That greater part of you knew full well what shape the forgetting would take, and all about your particular blindness to it. It knew the interim role you would take. It chose it because someone had to walk that exact conditioning path back out into the light. It was an initiation into wholeness that could not happen any other way.

The forgetting is necessary so the remembering has a chance to happen.

What happens next - whether you realise and follow the path back out - is yours alone to decide. Each person who finds the courage to choose change adds their thread to a much larger tapestry: What if we are a species quietly working its way toward becoming incorruptible - one choice at a time?

Finding the courage to choose is just a beginning

Having found the courage to choose, you should know that it is a beginning rather than an end. You do not arrive at courage and stay there; you must meet it again, and again, for as long as you live.

For those who have completely forgotten their origins, that would sound like a warning of constant discomfort. For those who are aware, it is a beautiful challenge. The practice is to choose in every single moment who you are going to be. Not perfectly, or just once, but continuously.

And whilst this is utterly courageous and heroic, it is also completely unglamorous. It takes the form of choosing to care for your body when numbing it would be easier. It looks like holding a discipline that nobody’s watching you keep. It’s the act of parenting yourself the way you wish you’d been parented, in the small hours when no one else is around to do it for you.

Fear not, although this path of choice might seem like a solo journey, it is in fact a collective effort. It ripples out into the room you’re standing in, the people in your circle, and the world around you. The world we live in - for better or worse - is created by our choices, literally. Multiply the courage to choose by everyone doing it - or refusing to - in every moment, and you change the world.

What do you choose? Or do you let the choice be made for you?

Please choose courage. Not because it’s the easy choice, but because you now know exactly what it costs - and you choose it anyway.

That’s the world I want to live in - I hope you do too.