Choice is an Illusion

. . . and so are you

The Tao Te Ching observes that 'to be' and 'not to be' arise mutually. The one includes - necessarily makes possible - the other. It is like holding a coin and asserting that only the side we "see" exists; of course both sides exist. How could it be otherwise?

Thus, as soon as one says A Course in Miracles is the way, the truth and the life, then Zen is also the way, the truth and the life. And the Catholic church. Atheism, too.

As soon as we say that democracy represents the future of human culture, then communism represents the future of human culture. As soon as someone says "turn the other cheek," somebody else says "the art of war is of vital importance to the state."

And so forth.

The emergence of a reference point always yields other reference points, whether we are talking apparent big-ticket items like God or Being or minor stuff like vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream.

Indeed, all those apparent differences point to the underlying illusion: that choice is real and so is the chooser.

This is not a problem that needs to be solved, though it often presents as one. But the experience of nonduality is not like winning an argument or fixing a broken sprocket, any more than duality is a sprocket that needs to be fixed or a wrong idea that needs to be corrected. The Tao that can be told or named is not the eternal Tao.

Still, it can be helpful to get clear on the insistent presence of apparent opposites, the relationships that appear contingent upon them, and the self that perceives and engages with them. Conflict arises when relative viewpoints appear to clash with one another, making the victory of one over the other seem both necessary and inevitable. But if both viewpoints are illusory, and are seen that way, then there cannot really be a conflict.

Hence the teaching and learning value of living nonviolently.

When we see an illusion as an illusion, all that ends is our sense of it as "real." The ancient Hindus used the example of a rope mistaken for a snake. So long as one perceives a "snake," then the rope is a snake, and one responds accordingly. But when one realizes it’s only a rope, then the perception of the snake ends, and the response to the snake ends as well. It's just a rope. It always was just a rope.

What changes is simply our sense of what is possible, or necessary. As A Course in Miracles puts it, salvation is “a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made" (T-26.III.3:6).

The Course is dualistic. It appears within a context where choice has meaning because loss and gain appear real. The ACIM curriculum reframes this apparent choice not in terms of what is "correct" but what is most "helpful" in terms of seeing that there really is no choice nor one to choose. Heaven was never lost and so there is nothing to seek or regain (T-26.III.5:2), and God has only one child, not a whole bunch of unruly rugrats all vying for attention (T-9.VI.3:5). Everybody reading this has all the Love there is, but some of us - including yours truly - think there has to be more.

But there is not, and when our eonic tantrum passes, we will realize that “there is only this: this this” was all along the secret to joy and peace.

There is no basis for a choice in this complex and overcomplicated world. For no one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in the perception of alternatives for choice. That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this (T-26.III.6:1-5).

The Course can help us discern the true from the false and on that basis, "choose" what is true, though this choice is really choiceless. It's similar to the "gateless gate" of Zen. Before you pass through it, the gate is real and attainable. After you've gone through it, there isn't any gate and there never was.

A split mind cannot perceive its fullness, and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness in it, and restores it to the Kingdom because of its acceptance of wholeness (T-7.IX.4:4-5).

This isn't something that happens to the discrete empirical self; it is the undoing of that self by what contains/creates it. It can't be forced or learned or accomplished. It can’t be taught or sold. It just happens. It's just happening.

Philosopher Archie J. Bahm offered a wordy translation of the Tao Te Ching (worth tracking down in full if that sort of thing interests you), the first chapter of which reads:

Nature can never be completely described, for such a description of Nature would have to duplicate Nature.

No name can fully express what it represents.

It is Nature itself, and not any part (or name or description) abstracted from Nature, which is the ultimate source of all that happens, all that comes and goes, begins and ends, is and is not.

But to describe Nature as “the ultimate source of all” is still only a description, and such a description is not Nature itself. Yet since, in order to speak of it, we must use words, we shall have to describe it as “the ultimate source of all.”

If Nature is inexpressible, he who desires to know Nature as it is in itself will not try to express it in words.

To try to express the inexpressible leads one to make distinctions which are unreal.

Although the existence of Nature and a description of that existence are two different things, yet they are also the same.

For both are ways of existing. That is, a description of existence must have its own existence, which is different from the existence of that which it describes; and so again we have to recognize an existence which cannot be described.

Serious assignment: re-read those sentences of Bahm's, substituting "God" for "Nature." How does it land in you? How does it resonate?

That is where we are now: in the presence of words pointing to that which cannot be expressed through words. The tempation is to fall back into the comforting illusion of “Sean” studying and learning, choosing between myriad options, making things happen, taking this or that stand.

Yet can we - even briefly - see how all of that apparent choosing and apparent being simply runs by itself and naturally includes what we tend to believe is a separate self with agency?

What it means, how it arises, what its source is . . . we can't say. But that it is we can say with certainty.

And that, it turns out, is enough.

To awaken is simply to realize that nobody is asleep and so nobody can actually wake up. Not only is there nothing to look for, there isn’t even anybody to do the looking.

And thus we are back at the beginning: the mutual arising of being and non-being. The particular and the general; the way and the no-way. The one is not superior to the other, and neither is absolute. We are not what we believe we are: nor are we anything else.

And yet, how certainly wonder-full this infinite being in Love . . .

Love,
Sean