The Choices We Can See

After writing There Is Nothing You Have to Do, another thought occurred to me.

If there is nothing I absolutely have to do, then life becomes a series of choices.

But the quality of those choices depends greatly upon how many choices I am able to see.

Fear Narrows the View

When my ego moves into fear, it is as though I am standing inside a long, dark tunnel.

I can see one small circle of light ahead. Because it is the only opening visible to me, I assume it is the only way out.

I tell myself:

I have to fix this.

I have to make this person understand.

I have to decide immediately.

This is my only option.

The more frightened I become, the narrower the tunnel appears.

My mind may be working harder than ever, but it is working with a shrinking view of reality.

Urgency begins masquerading as clarity.

Psychological research supports part of this experience. Anxiety can weaken our ability to direct and shift attention, while stress can impair the brain systems involved in flexible thinking. In one human study, prolonged psychological stress reduced participants’ ability to shift attention—but the effect improved after the stress subsided. Fear may not literally eliminate our choices, but it can make alternatives harder to recognize. (Eysenck and colleagues; Liston and colleagues)

Perhaps the light ahead is not the tunnel’s only opening.

Perhaps I have simply forgotten to turn around.

When I settle into the deeper awareness I call my soul, I discover a wider landscape behind me. The circumstances may not have changed, but the amount of reality I can see has.

Possibilities begin to appear.

I may act now.

I may wait.

I may ask for help.

I may change direction.

I may say no.

I may realize the problem is not mine to solve.

I may even discover that what felt like a crisis was merely an uncomfortable moment asking for patience.

The soul does not necessarily know the correct answer. Perhaps it is simply less frightened by uncertainty. Because it does not demand an immediate escape, it can remain still long enough for more of the landscape to come into view.

Choices We Haven’t Seen Yet

Stillness may help us notice choices that were already available.

But inspiration can do something even more remarkable.

It can reveal a possibility we had never imagined.

There have been times when an idea seemed to arrive in my awareness nearly complete. Sometimes this happened while I was awake and quiet. Other times it happened while I slept.

One of those experiences became 10KGuarantee.com.

I dreamed about a way to give buyers and sellers greater confidence in their real estate agent. Rather than simply asking clients to trust the agent’s promises, what if the agent put something meaningful behind those promises?

I awoke with the concept remarkably clear and felt compelled to write it down.

Where did that idea come from?

I don’t know.

My subconscious may have been assembling pieces of information outside my conscious awareness. Research offers some support for this possibility. Studies have found that periods of incubation and mind-wandering can sometimes improve creative problem-solving. One study also found that REM sleep helped people connect information that initially seemed unrelated. (Baird and colleagues; Cai and colleagues)

The science does not prove that ideas come from the soul or some external source. It does suggest that useful mental activity can occur outside our immediate conscious control.

That explanation is reasonable.

But I am also willing to leave room for mystery.

Perhaps when the usual chatter, fear and calculation become quiet, something deeper within us has a better opportunity to be heard.

Imagining Another Door

We often think of choice as selecting among existing options:

Door number one.

Door number two.

Door number three.

Then creativity introduces another possibility.

Sometimes consciousness imagines a door that was not there before.

Nearly everything humans have created began this way. An invention, song, painting, business or book existed as an idea before it existed in the physical world.

Someone saw beyond the immediately obvious.

That may be one of the most extraordinary dimensions of choice.

Sometimes we choose among the possibilities we can see.

Sometimes stillness reveals a choice that fear had hidden.

And sometimes inspiration expands the field of possibilities itself.

Something Deeper Coming Through

The word inspiration comes from the idea of breathing into something—giving it life.

That meaning feels appropriate.

An idea enters awareness and begins to take form.

I do not need to claim that every inspired thought comes from God, another dimension or a supernatural source. The human brain is remarkably capable of making connections outside conscious awareness.

But neither do I feel compelled to explain away the mystery.

Within the framework I use to understand soul and ego, the soul is not somewhere far away. It is the quieter awareness beneath the ego’s fears, judgments and calculations.

Perhaps inspiration is not always something coming from somewhere else.

Perhaps sometimes it is something deeper coming through.

Soul and Ego as a Team

The soul may expand the view, but the ego still has an essential job.

Once a possibility becomes visible, the ego can examine it, gather facts, anticipate consequences and take practical action.

The soul asks:

What else might be possible?

The ego asks:

How would we do it?

The soul offers a wider view.

The ego determines the next practical step.

And inspiration occasionally whispers:

There is another road you haven’t imagined yet.

This is why I no longer see ego and soul as enemies.

The ego without deeper awareness can become trapped in fear, control and tunnel vision. But insight without practical action may remain only a beautiful thought.

An inspired idea still needs someone to test it, challenge it, revise it, finance it, communicate it and bring it into the world.

The soul may open the door.

The ego must decide whether—and how—to walk through it.

A Larger Definition of Freedom

Confidence does not always come from knowing what will happen.

Sometimes it comes from trusting that I can meet whatever happens.

Difficulty may remain. Limitations may remain. Uncertainty almost certainly will.

But fear does not have to decide how much of the landscape I am allowed to see.

The more clearly I see, the more options I discover.

The more options I discover, the more consciously I can choose.

And occasionally, when I become quiet enough, I may see beyond the landscape I already know.

I may wake from a dream with an idea.

I may suddenly understand something that confused me five minutes earlier.

I may imagine something that has never existed.

Perhaps the tunnel never had only one exit.

There were doors all around me.

Some were hidden by fear.

Some required stillness to see.

And some were waiting to be imagined into existence.