The Choice

At the root of our movement through time is the choice. Each choice. Every choice.
We start with a given set… a certain robot adorned with certain innate propensities, tendencies, weaknesses, factory defects. It may be more able to work in a physical realm, it may have deficiencies in its emotional center, it may have a propensity for sickness, it may be overdeveloped in the intellectual center. It doesn’t matter. You can Work with any robot. This is what’s given. This you can’t change.
Then the game begins. And the game consists of a sequence of choices. I will be friends with this one. I won’t associate with that one. I will play with these kind of toys. I will not be like my brother. I want to be like those kids. I will dress like that.
These choices give shape to a creature of 4 dimensions (the fourth one is time) that extends through space and time from the place and moment of our birth to the place and moment of our death. But these choices are, under the normal course of things, made in a state of mechanical sleep. They are caused by outside influences, by imitation, fear and desire.
A true choice cannot be made while in the sleeping state. While the robot is going through mechanical motions, it can follow the programmed mechanical habits: the imprinted choices that have been there from early childhood. The game can end right there. This process can continue until death and it does in most cases.
So the first objective, for a Being that wishes to Work, has to be to find a way to awaken the robot, to bring it to a state of wakefulness that will allow it to make choices, to create a new shape in the space-time continuum which we call the Labyrinth.
An instant of the waking state will permit the robot to have a glimpse of freedom, of Doing, of coming to a space of real choice. Choices, even small ones, made in this space, can reverberate through time (backwards and forwards) to alter the shape of the 4th dimensional machine. Such a choice is not preordained, and can’t be controlled or determined from the outside. It is free and created in the moment. It emerges, wild and untamed from the void. In an initial state of wakefulness, choices can be made that will ultimately hurt the robot. This is a real danger. This can be ameliorated by working with a more experienced traveller that can help the robot, protect it and guard it from the ravishing force of raw creation and will.
Eventually, a choice must extend and grow in time…not mechanically, through a chain of cause and effects, but through the force of repetition. The same free choice must be made over and over again. Each time determined. Each time free. The paradox of this statement is a key to real Work. The same choice, each day. The same choice, each month. The same choice, each year. Each time done freely. Each time with the knowledge of other possibilities. Each time returning to the same place. "Today, I, in full concert with myself, again make this choice."
The repetition creates a new shape in time and space, a shape that has now emerged from the void and expands outwards. As it repeats, it extends and grows stronger. It may thus extend beyond the robot, in both time and space.
You breathe out, you find yourself in a space of raw freedom.
You breathe in, you use that freedom to make the choice, the one choice, what we call the Work.
You breath out.
This repeats as long as you can hold it.
If it falls, you find it again. You find your place in the labyrinth, regain your rhythm, your constant discipline… and start again.
Your mind may wonder: "What is the nature of this choice?"
In the sleeping state, there is no hope of understanding the answer.
In the waking state, you can begin to understand the nature of making a choice at all.
As you grow more familiar with the actual taste of free choice, the question will come up again. And the answer will be clear.