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Here’s Dude’s ninth lesson for life (from the second Dude book). You can read all the lessons here : https://etandi.wordpress.com/?s=Dude%27s+9+lessons. Enjoy The God Machine’s “Scenes From the Second Story” – a masterpiece from one of the best rock bands of the 90s !

Nine

I think this one you’ll find to be challenging but also something that will be important to you when you have a full understanding of it. So Bright please understand that for your average human being, trying to make sense of life is beyond them, trying to choose the life that they want is beyond them, trying to better their life is beyond them, trying to be satisfied with life is beyond them. Many people try to have these things but they come up short. And why is that ? Because for the most part human beings do not take the time to understand themselves, to understand the human mind, to understand the human body, to understand relationship, to understand reality. So when you take time to understand things, you can gain wisdom, you can gain understanding, you can gain insight and integrate these things into how you live. In other words, you can make changes that help you. And by helping yourself, you help others. And when you help other people, you in turn feel satisfied. So understand Bright, a conscious choice in how to choose to live is something that most human beings do not make ! They do not choose how to live ! They do not see how they can live ! They roll along, pulled along by every whim, every desire, every mental piece of flotsam and jetsam, every little distraction, every little reaction, everything they feel they have to do ! But rarely, very rarely, do they make a conscious choice in how they want to live, for their entire life ! Let alone, just one day ! When you choose how to live for one day, it gets easier every other day ! When you choose to live every day a particular way, you live your whole life that way. But people don’t do that. Human beings don’t do that. They pull up their socks every now and then but then they let them slip down again and then they make the same mistakes that kept them dragging in the mud before.

So I want to give you something that I feel will help you significantly. And it’s very, very simple.

Yes Dude.

Let me start by saying this. For every life that exists in the entire cosmos, there are ways to live that are good for that life and ways to live that are bad for that life. And no two lives are the same, although they are similar in some ways and different in others. But no two lives are the same. So when it comes to human beings, you have a choice – a very simple choice. You have a choice, you can choose to embrace what enters your life and to take it, whatever it is and be satisfied with whatever it is. Or you have a choice to say ”No I don’t like this.” and put up with it and feel miserable. Or to say “I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to make a change because I don’t like this.” and so you make that change, however you need to do it. Now here’s the problem with human beings. You say you want choices, you say you want to make changes but you don’t like choices and you don’t like making changes. And whenever you’re confronted with something really painful, something that puts you in a position where you have a really painful choice to make and it isn’t clear which way you should go, you let all kinds of things tear you apart. And you focus on all of your failures and all of the bad feelings from the past. You let your imagination take over for worse, instead of taking over for better. And I’m not saying you should be foolhardy and pick up anchor and coast along as if they’ll never be anything that will go against you. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that you should make choices that you feel are good for you and be aware of what those choices lead to. But here’s the thing – you have to be willing to do that. To see that you have choices. To be willing to make a choice. To be willing to take a risk. And then depending on what choice you make, you have to be willing to accept where you’ve gone or to do something about it and not just complain about it. And that’s the problem, many people just complain about those things.

So I’m going to give you a very simple exercise. One that relates to something that I said earlier but one I think that might surprise you.

Yes Dude.

So I want you to consider this. On a day to day basis you are faced with countless choices. Perhaps dozens, perhaps hundreds. Now depending on your environment and whatever situations you’re in, it can vary widely, from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes at night. Many many choices. And you tally up those choices, every year you make many, many, many choices – thousands of choices and most of them you make without giving much thought ! Many of them are made unconsciously. Many of them are made with only the briefest of thought and most of them are made without any consideration of how you feel – how you feel emotionally or how your body feels. So consider Bright that when you make choices, you do so in a number of ways. You can do so unconsciously – you just go with the thing, almost moving over the fact that you had a choice because the choice has been made for you. Or you can think about a choice. Put yourself in a position where you think about something. You can approach that in many different ways. Or you might imagine something. Or in so doing, think about it. Or you might feel something emotionally. Feel either choice and see how you feel emotionally. Or where you might imagine either choice or see how your body feels. So you have all these different ways of making choices. And for the most part human beings make them unconsciously or by thinking about them a little. They very rarely connect with how they’re feeling emotionally and really pay attention to that or how they’re feeling in their bodies. Now sometimes when you make a choice, you make it very quickly. You’re reacting directly to an emotion but you may not be thinking about it. You maybe imagining but not thinking. At the same time you’re not paying attention to your body. So the danger for a human being often, is to choose one way or another of making choices. Rather than approaching them using all of these ways of choosing, integrating all of them. Now that’s not something that you do easily. You make hasty choices all the time and you’ve trained yourself to do that. And as I said, many choices are unconscious. You haven’t even made the time to bring it into consciousness. You do them automatically. So that’s not very useful either. And so whenever you have a choice, inside of a choice about something, is a choice about how to make that choice and if you can be aware of that, you can make a choice that is actually good for you, that actually takes you to where you want to go – to where your body wants you to go, to where your spirit wants you to go !A choice that is good for all of you !

So I’m going to give you a simple exercise. It is one that you can modify however you like, one that you can use in any particular experience, any particular situation, when it comes to making choices. And I think you’ll find that once you’ve integrated it, your ability to approach life and to take on choices becomes far easier and far more rewarding, far more satisfying, without feelings of “I should have made this choice or that choice or what if I’d have done that or maybe it’s too late to do this.”. All these different types of regret. You wont have that. It will disappear from your existence. And with it you will feel greater fulfillment.

So this is the exercise. Start small and work your way up. And as I said you can vary it how you like, personalize it however you like, change it from occasion to occasion. Right, the exercise goes like this. During the day, twice a day, I want you to pick a situation in which you have to make a choice. It can be a simple choice, it can be a hard choice. Start with the simpler choices first and then work your way up, so that down the track you’re doing it with your harder choices. But you can start with your simple choices. Look at your choices before you make them. Create the mental space to look at them before you choose them. And now, ask your body, “Where in my body is this choice being felt ?” and take note of the parts of your body that are experiencing this choice. And just sit with that feeling for a minute. And when you’ve done that, I want you to consider your choices. What are the choices you have in making that choice ? And I want you to see if you make one choice, where does that choice feel in your body ? And just take note. And if you make another choice, where does that choice feel in your body ? And just take note. And keep going, depending on how many choices you have. And what you’ll find is this – different choices create a certain energy in different parts of your body and overall in your body. Sometimes the energy is weak and sometimes it’s stronger and sometimes it’s very strong. And what you’ll notice is a particular sensation, when you ask the right choice. The choice that is best for you to make. It will have a strong sensation and it will be a pleasant sensation. And if there are other choices that aren’t too bad, they maybe pleasant but they wont be strong. And other choices that are not good for you, they maybe strong but they wont be pleasant. It will be very clear the distinction. And of course they’ll be some that aren’t so bad, that won’t be so strong but they’ll be unpleasant. Now this distinction will happen very clearly for you. Now I said at the beginning, you will feel where the choice is inside of you. Now that feeling will occur in a certain part of your body. Now the feeling of the best choice may occur in the same part of your body or in a different part of your body. It doesn’t matter. They’re answering different things.

I’m a bit confused Dude. You said I could personalize this how I want. I’m not seeing the personalized bit at the moment.

Keep listening Bright, you will.

Alright, please continue.

OK, so once you’ve done this – felt what each choice is like in your body, I want you to see what happens if you imagine that choice, the right choice, inside the part of the body that had to make the choice. Now you can see it moving if you want, you can feel it moving. It doesn’t matter. Now when that happens you’ll feel a particular feeling arise. It will be a feeling of goodness, of wellness, of satisfaction, of fulfillment, of knowing it’s right. Now if that doesn’t happen, do that exercise again because something is wrong or you need to consider other choices. Now here’s where it comes into personalizing. When you’ve done that I want you to try this. Now that you have the feeling of what’s right, I want you to imagine that particular choice. See what it will involve, see what it will look like. You can do that however you want. It’s very personal. What I might do is very different to what you might do. And as you’re watching that image and as you’re seeing those images unfold, just notice the emotions that arise inside of you. What kind of flavour do they have ? Are they positive, are they negative ? Are they comfortable ? If they’re comfortable that’s good. If they’re not comfortable that’s not so good. It means you need to revisit the whole thing. And so that’s the exercise. You can personalize any part of it that you want but what I was trying to emphasize is that whatever you choose to see regarding that choice, is up to you. You may see one thing one day and another thing another day. You may see different elements of an experience – the choice at different time intervals. Personalize it how you want, play with it how you want. And it will vary from person to person, depending on who was in the situation. So explore that and always come back to the feeling that it creates. Emotionally and physically it will have a very distinctive feeling. It is very comfortable or uncomfortable. And so that gives you certainty on your choices. There are several different ways of getting to it. You’re not just relying on one thing.

Dude I’m a bit confused. Why did you mention another thing to do with choice making later, rather than earlier ?

Well. because I felt it connected to what came previous and I think Bright you’ll find if you work through these – initially when you work through them that the ones prior help with the ones that come after. The first one is the easiest to work with. But once you are familiar with all of them, you can apply any of them at any time. That will take practice and it’s the practice that will make the difference. You can’t just do something once and expect your life to change over night. It will only change when you practice things. When you allow yourself to feel what you need to feel because it’s the feeling that’s going to change everything.

Sorry I interrupted you. Feel free to go back to it.

Yes, well I just wanted to say one thing about that. In your experiences of making choices, it’s OK to make unconscious choices. Sometimes that’s useful, it’s necessary, it helps. It is the best way to make a choice. But sometimes when it comes to making significant choices or difficult choices, it’s better to get out of unconscious mode and to make better choices. Choices that integrate all of your being, instead of choices that are made one way or the other. If you have this integrated approach, you’ll find that all of you is informing that choice, rather than just your mind, rather than just your impulses, your normal habitual reactions. So when you train yourself this way, it gets easier with time. Yes it will be challenging at first but you’ll find with time it gets easier and because it gets easier, it becomes habit. It becomes something that you know how to do without having to think about it. You do it naturally and because of that, it’s integrated into your life. It doesn’t feel like a chore, it doesn’t feel like something that you have to be aware of; you know how to do it and you do it by matter of habit. And because it’s habit, you make habitually better choices than you did before when you were not aware of how you were choosing. You were just choosing without consciously being aware of how you were making the choice and how you could have made the choice. This way you will do so in an informed way, a way that considers all of your needs, a way that connects you to what is best for you. And by doing that, you’ll make choices that are better for you, choices that are more fulfilling, choices that leave you with a feeling of satisfaction and no feeling of regret. And because of that your life will feel better. You’ll be healthier, you’ll be functioning better in every way.

It is often Bright, the fact that humans make choices that they were uncomfortable with, that they didn’t like afterwards, that they felt regret for afterwards, that had made them sick, that shortens their life, that makes their lives miserable. The ability to make choices in the right way changes everything for you human beings. And you need to understand that. You need to understand that if you’re going to go out into the cosmos. If you’re going to be space faring. If you’re going to be ordinary human beings that want to live a long, healthy life. So does that make sense ?

Yeah, it does. It turned out to be very long all of this. But I have a sense that there was a great deal here in understanding just two things – our emotions and our ability to make choices.

Yes that’s true and if you explore that you will see that it’s true.