Below is a dictation of the speech I made for my Health Coaching circle in January of 2018 while enrolled at IIN. I edited it for relevancy because I wanted to share it here. Choice is one of the most overlooked, powerful tools we have as humans.
Every decision changes the course of our lives. There’s spirituality behind the decision for me to write and post this article, your decision to visit this website and read it and the ripple effect thereafter. It is important to recognize the significance we have in changing the lives of others and changing the world. Events both large and small are happening or not happening because of you. You make the decision to partake in life, or to retreat as an observer.
So many things need to align just right for opportunities to present themselves: The right job, the right apartment, the right partner. All of which spiral totally different chains of events depending on the option you choose to proceed with, or what opportunities you let pass you by.
Participating in life with this in the back of my mind as an adult who is adulting without a partner after spending 12 years in codependent relationships, this concept can be agonizing. Only I am vested in deciding what is best for me and most of the time, I don’t feel completely qualified to do so.
I can get caught up in analysis paralysis. Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right decision?
Should I just retreat?
So…how do I make it less scary? How do I relax and know that I am on the right path? I found some interesting points rooted in scientific studies, Buddhism and Christianity.
To be clear about my background, I’m curious about everything. I like to gather information from all sources and believe there is validity and something to take away from all philosophies. I will use the term God and the Buddha and the universe as described from the sources I will be quoting from.
First the boring stuff – science. While I was agonizing over whether my decision to dump someone who I thought was toxic for me was the right thing to do, my friend told me about a scientific study about the neuroscience of free will and how free will might actually be an illusion. I read more about this on Wikipedia:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will)
Free will meaning – not coerced, or the person could have done otherwise at the last moment.
Researchers began observing the brain to watch decision making processes at work. It’s very convoluted and gets philosophical, but here is the theory and the results:
“Human agency, the ability to affect the surrounding world, may be a result not so simply of conscious choice – but instead a result of training unconscious habits beforehand. One significant finding of modern studies is that a person’s brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them.”
“With contemporary brain scanning technology…scientists… were able to predict whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice.”
My takeaway from this – If your decisions have already been made, there is no point in agonizing after the fact whether or not it was the right one. Just trust that it was and move on with laser beam focus. Done. Stop analyzing it.
In Nicherin Buddhism, there are philosophies called three thousand realms in a single moment of life and human revolution. To overly generalize these complex and deep concepts, it basically means that your reality manifests based on your internal life-state, which is known as the ten worlds. They are hell, hunger, animality, anger, humanity, rapture, voice hearers, cause awakened ones, bodhisattvas and buddhahood.
We all have a tendency to view the world from one of these life states, but also have have the freedom to move to a higher state with awareness through chanting. We perceive life differently in each of these worlds and it effects our thoughts, decisions, actions, which then effects everyone around us and how they react, then everyone around them, and so on.
Three thousand realms in a single moment of life can be viewed from two perspectives: First, our lives at each moment encompass and include all phenomena in the entire universe; second, our lives at each moment permeate and fill the entire universe. In short, a single life possesses vast and limitless potential.
Human revolution is partly the awareness that you are perceiving life from one of the lower worlds and you can level up to a higher and more enlightened perspective through chanting.
A famous quote in Nicherin Buddhism is:
A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation, and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.
Not only does the consistently changing state of mind of each person affect all of reality, I love this quote from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life when observing what happens when one isn’t born at all:
One man’s life touches so many others, when he’s not there, he leaves an awfully big hole.
While I was home in Connecticut for the holidays, my mom and I went to a library book fair in Southbury. A book popped out at me called Every Decision You Make is a Spiritual One by Nicholas Markell, Anthony J. De Conciliis, and John F. Kinsella. As I read, I realized the beliefs were rooted in Christianity.
First, it explains Gerald Broccolo’s definition of spirituality, which is simply, “How I cope with life.” It consists of two components: “A way of viewing the world (attitude) and a way of experiencing life (behavior)… Ultimately, it must also include a reference to the transcendent.” (page 6)
You can choose transcendent to mean God, the universe, source energy, etc.
Another way to view spirituality is as an expression of what our hearts draw us to:
“Each decision, honestly made, draws a person closer to his or her heart – which ultimately draws each to the mystery of God.
Facing the mystery, rather than hiding from it is the goal of a healthy spirituality. Therefore, it is a heart-searching process, just as Martin Buber suggested: ‘Everyone should carefully observe what way his heart draws him to and then choose that way with all his strength.’”
“Every man’s foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities and not the repetition of something that another and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.” (page 7)
“Spirituality is not something we decide to do, it is the filter through which we decide what we ought to do.” (page 7)
As I read, I wondered if I could fully make a career change and become a successful practitioner. I kept wondering, am i good enough? Do I know enough to put myself out there? This book discussed the spirituality behind what you decide to do for work:
The often unspoken assumption about God’s call is that it comes to the good and the innocent, the talented and the prepared…The one necessary ingredient of a call to do God’s work is not prior virtue but current willingness. Here I am. Send me. Page 49
In other words, God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.
To conclude, the significance of our existence as a part of the collective and making the decision to rising up to our goals can be summed up in one of my favorite quotes by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. You playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wont feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
I hope all of you have already made the decision to shine.
Holistic Style 