Choice

Webster says in part:

Main Entry: choice

Pronunciation: 'chois

Function: noun<p>

1 : the act of choosing

2 : power of choosing

5 : care in selecting

- of choice : to be preferred

synonyms CHOICE, OPTION, ALTERNATIVE, PREFERENCE, SELECTION, ELECTION means the act or opportunity of choosing or the thing chosen. CHOICE suggests the opportunity or privilege of choosing freely <freedom of choice>.

Every action in life is the result of a choice. Some of the choices that we make are major, others are so insignificant as to be unnoticeable. We even make the choice to take our next breath. Every choice that we make carries with it a result.

Choice is central to our human development and spiritual evolution. By what we choose and what choices we make we determine how and what we will learn. For instance, we can choose to exercise regularly or we may choose to be a couch potato. In the first case, we will have a healthy body, in the second, we will tend toward flab. We can choose to study and perhaps pursue a degree at a university or we may choose to spend all of our free time in front of a TV. In the first case we will be training and exercising our mind. In the second case we are likely to become a rather dull person. These same things apply to our spirituality. We can choose to pursue our spirituality, or to ignore it.

As newborns and as children, our choices are made for us, where we will live, what we may do within those years and even to some extent who our friends may be. In our earliest years, those choices are made by our parents and to some extent by our grandparents and will help to determine who and what we will become. A little later in life, school teachers will also make choices for us. Those choices are made for us without taking into account who we are and what our chosen life path is.

Children rebel because they feel that they are being forced into a mold not of their own making or design. They rail against the stupidity of parents, adults and authority figures in general. But the choices that were made for us by our parents were the correct choices!! Before birth, we chose our parents knowing what kind of choices that they would make and how those choices would effect us and our lives. Our parents may have set us on a life path that is very different than the path that we need to be on during our adult years, but there was obviously something that we needed to learn by being on that path for a time. As adults people often leave the path that their parents set them on and set out upon a totally different path, they have made a choice.

As we learn and grow, we may choose to continue on with the path that we chose before birth, or we may choose to diverge from that path. Sometimes during a lifetime the circumstances of that life will change. We may have learned the major lessons that we felt that we wanted to learn during this lifetime, or the circumstances surrounding us may have changed to the point that we will not be able to learn what we had wanted to do. So at this point, we may choose to end this lifetime, or we may choose to continue on with our growth and learn other things. We can even choose to move into a higher level of awareness.

Every minute of every day, we are faced with choices, each choice we make presents even more choices. It is a cycle that never ends. Every choice that we make alters our path, our course through life. Some of those alterations are insignificantly small, others will be major. We can choose to follow the basic life plan that we had set ourselves before birth, or we can choose to ignore it.

We can choose to get involved in our own growth and development and the growth and development of others, or we can choose to hide our heads in the sand.

Every choice that one makes is an intention. You gain or you lose by the choices you make. You can open yourself up to the unlimited or place limitations on yourself. Life is choices, and it is how we handle those choices that determines what will happen to us individually and as nations or the planetary society as a whole. Choices made today affect the choices of tomorrow or in the years to come.

We can choose to become an enlightened person and again choose not to. To be an enlightened person is a choice. Even the choice to become an enlightened person is an enlightened choice. And such a choice carries with it results, just as all choices do. Some of the benefits of becoming enlightened are accelerated growth and soul evolution. This means that you will lessen the number of times that you have to come back to the Earth plane with its trials and tribulations. Becoming enlightened also places certain responsibilities on us. First of all, we become more responsible for our own growth and development. We also become responsible for helping others with their growth and development. The degree to which we are responsible to others is determined by the state of evolution of our own soul and the degree of our own enlightenment.

This series of dissertations is the result of some choices that I made and are actually a service to my fellow man. But that is the topic of another dissertation. Even though I wrote these dissertations, and most of the words are mine, the inspiration of much of them came from notes supplied by Charles Grooms.

Sometimes choices are forced, because one has not learned or open themselves up to deal with a particular life lesson or issue.

Joyce Chandler