The effortless way: on enlightened 'decision-making'

[blackfence]

It's an interesting question if, when someone follows the logic and 'experience' of non-duality/Brahman/Nirvana/the Tao all the way through... when the mind is therefore rendered silent -- when egoic desire is 'defeated' because the ego itself cannot stand in the face of the Truth -- how 'decision-making' and motivation works. This has long been a vexing question.

 

I'd like to pose a hypothesis: that there are two kinds of decision-making. Let's call them the common-sense version and the spiritual version, which is highly counterintuitive and really anti-common-sense.

 

The common-sense version examines normal human aims: health, well-being, happiness, peace in both the individual and society, etc. And it tries to figure out what the best means to those ends are, and attempts to execute on those means. It is fundamentally instrumental -- meaning that it's about accomplishing certain goals.

 

The spiritual version is not really decision-making at all. In the mind's silence, we can say that something else manifests. In the space of absolute effortless and 100% relaxation, in that creative space, in that primordial soup, lightning flashes and something appears, though at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways, but -- intelligently.

 

So if we admit in this way that action still goes on even among and by the 'enlightened,' then the question is: upon what basis? 

 

The answer is: that the basis cannot be named. There can be no story, however complex or nuanced, however peaceful or 'good,' that accurately captures the enlightened one's conduct. As soon as one touches that question the mind again goes silent.

 

One cannot have both the mind and not the mind. One cannot be the Tao and also the person. Both the Tao and the person -- that distinction -- disappear in the silence that is the real Tao. The Tao that can be named, isn't.

 

So there is a wholly different way of going about things, one which avoids labels, names, goals, programs, categories, distinctions, and yet which acts intelligently, and yet in a way that cannot accurately be described or planned for.

 

What description or planning happens itself is the result of these trans-rational indescribable forces.

 

And the real kicker is, of course, that this is always true even for the so-called unenlightened minds... they are all of them in that mode alone. 

 

In the end, there is only a single version of decision-making. All the rest is imaginary.

Edited January 12, 2019 by blackfence

[dwai]

11 hours ago, blackfence said:

It's an interesting question if, when someone follows the logic and 'experience' of non-duality/Brahman/Nirvana/the Tao all the way through... when the mind is therefore rendered silent -- when egoic desire is 'defeated' because the ego itself cannot stand in the face of the Truth -- how 'decision-making' and motivation works. This has long been a vexing question.

 

I'd like to pose a hypothesis: that there are two kinds of decision-making. Let's call them the common-sense version and the spiritual version, which is highly counterintuitive and really anti-common-sense.

 

The common-sense version examines normal human aims: health, well-being, happiness, peace in both the individual and society, etc. And it tries to figure out what the best means to those ends are, and attempts to execute on those means. It is fundamentally instrumental -- meaning that it's about accomplishing certain goals.

 

The spiritual version is not really decision-making at all. In the mind's silence, we can say that something else manifests. In the space of absolute effortless and 100% relaxation, in that creative space, in that primordial soup, lightning flashes and something appears, though at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways, but -- intelligently.

 

So if we admit in this way that action still goes on even among and by the 'enlightened,' then the question is: upon what basis? 

 

The answer is: that the basis cannot be named. There can be no story, however complex or nuanced, however peaceful or 'good,' that accurately captures the enlightened one's conduct. As soon as one touches that question the mind again goes silent.

 

One cannot have both the mind and not the mind. One cannot be the Tao and also the person. Both the Tao and the person -- that distinction -- disappear in the silence that is the real Tao. The Tao that can be named, isn't.

 

So there is a wholly different way of going about things, one which avoids labels, names, goals, programs, categories, distinctions, and yet which acts intelligently, and yet in a way that cannot accurately be described or planned for.

 

What description or planning happens itself is the result of these trans-rational indescribable forces.

 

And the real kicker is, of course, that this is always true even for the so-called unenlightened minds... they are all of them in that mode alone. 

 

In the end, there is only a single version of decision-making. All the rest is imaginary.

a dream within a dream. All happens in the mind of the one who is awake  

[Everything]

Yes you could call the most high and effortless nature of enlightened decision making the idea of the positive aspect of having no choice.

 

To have a choice that feels so absolutely good, that you have but no choice but to choose it, because that is how good it feels. And thus then you can't help but to allow your ever greater destiny and purpose in life to be more fully realised by you, evermore, through those choices that will forever feel so absolutely good for you, that you have no choice but to choose it, evermore, as it's being and ever greater becoming are one and the same thing.

Edited January 13, 2019 by Everything

[manitou]

And then there's the Voice.  Not an actual voice, but an off-the-wall thought that tells you to do something totally unexpected, but it comes in real strong.  Like a real strong intuitive instruction.  Disregard that one at your own peril.  It always seems to make an appearance when one gets oneself out of the way.

Edited January 14, 2019 by manitou

[Zen Pig]

2 hours ago, manitou said:

Like a real strong intuitive instruction.  Disregard that one at your own peril

yes, actually had a couple of these "voices"  which , like you say, is not a verbal voice, but something we cannot ignore if we wanted to.  

[manitou]

3 hours ago, Zen Pig said:

yes, actually had a couple of these "voices"  which , like you say, is not a verbal voice, but something we cannot ignore if we wanted to.  

 

LOL.  I thought everybody had it.  Maybe they do and can't hear it.  But I was at my brothers last week and I was talking to him and his wife.  I said 'you know that emphatic little voice that tells you something off-the-wall, like 'Go give that homeless guy $20?'  My brother and sister in law just shook their heads, said 'No', and were rolling their eyes for the rest of the evening.  You'd think that by this age I would have learned to keep my mouth shut...