Choices Law # 20

Most of us make Choices from a range that’s far too small, that diminishes us.  We let fear, confusion and other people’s opinions limit us.  How do we discover and consider our Choices before we make them?

                 Cynthia F. Davidson, excerpt from the Wisdom Wheel Choices card

Time for Choices, the 20th Law. During the next ten days, take the time to seriously review all your options. Brain storm and generate some new Choices to consider. Make some lists of alternatives in many areas of your life. Think up new job possibilities, creative projects, different places you could live in the future and what you could do with your 'retirement' years. Review how you source your ideas, energy and expectations. Do you feel the freedom of 'free will' or do you feel trapped and limited in terms of your Choices?

Next consider how you make your Choices from among these conscious options. Then make room for your unconscious motivations. 
Are you aware of what's involved when you try to make up your mind? 
To what degree is your spirit consulted when considering your options? 
Do you pray for guidance before making your Choices? 
If you were consciously 'spirit led' rather than 'self propelled' (from your fear/mind/ego level), what changes could be possible? 
When it's time for change, do you tend to act in a pro-active or reactive way? 
How has this attitude affected your range of Choices?
For these ten days, ask others about their Choices. What were their best and worst ones? Why? 
Emotional Choices, intellectual Choices, physical Choices, and spiritual Choices are all worth considering, so remember include these categories. You can choose to feel well, have healthy thoughts, make Choices that honor Nature and your body,  your loved ones. If all we ever choose to do is what someone will pay us to do, then our Choices are severely constrained. 
In the end, we will be defined by the Choices we made and failed to make. So write down all past Choices you can recall, and the ones you know need to be made in the near and long term.   

During these next ten days allow different Choices to present themselves without rejecting them at first glance. Reconsider the Choices others have made, and how things have turned out for them. There are always consequences, even when you try to avoid choosing. 

On the Wisdom Wheel the Choices Law is balanced by the Eternal Present. This means we need to stay in the 'now' and not bring forward the baggage of bad Choices when considering current options.

Here are some wise words from others on the subject of Choices. 

The Law of Free Will aka the Law of Choices

We...have the right...to bring our creative and expressive energies out into the world in positive or negative ways... No matter what our circumstances, we have the power to choose our direction. We also choose to be under the influence of others or choose to be an example for others. We do it with a hundred actions which lead to the circumstances we find ourselves in today. Thoughts are things and the mind is the builder.

Margo Kirtikar Ph.D, Flowing with Universal Laws

Everything you do is a choice based on your dominant values at the moment. Even taking no action is a choice. You are where you are and what you are because of your choices and decisions in life to this moment.

Brian Tracy

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

Robert Fritz

I do not know why it is we remember so much about some of the small decisions of our lives and so little about most of the great ones, but for me at least that has always tended to be the case. Maybe it is because the great decisions are not made at some particular moment in time but deep within us have been so long in the making that we find ourselves acting on them before we are altogether conscious of having decided to.

Frederick Buechner’s memoir, The Sacred Journey

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Gregory David Roberts

Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

Herman Broch

The choice to experience life as a genuinely powerful person librates a huge amount of creative energy, and most people are unwilling to enjoy that amount of energy.

Gay & Katie Hendricks

Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that ‘the people’ do not want freedom. They want bread and circuses. They want workman’s compensation and fringe benefits and TV. Give up your free will, give up your freedom to make choices, listen to the expert and you will have three cars in your garage, steak on the table and you will no longer have to suffer the agony of choice.

Maldeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

Spirituality is neither the privilege of the poor nor the luxury of the rich. It is the choice of the wise man.

Chinmaya

Ethical existence [is] the highest manifestation of spirituality… A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself to all life ...which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Albert Schweitzer

Transformation is happening, the only choice you have is what it will look like: war, pestilence, frogs, blood. It can be plagues but it can be pleasure. Love each other into newness…

Pat B. Allen, art therapist, books include Art Is a Way of Knowing

At every instant, one is really making a choice between heaven or hell. The cumulative effect of all these choices determines the calibrated level of consciousness and one’s karmic and spiritual fate.

Dr. David Hawkins in I

We are both burdened and blessed by the great responsibility of free will- the power of choice. Our future is determined, in large part, by the choices we make now. We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can and do choose our response to whatever arises. Reclaiming the power of choice, we find the courage to live fully in the world.

Dan Millman, in The Laws of Spirit

In ten days, we'll take up the 21st Law of Renewal, so do your Choices work in the meantime.