Choosing Consciousness

0:00 Last time, I left you with a question, what are you choosing when you choose, not what you're choosing. Between what you're choosing when you choose, there's a difference, and it's the difference that changes everything. We treat choice like a multiple choice exam. Option A, option B, option C, maybe D if you're feeling adventurous and we feel sophisticated about it. Some choices are conscious, some are subconscious. Some happen so far below the surface we don't even know we made them. We've built an entire vocabulary around this, an entire therapy industry, a whole coaching ecosystem dedicated to helping you make better choices, more conscious ones, more intentional ones, more aligned ones.

1:25 Here's what None of that addresses the menu itself. It doesn't matter how consciously you choose if every option on the menu was generated by the same filter.

1:44 Last episode, the filter was frustration and July heat and the assumption that something was broken. Every choice it generated haul the freezer, buy a replacement, check the breakers was completely logical, completely conscious, completely unnecessary. The filter that generates the bigger menu, the one we're all working from, is the belief in separation. I am incomplete, something is missing, something needs to be fixed or earned or proven. Every choice that menu generates is a variation of the same faults premise conscious, subconscious, unconscious.

2:53 It doesn't matter. They're all on the same menu, built by this same belief. Choosing more consciously from a false menu is still the false menu.

3:19 So here's what I want to think about. There's choosing consciously and there's choosing consciousness. Those sound like the same thing. They're not even close to the same thing. Choosing consciously means I see multiple options, and I'm deliberate about which one I pick. I'm awake during the selection, I'm thoughtful, I'm intentional. Still multiple choice, Still the same menu, just more awake inside it. Choosing consciousness is something else entirely.

4:16 It's not picking the best option from the menu. It's recognizing that the menu itself is the question. Think about what my father did. He didn't look at my situation and pick the best option from the menu that I had built. He didn't say haul the freezer or don't haul the freezer, buy a replacement or don't buy a replacement. He asked a question the menu couldn't generate. That's not a better choice. That's a different operating premise entirely choosing consciousn business isn't multiple choice.

5:06 It never was. Truth or its absence not true versus false, as in one option is right and one option is wrong truth or its absence, as in one is real and one is what appears to be there when the real thing isn't. Darkness isn't the opposite of light. It's just what's there when light isn't. The absence of truth isn't a wrong answer, it's just what the menu looks like when truth isn't the filter.

5:54 And here's the thing about that. Every option, the belief and separation generates every item on that menu, is on the same side of that binary, conscious or unconscious, deliberate or reactive, optimized or chaotic. All of it is the absence of truth wearing different outfits. Now it gets even more interesting. The ego isn't stupid. When you start to see the menu for what it is. It doesn't argue, it doesn't defend the menu. It offers you an exit.

6:48 The exit sounds like this, I know I made bad choices, but I wasn't in my right mind, not guilty by reason of insaneity. And here's the thing about that plea. It actually works in a courtroom. If your insanity can be demonstrated to a sufficient degree, whatever happened while you were insane didn't happen, you're off the hook. The problem is you're still in the courtroom. Not guilty still requires a crime, It still requires a judge, a jury, a verdict. It still requires the entire framework of guilt to be real and operational.

7:44 The insanity plea doesn't dissolve the courtroom. It just gets you a better sell. Not guilty is still inside the menu. It's the most sophisticated item on it, the one that looks like freedom while keeping you exactly where you were Choosing consciousness isn't a plea. It's not a better defense. It's not a smarter strategy. It's not even a decision in the way we normally use that word. It's the recognition that the courtroom was built by the same false premise as the menu. Guilty, not guilty, insane.

8:49 Those are all items on the same list. They all assume something real happened between people who were genuinely separate.

9:06 Remove the premise. The courtroom dissolves, not because you won the case because you stopped showing up for a trial that was never real. Sit with this discomfort means it landed next time. Not guilty is not the same thing as innocent.