Awareness of Choice

   I believe it may have been in reading Krishnamurti that I was introduced to the idea of 'choiceless awareness', which involves being able to look at a situation holistically without trying to separate out anything. But I also begin to appreciate more and more the idea that we can use this same awareness to make choices. The difference is that I am no longer attaching to the outcome or believing that choices are inevitable.
   An example might be what happens at work when one disagrees with the way the work culture is unfolding, or even with the boss. In this instance, I can react negatively to the situation, or can look at the situation with equanimity and reason that this is what they are presented with, take it or leave it. But once I recognize that I cannot resist the reality of that situation, I suddenly have a different set of choices. Whereas the first was about whether to fight, conquer or flee, the second phase after equanimity is to completely accept the situation, but also knowing that there are choices. At each moment, one can choose to engage or not to engage, or even just to engage a little bit. There is no rule that forces a person to either wholeheartedly embrace or reject a proposition. Somewhere in between, one can actually experiment. And when a person realizes the many choices they have in handling a situation (many of which haven't even materialized or been imagined yet), there is an enormous space that opens up, almost a kind of relief from the pressure of assuming that one has no choice but to handle the situation either one way or the opposite.