§03 · Freeing Will · 528 Hz · Ludus · Begin within
How do I choose?
In-Room Exercise — How Do I Choose?
Bring to mind something you have struggled recently to decide. A dilemma, a conundrum, a quagmire — even a crisis. As light or as heavy as you would like. You will not be asked to share it with anyone. Only to invite it into your hearth, your furnace, your solar plexus.
Invite this quandary into your center and wash it in the fire of will you carry and stoke.
Observe how your will burns or smolders, sizzles or smokes. Watch as this tangled quandary — this wound-up ball of yarn — begins to singe and flare.
Where is the kink, the stubborn knot, that keeps it from unraveling? Where does the hidden end of this thread attach to you?
Look on with curiosity, with raw wonder, with thauma.
Inquire within: when did this quandary rise to your awareness? How does this decision differ from ones where you knew what to do — or where you did not know what to do, but had less trouble deciding?
And remember: even when you have not known what to do, even when you thought you did and later learned otherwise — right now, in this moment, in your center of centers, you are okay.
You will always be okay in this present moment, in your center of centers.
The past and the future may hold pain, regret, guilt, shame, fear, uncertainty. But here and now there is only the breath, and the knowing that you are enough, that you are okay — and that next time you return to center and check in like this, you are likely to find the same self-assurance waiting.
Now exhale again, all the way down to empty. Squeeze out all the little voices of doubt with the last of the air in your lungs.
Grounding your feet — slowly refill from the center outward and upward.
How do I choose?
Let this question ring like a bell as you softly let your breath lap at your inner shores — out, and in — out, and in.
Repeat with me, aloud or not:
I begin within. Will be free. Let it come. Let it burn. Let it go.
Practice in the Wild — The Biggest Choice
At the end of the day — lying down, one hand on the solar plexus — bring the biggest choice of the day into the fire.
Not the most dramatic necessarily. The one that felt largest to you.
Ask yourself:
Why did this feel like a big choice? Was it the weight of potential consequence, the uncertainty, the number of people it touched?
Was it difficult to make? Did you waver, or were you resolute from the start?
How did the choice occur? Did you reason it through step by step, or did the decision arrive whole and sudden — already made before you knew you were making it?
Will it have a lasting or intense impact? On you, on others, on what comes next?
How has the story you tell yourself changed since you first made it? What did you think you were choosing then, and what does it look like now?
Hold these questions in the solar plexus. Let the fire work on them.
With a trusted companion: share this practice aloud. One person at a time — the other only listens, without fixing, advising, or comparing. Ask the questions of each other. What the fire reveals in the telling is often different from what it revealed in the silence. This is a vulnerable conversation. It asks to be held with care.