I goofed up in my last article…
In that article, I wrote about conscious choice-making which is a general technique that can be applied in any life situation. BUT I made the mistake of not giving common examples for conscious choice-making.
So, to correct that mistake, I have made a major update to that article and have republished it. Please go back and re-read that article to get a better understanding.
In this article, I am writing about Seven Spiritual Choices which is a specialized technique that I received as inspiration from the Universe/Divine based on conscious choice-making. This technique focuses on 7 big aspects of life that are important both spiritually and practically. You can expand your consciousness by regularly contemplating and holding active intentions about these 7 choices.
The seven spiritual choices are:
- The choice of Life – Life is the Universe (or God) unfolding and manifesting itself moment by moment. This choice is all about being fully engaged in life and fully connected to the Universe. This choice is big and important because it is so empowering.
- The choice of Awareness – Increasing your awareness is so critical to growing both practically and spiritually. So learn to make this choice often and, as a result, you will steadily become more aware of yourself and the world around you.
- The choice of Freedom – To experience your full power and capability in life, you need to become free from self-imposed limitations, such as attachments, and from other limitations, such as conscious or unconscious beliefs that come from events in your life and from parental and social conditioning. These types of limitations are blocks to your growth and to your ability to be, do, and have everything that you want. Choosing freedom helps you clear the blocks.
- The choice of Love – Love in its highest form is a powerful state of awareness and being. It is a state of consciousness and energy frequency that is higher than almost any other state of being except joy and enlightenment. It helps you eliminate fear; and love of self is so important for helping you live up to your full potential.
- The choice of Expression and Creation – Expression and creation are all about the everyday living of life and interacting with others. They are the most significant things you do in the living of life, so you should choose to do them well. Expression is how and what you communicate to the world. Creation is how you create or recreate yourself, your life, and everything in it, and how you can be of service to others.
- The choice of Knowing – Knowing is receiving or attaining true knowledge about yourself and the world around you. So it is vitally important to grow in your knowing through intuition, inspiration, and grace as well as through awareness via your senses and communication skills. Choosing knowing enables you to grow and awaken to higher levels of consciousness and being.
- The choice of Wholeness – Wholeness is the quality of your connection to and integration of your body, mind, and soul; AND it is also the quality of your connection to and integration with both the world around you and the larger Universe and God. You become more whole and capable in all aspects, and more able to be of service, as you pay attention to and grow in wholeness.
Because these 7 choices (or intentions) are big in their very nature and applicability in life, I find it very helpful to start by contemplating the choice – that is, by thinking about and appreciating its true nature. Doing that gives me greater understanding and greater feeling for what it means to me, and also a better ability to visualize what the outcome of holding the intention looks and feels like.
For example, on the subject of Life, I want to choose Life because I want to fully embrace life, be more conscious of it, and know that I want it with all of its positive aspects and not its negative aspects. And I might mentally say something like the following to myself with strong feeling, almost like a prayer…
“I choose Life.
I choose to know Life and experience Life.
Life is expanding in me and around me. Its expansive energy fills me and surrounds me.
Life is full of possibilities, is creative and abundant. I am filled with growing awareness of life’s infinite possibilities, creativity, and abundance, and I choose to be a wholehearted, active participant in life as it unfolds in each moment.
I choose my life to be happy, healthy, and whole with successful and beneficial outcomes.”
As I said in the previous article, choices and intentions should always be positive, present tense, and with strong emotion (feeling) because it is what you desire. You can also choose intentions that are for other people or for larger collectives of people – likewise expressed positively, in the present, and with strong feeling because it is what the greater whole desires.
I recommend that when you first begin practicing the Seven Spiritual Choices, you do just one choice per day and give a lot of time (5-10 minutes) to contemplating its nature as you make the choice. You will notice that the seven choices are big because they are processes that have a subject, object, and actions (between subject and object) that can be seen from multiple perspectives. So, you can express the choice/intention in different ways – for example, intend being the choice, doing the choice, and experiencing the choice.
Once you become familiar with the choices, you might choose to make/hold them in your awareness for multiple or even all 7 spiritual choices in one day. I normally try to make all 7 choices each day during my morning walk. But some days, I explore them in more depth and in different ways, so I may only do 3 or 4 of the choices.
There is no right or wrong way, except remember that you are holding an intention to be, do, or have something you desire. And implicitly, you are choosing to grow in consciousness and become more than you were before.
And, you can choose them again, in a kind of short form, as they happen to come to mind during the day. For me, I contemplate all 7 fully most days during my morning walk. But during the day, the choices that come to my mind most frequently are Awareness and Love, and the occurrence of the other 5 vary widely based on what comes up in my thoughts that particular day.
Let me conclude by pointing out that these seven choices are hugely important to both spiritual growth and practical growth, so developing the ability to hold clear intentions about them will have a huge payback for anyone. The practice of the Seven Spiritual Choices has made a profound difference in my life.