This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation

by Alan Lew

We can see that they are just impulses, arising for a moment, the way wind and rain and snow arise for a moment in the world. They are wind and rain and snow, but they are not the world. They are not us. They only become us by our own choice, by our choosing to see them that way, by our choosing to cling to them so tenaciously. We can make another choice if we wish to. We can choose to allow these feelings to rise up and then let them fall away again like a hot breeze. And this is the simplest and most frightening truth about all this business. Anger is a choice. Boredom is a choice. Fear is a choice. No one can hold a gun to our heads in this regard. No one can make us feel this feeling. No one can crawl inside us and alter us. We are responsible for the state of our own consciousness.