The Body that Makes Choices

Life is repetition of choices.

The moment we start living, we pick up some and discard the other.

The result of all choices I have made is “I”.

Whatever we do, we cannot avoid to make choices, and cannot be neutral.

“Choices” are not only social and conceptual (what jog I choose, and what kind of character I play).

Standing with two legs as a process of evolution is also human choice, and we Japanese losing the ability to distinguish “R” and “L” is choice, too. We cannot be alive without these choices literally.

Therefore, that we say something, that we take certain form (have a body that have a specific shape), and even that we exist are parts of our choices. In other words, they are removal or directivity.

Any existence cannot see the world as it is.

That we live in this world means that we categorize the world along with our own convenience, and do something based on this categorization.

I want to question here.

What have I been doing?

There is a “life” we have already begun, and there is a “self” we have been playing in a very real way.

Earlier than I do something, I began to “do human” and “do Yuto Matoba”.

My body presents the gross of what I have been doing.

Anyway, let’s move my body.

The moment I flex any parts of my body, one choice and exclusion begin,

If I pay attention to some parts, the other parts begin to exclaim.

“That’s not fare! Look at me!”

I move and breathe while listening to them.

After this exercise, I feel refreshed, relaxed and can see the world in a flat way.

However, even in this state, there is a bunch of parts that I have overlooked.

Moreover, returning to daily life and doing “Yuto Matoba”, playing a “university student”, and behaving “masculine”, and doing a “human”, I put myself huge number of bias.

After all, we can see the world only through the lens we ourselves have made.

We, such existence, always face something different.

Different culture, age, gender, species…

They categorize the world in a different way from me and live based on the world image.

That’s why it is possible to have a conflict.

I need to renew the question I made earlier:

What have I been discarding?

People, animals, plants, stuff around us, and my body...

They are always sending signals to notify us what we have forgotten.

Looking back choices I made, and being aware of them.

Only after that, I can have a possibility to relate to others who are incompatible to me.

Still, I can see the world only in a way I have categorized, but there is a beauty in the fact that while we cannot understand each other completely, we can relate .

The Self as a medium

You are a perfect being as you are.

When you are said in this way, you tend to have this questions;

“Then, don’t I need to anything?”

NO, no,

You take “yourself” in wrong way.

You regard your “true self” as the unchangeable subject that exists without any transitions and interactions with others and do nothing, aren’t you?

In reality, however, we are cast on this world first, and are made to start living while we cannot understand why we do so.

We tend to think we have a body first and the body changes and interacts with others.

But, in fact, interactions first, transitions first, and the place that they happens is called “body”.

The existence of “I” is dependent on this world.

So there is no such thing as “the self” that does nothing and isn’t placed anywhere.

This is a mere product of our thoughts.

Some people use the expression; we need to keep internal peace,

But we cannot identify “internal” and “external”.

Even if we become a priest and renounce the world, we cannot exist without interaction with the world.

I’m not mentioning some special states of spirituality.

I’m mentioning in an actual way.

For example, see how your body is.

Your body doesn’t exist as an entity.

The interactions with what you eat and drink, the air you inhale, and the bacteria that live in your body happen all the time.

We cannot live without them even a few moment!

It is said that the number of bacteria that live in human body are more than that of human cells.

Not are bacteria living in our body, but are we living on bacteria!

Then, when we say “I am thinking”, “what” on earth are thinking?

When I chanted Yoga Mantra one day,

I tried to manage how I chant well at first.

As I continued, however, the consciousness that “I am chanting” was getting to disappear.

I felt like the world wanted to express something and accidentally my body was chosen as a medium.

I didn’t need technique to chant anymore.

What I did was just try not to distract the flow of the energy.

Even though my self-consciousness disappears, it doesn’t mean my personality does.

My personality remains through my body inevitably.

(Feel a relief!)

When I was there as a medium, I felt so fantastic.

But, it is boorish to try to maintain it and to find the way to represent it.

On the same level, for us, mere media of what the world wants to express, it is also boorish to try to remove something bad when things don’t go well.

We are just placed in this world, and we can enjoy the transitions and interactions that happen there.

Well then, is there nothing that we can do?

Relax. You are doing something inevitably.

So, don’t I need to do anything positively?

???

I’m wondering in the same question that I cast as first…

If you have a good mirror, reflected you will be better.

　　　　　　A person who is in front of you is your mirror; he or she reflects how you are.

              For example, when you think that your counterparts of conversation boast of themselves, your way of receiving them reflects how you are. This situation shows that the counterparts have a desire to show off or to be praised, but at the same time it shows that you also have the same desire as they have.

              If you don’t have such desire at all, you must not think the counterparts as people who crave the limelight. If you think so, this is an evidence that you also have same desire.

              Your counterpart is your mirror. This proposition also means that you can play a role as your counterpart’s mirror. Therefore, it is possible to change how counterpart is by how you are, and it is also possible to be changed how you are by how the counterpart is.

              Hence if you meet a good person, you can make yourself better by using him or her as a mirror. I realized this fact when I met a great person recently.

              I thought this man didn’t have a desire to show off or to be praised at all. It is usual for us to have a desire to appeal ourselves to some extent especially when we meet someone for the first time. However, when I met this man for the first time, my latent desire to be praised didn’t reveal at all.

              We usually use this kind of words; “you should be just the way you are”, but it is not easy to embody this word. It is natural for most of us to have a desire to boast of ourselves and to be praised.

              However, what if there is a person who doesn’t care about evaluations from others at all and concentrate just on what his or her true self seeks…?

              What you can get from attitudes or atmosphere of who is in front of you has much stronger power to change you rather than what you are said. When I met the man and share atmosphere with him, I felt that I received a silent but strong message; “you should be just the way you are.”

              Therefore, if you have a “good mirror” in front of you, reflected you will become better. My next challenge seems to keep this good state without this “good mirror”.

              If I can make it, I can become a “good mirror” for others, and I can make others better.

To wait until you feel like doing

I came home at this evening, and I wondered what to do because I didn’t have anything to do particularly. We tend to turn on TV or PC for no reason on this kind of situation. The problem is the fact that there is enormous information on TV or on the Internet. There are lots of devices that attracts us on these tool. While we are devoted in these, we waste time unconsciously.

In order to know what we really want to do, we need “conversation” with our own body. However, we forget our body when we click something attractive (mostly what forces us to think attractive) and are lost in it. While we are devoted in what our brain regard as attractive, we are easy to forget what we really want to do.

Today, before I did something, I tried to “wait until I felt like doing something”. As I did this, my eyes were struck by a bookshelf, and I took a book that I bought before and hadn’t read yet in my hand.

This action, so to speak, was done by my body spontaneously rather than by my will. Compared to the time I bought it, it was much easier to understand the contents of this book. If I describe this incident a little spiritually, my body, the closest natural object, made me read at just the right time.

We usually make a choice based on general ideas that we “should” do. Even when we choose what we eat, we care about proper calorie, nutritious balance, and how we are looked by this choice. In other word, we persist in what we “should” do.

However, as long as we cling to what we should do, we cannot listen to our body. Once we make our thinking mind empty and ask our body “what do you really want to eat?”, the answer from our body may be“I don’t want to eat anything now”.

             If you can wait until your body really wants and eat what you really want, it may be a great happiness.

              If you have something to begin as a new habit, it is useful to “wait until you really want”. For instance, consider when you want to begin to jog as a habit. When you don’t feel like jogging, your body may not move comfortably even if you force your body to run. If you feel like this, “wait until you feel like jogging”. Just then, there might be a moment when your body start moving unexpectedly. If you can encounter this kind of moment, you will become able to enjoy jogging deeply and become healthy. When don't you feel like running forever? Jogging may not be fit for you.

              It is difficult to keep doing when your body and mind are not in harmony if you don’t have strong willpower. I recommend you that you wait until you feel like doing job even if it is what you “should” do in order to you tackle it with the condition that your body and mind are in harmony.

            Of course, sometimes this easy kind of attitude is not allowed by society around you. Still, you also have what you can make a choice by yourself on a daily basis. I think it is better to follow your body than bind by ordering yourself “you should do it” “you had better do it now”.