Everybody makes a choice, but a choice made in unawareness is compulsion. Let us say you get angry. It is your choice to be angry. You believe that is the way to handle the situation, but the choice is made in such unawareness that it is a compulsion.
One must shift into making a conscious choice. Even a simple act, like when you wake up in the morning, he unconscious choice is that you do not want to wake up. This is the unconscious choice. Your physical body wants to remain in the bed for some more time.
There are so many limitations in your experience of life that in many ways, unconsciously, you are not really looking forward to the day. Let us say tomorrow, you have planned to go on a picnic. Do you see, before the sun rises you will wake up on that day? Consciously, you had decided the previous day; you are now looking forward to tomorrow.
Why ascetic paths were set is simply because of this: you start doing things that are naturally not comfortable for you; you do it but you do not like it. Things that you like, you can do compulsively.
Things that you do not like, you can only do it consciously; there is no other way. When you are hungry, the natural urge is to grab food and eat. Now you make a conscious choice, ‘I am very hungry, but I am not eating.’ To stay away from food, there is no other choice except being conscious about it.
{{/usCountry}}Things that you do not like, you can only do it consciously; there is no other way. When you are hungry, the natural urge is to grab food and eat. Now you make a conscious choice, ‘I am very hungry, but I am not eating.’ To stay away from food, there is no other choice except being conscious about it.
{{/usCountry}}Maybe, initially your awareness is only for half-an-hour a day, but gradually you are bringing it into various aspects. The idea of cultivating awareness is to make it seep into your life.