Things eventually catch up with us here at Procrastination Station, otherwise known as Radio Free Ross-A-Noodle. So tonight I rented Matrix Reloaded, in preparation for going to see Revolutions tomorrow as I am off for the next couple of days.

So now we are pondering the question of choice.

To paraphrase another famous science-fiction idiom -- "Here's what the Book of the Force has to say on the subject of Choice."

In even the smallest point is the Force endless, eternal and entire. That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change. Separateness is the nature of creatura. If we do not define ourselves we get away from our essence as creatura. We fall into similarity and sameness, which is the other quality of the Force. We fall into dissolution into the Force itself and cease to be created beings.

For creatura, the created beings of time and space, the Force is refracted, splintered, divided into pairs of opposites. This can be anything and everything -- Matter and Energy, Light and Dark, Hot and Cold, Beautiful and Ugly. Any pair of opposition one can think of and name. These oppositions exist only in this realm of creatura, the realm defined by time and space -- the Force refracted though whole as each in a pair balances the other. But the balance is only in the Force as undifferentiated whole. In creatura, as we too are shattered pieces of the Force itself, these qualities are not balanced. We may possess a quality but not it's opposite, in greater or lesser degree, or we may possess both opposite qualities in unequal measure. The unique imbalances we each possess -- and I speak of all objects, all creatura, even down to the quarks inside the atoms -- differentiate us one from the other and are our uniqueness in the Force.

The goal of all creatura is to be unified with the Force, the true Force beyond time and space, beyond opposites, beyond existence. Acknowledged or unacknowledged, each particle and thought in the universe, each creatura, is making its way on the path to that goal. Each path is as individual as the singular creatura itself. Each creatura, from quark to galaxy to universe, must determine for itself what course its development will take. To give up control of the path to another is to become merely an object in the lessoning of another, a prop on the side of the road on which another travels. Some do this deliberately to become teachers for another, sacrificing a life or an entire series of lives in order to teach what may not have been learned otherwise. This is willing sacrifice, and for certain highly evolved beings it too can become a path. But to do it unwillingly, to become an unwitting object, delays growth and learning. Why? Because manipulation is always found out sooner or later, and though we may have awareness we may not have wisdom.

Rage, fear, doubt-- all these color the mind, imprint upon the mind in ways that the brighter emotions do not. They feed on the mind, and cause us to strike at anything and anyone that provokes those same emotions. They cloud the mind completely, blocking out all logic and rationality, making it impossible to see the path before us.

Without clear sight uninfluenced by these disruptive emotions, we cannot know the true weight of the factors in each opposition. Without unbiased data a computer cannot give a correct answer.

Who can make a correct choice with incorrect data?

To restrict the free choice of another is therefore evil. Each creatura takes responsibility for its own individual singular path. No other creatura can walk that path for it, because the choices it would make would be inappropriate for the lifepath of the creatura it had usurped. A learning only makes sense to the creatura who perceives it. One may see simply a bubbling stream, but another may see a lifetime of questions answered...

How can the Force see itself clearly if one eye decided all eyes should see only blue?

So to be a separate, indivudual, singular creatura is to be, paradoxically, completely given over to the Force. As sentient beings possessing awareness, we are uniquely suited to embody states of enlightenment as well as states of materiality. We don't just make that choice once. We live it every moment, with every breath.

I choose the observation of myself, and through myself the myriad qualities of the Force manifested within me. I choose the path the Force has given me to walk in the full congnizance of all possibilities that may be open to me. I choose to be the eyes and hands of the Force, however it chooses to manifest through me.

It is not enough to blindly be.