Questioner: Why think so much about decisions? Shouldn’t our decisions be spontaneous? I like to decide in a free flow.
Acharya Prashant: So the questioner is stressing on the spontaneity of decisions. He says that he likes to decide in a flow. It's a good thing, your intention is good. But we have two flows within us: one is the flow of conditioning and the other is the flow of freedom. And both these flows in many ways can appear similar or identical.
When you are in a flow, a stream, then movement is effortless; you get carried away. So, you have to be very careful of which stream you have chosen to be in - the conditioned stream or the free stream.
You see, you are angry and you are saying a lot of things. In that moment, have you seen how the inner flow operates? In a sense, you are quite spontaneous at that moment, aren't you? But is there freedom in that spontaneity? Or is it just a kind of conditioned inner reflex? You are standing in a barren place, barren and dark, and somebody approaches from behind and taps on the shoulder. And you respond with a jerk, shocked. You didn’t have to think about this response, right? But is there freedom in this response or is this a totally conditioned response? The response was instantaneous, wasn’t it?
So, that brings us to thought and time. Operating without thought - deciding without thought - is a great objective to have, but you have to remember that there is a stream that flows above the zone of thought and there is a stream that flows below the zone of thought. Thought requires time. When you decide using time, when you decide thoughtfully, then you are in the middle zone. But your objective is to decide without using much thought - you don't want to bring time into the picture. Your objective, as you have mentioned in your question, is spontaneity. So, that can happen in one of two ways: One, you become a totally conditioned machine. You start belonging to the stream below the zone of thought and there, no time is needed.
