This is a summary of the Douglas Harding No-choice principle and technique from his book Head Off Stress.
This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Douglas Harding’s books (Amazon).
“All this choosing one thing in preference to another is illusory, a great cover-up. Separate individuals, as such, are powerless to make the slightest difference in a universe where every one of them is tightly controlled by the rest. Pretending otherwise, pretending that, as our sole selves, we exercise free will, is as absurd and dishonest as it is vainglorious and stressful. Only the Source of all, under the sway of none, has free will.” — Douglas Harding
The No-Choice Principle & Technique (Douglas Harding Summary)
What is the principle and technique of No-choice?
No-choice means no decision making, no decision regretting and troubled postmortems, and no accompanying stress.
- No-choice works creatively, coming up with unforced and unpredictable and truly inspired solutions that you couldn’t possibly take personal credit for.
- To live the choiceless life is to identify with the Machine’s Inventor, to take one’s stand in Freedom itself. It is to be one’s Source, to choose what flows from it, and to perceive it as very good.
- Decisions arrived at this way, choicelessly, are never wrong decisions.
The Four Stages of No-choice
When faced with a problem, the action to be taken happens in four stages…
1. See yourself as the Bottom Line (or Ground) for the problem pros/cons to arise from
- “As entertaining the problem in all its aspects, as the Screen for them to come and go on, as their Mirror, you remain neutral.”
2. See that the completed pattern of things to come arrives from the Bottom Line (spontaneously/unannounced)
- “So inevitable it seems, so conclusively does it resolve your problem, that you are left in no doubt that here is the right decision, arrived at in the right way at the right time. It has been immaculately conceived in you and for you but not by you.”
3. Now it is the turn of that decision itself, of that seemingly so right design, to go on display above your Bottom Line (and to reveal its limitations and weak spots)
- “All manner of doubts and difficulties, and dilemmas about how to give effect to the decision, are now likely to appear. Again, you don’t solve them by choosing between possible alternatives. You stay with them till they, in turn, are ripe and ready to resolve themselves.”
4. The plan is implemented
- “With interest, perhaps with awe, you watch it take shape. At no time do you feel that you are moulding or forging that shape. It forms in you as cloud-shapes form in the sky.”
In summary:
· Above Bottom Line = No-choice: The apparent you that has no choice lies above the Line. Everything there is caught in a close-knit web of mutual conditioning, and freedom is a dream.
· The Bottom Line itself = Choice: The real You that has choice lies on the Line. This is the only place where freedom is real, seeing that there’s nothing to bind or be bound. Here You freely decide to be, not just the Origin of all things, but of Yourself.
· Your heart tells you that you choose: In your heart you know you have freedom of choice.
· Your head tells you that only God chooses: In your head you figure that you have no such freedom, because you are conditioned through and through—conditioned from outside by your environment and from inside by your heredity; and you may add that only the Unconditioned, alias God, has the power of choice.
· Head + Heart: Taken together, they tell you Who you are, right now. In the end, the only way to be free of stress is to be Her, or Him, or It (pick your own pronoun) who is Freedom Itself.
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