“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  – Carl Jung

I was passing the lounge area of a hotel on my way out the door and I glanced up at the TV monitor, which was tuned to a news station.  “Coming up next”, the anchor announced, “is the story of the case of a mistaken rape.”  I rolled my eyes, groaned and kept on walking.  Rape by mistake????

Without wanting to dwell on it, I figured the perp had two possible scenarios: “I didn’t mean to rape you,” meaning he had something else in mind.  Or, “I didn’t mean to rape you,” meaning he had someone else in mind.  These are not good defenses.

There are a lot of things we do automatically that we should do (like brushing our teeth), or that must occur unconsciously in fact, to live, like our circulatory, digestive, and respiratory systems.  Most other things fall in the arena of choice.  We don’t eat chocolate cake by accident.  We don’t cheat on a spouse by accident.  And no one rapes by mistake.

What many of us don’t realize, however, is that we don’t do anything that we don’t give ourselves permission to do.  Flip that around and underneath any action is an internal “yes”.  Behaviors that seem mindless are simply those actions that we have green-lighted so many times that they have become habituated.  Look further under the hood, however, and you will find that at one time, you have checked the mental box, ”I agree and accept these terms”.

So when you find yourself in conflict doing something that you think you don’t really want to do, I suggest you check in with the internal dialogue to see what is going on.  The mind has a logic of its own that makes perfect sense in your head.  “I have to cut off that ragged bit of the lasagna before I put it away so that the edge is straight and I should eat that bit because it’s a shame to waste food.”  If you verbalize it out loud so that you can hear the crazy talk coming out of your mouth, you have a much better chance to dispute it, and you can see how the justifiable rationale in your head is in fact irrational and unjustifiable.

Connecting the Holy Dots 

In the Torah portion Va’Etchanan, we see Moses’ repetition of the Ten Commandments, albeit with a few minor changes.  Between each of the last five Commandments, which proscribe man’s relationship with his fellow, Moses inserts a vav, which is a Hebrew letter meaning “and”.   So instead of each Commandment standing alone, it is joined to the next…“You shall honor your father and mother AND you shall not kill AND you shall not commit adultery AND you shall not steal AND you shall not bear false witness AND you shall not covet.

The implication, according to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, is that each of these Commandments is equally weighted, whether the sin is against someone’s property, marriage, honor or life.  “Holiness” presumes “wholeness” and therefore Moses wants us to understand we cannot prioritize or be selective.  As a unified and interconnected whole, we cannot compartmentalize our actions; violate one precept against your fellow man and it is as if you violate them all.    And so you can read them backwards as well.   And then the last Commandment – which prohibits coveting – becomes first.

Fighting With God

In essence, what is coveting?  It’s not an emotion.  It’s not a desire.  It’s a thought – an ego-based decision stemming from a self-centered worldview that makes life wrong.  It’s like  – “I want, I’m owed, I deserve, and I’m gonna get” – all rolled into one toxic ” thought.  In essence, it’s a fight with God, Who runs the universe.  And once someone thinks along these lines, then that person gives him or herself the necessary permission to violate other people’s autonomy, possessions, honor, marriage, life, etc…. There are no “mistakes” here.  This is a choice.

The Impact Of Choice

So what does this have to do with chocolate cake?  All behavior can be traced to the thought that permits and justifies the action.  It is the thought that generates the emotion, which then drives the action.  That’s the pipeline.  So use this constructively.  Think good thoughts, therefore, and you set goodness into motion.  In a nutshell, this quote from Marcus Aurelius encapsulates it perfectly: “Our life is what are thoughts make it.”  When you understand that the decisions you make are what make you, you can choose your thoughts well, and in so doing, create a life you love and worth living.