Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
challenge you on [Laughs]. The thing about you is in the course of
that book you changed quite a bit, you evolved, and it occurred
over a period of time so I'm not trying to pin you down on
anything.
WIZARD: I've been getting this from Trip for years.
TRIP: [Laughs] Okay, so in your book there's a big chunk, well let
me start by saying there's a saying that I picked up somewhere
that goes something like, we can't control how the wind blows, but
we can trim our sails. There's a big chunk of your book that's
dedicated to the notion of choice and how we feel or react, or don't
react to something, okay. And in the book you're convinced that
we have this choice, that we have this ability to choose to react or
not react to something. But I have a question for you. If you
didn't have that choice prior to your awakening, and that
awakening came by grace, how can you say that you have it now?
JAN FRAZIER: Yes, and that's a wonderful point. I just have
written a second book, and I spend a lot of attention on that very
question. What does it mean for somebody to theoretically have
choice if they don't themselves experience that they have it. It's
very clear to me. I think when somebody wakes up and they look
back at how they were before, how they felt, how they experienced
their life, it has become very clear that they were choosing all
along everything they did, but then you could say, well, so what, if
you don't know, of what use is it? So one of the things I try to do
when I'm talking with people is invite them into looking at their
very immediate experiences they live moment to moment, and
watch what goes on in their minds, and watch the various levels of
choice that really are operating, and discover what's already at
play.
So I'll give you an example. So if a person experiences something
that's negative, they experience it negatively, and it sets in motion
thoughts of resistance, or judgment, and then their emotions that
are uncomfortable that have to do with anger or fear or something,
recoiling from the thing that's happened. That feels like the
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