I woke up this morning in my warm nest of goose-feathers-doona, and it was oh so compelling to lie in bed. The eastern light was flooding into our bedroom from the clerestory windows, a clever to capture the morning sunshine.
I turned to Daniel and said, ‘I just want to stay here’, at which point he became my co-conspirator.
‘Well, why don’t you?’
‘But what about my yoga practice?’
‘You can do it later.’
Did I make a choice in this moment when, I did in fact stay in bed? Or, was I just following some citta vrtti that had popped up randomly on my mind’s radar. How much choice do we really have when an old practitioner like me can be so easily shunted off the track.
I guess we mere mortals have free will to choose but must exercise discrimination, which I probably did not invoke this morning.
Beings who have achieved enlightenment, however, have transcended duality and the ambivalence of choice. They are guided by wisdom gained from insight, which is sometimes called “listening to the inner voice”.
I must admit at my stage, I’m still quite capable of turning down the volume of the inner voice, or even switching to another channel.

 sruta anumana prajnabhyam anyavisaya visesarthatvat

Truth-bearing knowledge is first-hand, intuitive knowledge.*
*Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, B.K.S. Iyengar