Hi Chary,

Why indeed are any of us smoking when we know it is harmful to our health? Maybe you will expand on your own thinking about this question you've open for us Chary? You've opened up a BIG line of thinking - why do we follow any "habit", (including habits of thinking and feeling), when we know that certain behaviors (paths) won't and don't get us where we want to go?

In a conversation one day, a woman declared (to my utter amazement!) that everything we do, has to be because we want to! Needless to say, most of us understand our "self" and our lives as much more complex and meaningful experiences than such a non-dimensional, simplistic conclusion boils us down to! Most of us realize that our behaviors, actions and interactions, are not driven by personal desire alone. After all, many people who smoke do have a legitimate desire to quit. Habits, especially those that are detrimental to us like smoking, are about more than a simplistic motive of "desire" alone.

From the perspectives of the Speaker Material (which is the reason for this site), when we try to explain our outward behavior as it is connected to our inward behavior of thinking and feelings, we are trying to understand how intention and motive are related to action. No behavior is "thoughtless" or disconnected from the self-mind that powers it.

The Speaker Material contains much in-depth discussion about intention and motive as inward values between our self-and-Self, and how understanding these concepts directly bears upon what we create as our experience of living. To delve into our private reasons and reasoning, is to delve into self-power and manifestation - we are asking qestions about this magic of choice, that gives us our reality of selfhood.

Have you read the post on this forum that is the first post in Life Application, under the topic "The Lesson Is In The Learning? The discussion there is about whether solving any problem from a mechanical action alone, is the whole of these issues. Are you talking about using only some sort of physical-mechanical aid to quit smoking? I don't believe finding a complete solution to any of our problems is as simple as only an outward physical action, anymore than I believe it's as simple as only an inward action of "thinking" or "believing". If there are complex paths to the creation in the first place, then there are still those same complex paths to any re-creation, as a change. Since we are each a reality of both external energy as "already manifest" life-factors, AND internal energy as our own "still un-manifest" thinking, believing and feeling, then our solutions will most likely need to come from both internal AND external efforts. Certainly neither myself, nor The Speaker Material, supports a view that any single sided, either/or criteria, can, alone, give us our answers.

To simply change the outward behavior (in this instance to stop smoking), does not necessarily answer the questions of why smoking, or any unwanted habit-driven behavior, arises or continues. Knowing "how" and "why" we make our choices about anything, is crucial to learning how to make more accurate, more informed and hopefully wiser choices, about everything. Though it may seem that smoking has nothing to do other life choices, I'd venture to suggest that there is self-information concerning the habit of smoking - or any habit, that can be linked to a better understanding of how we make choices...

Our private seeking of personal reasons for our choices can lead us to a better general understanding about the power of choice. To gain an understanding about our individuated power of choice as it relates to our power in general, gives us a clearer sense of the connection between ourselves and others and how that connection ends up reflected into all the layers of both our private and more public reality.

Beyond only individual lessons about rationalizing our behavior, questions concerning choice encompass and explain much about our reality of humanness. Choice is the heart of all power - and power is the heart of all action - for you, me, and everyone. So to better understand choice, is to better understand our power to create, so we can choose to create in less contradictory and more fulfilling ways, for you, me, and everyone.

There is something to be said for both sides of any discussion of problems and solutions. Who else will add their views to all of this?

See you later,
Spinfo