choice
The mind’s ability to decide between different alternatives. Choice is truly free. It is caused in each moment purely by the mind itself rather than by the past or anything external. Not even the Holy Spirit knows what we will choose from moment to moment, and He cannot override our choices. Choice is meaningless in Heaven, where only will exists; “the concept of choice…is not of God” (CE T-10.V.14:4). It only makes sense within the split mind, which has invented an alternative to oneness and so must now choose between its two allegiances. Choice is not between outer alternatives (e.g. what to eat, what to wear, whom to marry, etc.), as the ego maintains. Such “choices” are merely smoke screens for the only meaningful choice: the choice of whether to think with the ego or the Holy Spirit. And even this choice is an illusion, for only one alternative is real. Yet by using the illusion of choice to choose only truth we eventually remember that only truth is possible and that no choice exists. See CE T-6.VII.C.5:7-6:2, CE T-24.VI.7:1-2.