I want you to think of an orange, a nice big juicy orange. . If you cut this orange in half and squeeze it really hard what do you get? You get orange juice, right? And why is it that you get orange juice from this orange? Because orange juice is what is inside of an orange. Pretty simple logic, true? You are not going to get motor oil or lemon juice; you are going to get orange juice.

Now, let's take this analogy and apply it to ourselves. If somebody squeezes you, that is, they threaten you or challenge you verbally or physically, what is going to come out of you? Well, whatever is inside of you is going to come out of you just like an orange. If what is inside you is an unconscious decision making process that reacts to external stimuli by going to your memory banks and picking out a similar situation, then that is what you will get. You will react to the threat with a state of being that you have used in the past. Typically fear, anger, hostility and being afraid will be your automatic choices from this unconscious level of choice when somebody squeezes you really hard.

If you are living consciously and have defined who you are as love, peace, forgiveness and kindness, then you will consciously choose a state of being to reflect these and react to the stimuli accordingly by doing loving things, such as peaceful talking, a forgiving attitude and kind gestures.

You still have the option to choose fear and anger but you are less inclined to choose them, because who you have defined yourself to be is not in alignment with those choices. We see very clearly that the polarity of love and fear is at work when we look at the options available to us in the choices we make every day of our lives. Every day of our lives we make hundreds of choices because we have hundreds of thoughts running through our heads at all times.

Each thought is a love-based thought or a fear-based thought. There is no choice in that because every thought comes from either love or fear. In order to increase our odds of making more love-based choices than fear-based choices we need to be awake and aware of how tremendously important each of our choices is and how it impacts our lives.

You then see the connection between what you think and choose to pursue and how that choice will affect your life. Your choice to read this article will affect your life differently than a choice not to read this article. Each choice is okay, but the impact of reading these words has the potential to change the way you think, make choices, and evolve at a faster pace. Or it may not. It is entirely your choice.

The importance lies in your perception of what you read. That is what I love about the nuts and bolts of spirituality. The nuts and bolts of spirituality allows you to be the choice maker of your life. If you choose to you can continue to sleepwalk through life and live with the consequences of your unconscious decisions.

You are here to create your life in any manner that you choose. You are not restricted in any way by a controlling God who 'cares about what you do.' Whatever you choose to do is fine with God. You are eternal and what you choose in this lifetime does not change that. When you experience your earthly death that will be by choice also.

You may choose to die slowly and 'before your time' by choosing to smoke cigarettes for most of your life. You may choose to eat red meat throughout your life and develop clogged arteries. You may choose to be sedentary and never exercise your body or mind. You may choose to drink alcohol to excess at the expense of your liver. You may choose to allow your elected representatives to let industry pollute our drinking water or soak our food in pesticides that go into our bodies to continue their poisonous intention.

These are all choices that we make both individually and collectively that have natural consequences affecting our lives. We cannot claim to be ignorant of these day-to-day decisions but we can claim to be unaware that we are making these choices through unconscious living.

Of course unconscious living is a choice. Most of us would not knowingly poison our bodies or those of our loved ones. Most of us would not knowingly allow our elected representatives to make laws that are detrimental to our personal lives and our collective survival on this planet. We just wouldn't do this knowingly. We wouldn't make those choices consciously.

However, those choices are being made on a regular basis, both individually and collectively, when we go through life as a sleepwalker. The unconscious choices we make daily affect every facet of our lives in the exact same manner as the conscious choices we make every day.

Once again, we are not being judged for these choices but we are living with the consequences of these choices. There are natural consequences to every action that we take as individuals and as societies. It would behoove us to be aware of these consequences and see if they serve us or not.