To what extent is reality a choice?

This question arose yesterday when I wondered what I might ask Shunyamurti in Satsang.
Almost immediately, it became clear why the question itself doesn’t quite work.

In his language, there is no single, undifferentiated “reality.”
There is the Real and there is the illusory.

The latter refers to the egoic field: thought, conditioning, memory, identity, and the narratives through which perception is filtered. The Real, by contrast, is not psychological, not personal, and not subject to choice.

Most people are busy trying to fix the world outside, without ever investigating the machinery that produces their own perception of it.

By machinery, I mean the whole entanglement: conscious and unconscious thought, emotional reaction chains, the bodily tension that follows them, and the identity structures we inhabit so completely that we rarely get to question them.

Are you familiar with the subtle, addictive pleasure of being right?
It feels good. So good, in fact, that thoughts offering that reward hook us even when it’s clearly seen for what it is. The irresistible pull remains.
In those moments, the ego no longer feels like a collection of habits or narratives, but like a high-security facility designed to prevent its own dissolution.

Investigating this machinery is not meant to optimize it.
It is meant to loosen identification.

Ayahuasca can turn such questions into lived experience rather than conceptual insight.
It may free perception from its habitual frame, offering clarity and an experiential reference point.

Especially when it comes to identification this process is rarely possible in isolation. Blind spots tend to remain invisible without something, or someone, that reflects them from the outside.

With increased presence, something shifts. Not absolute freedom, but space.
Sometimes a reaction can be interrupted. Sometimes it plays out before it is seen. And sometimes the repetitive nature of these movements reveals itself — almost to the point of absurdity.

At a certain point, the question of choice itself begins to unravel. Because the one who asks, “Am I choosing?”, is already bound to the very structure under examination.

Truth does not begin where we try to prove something true, nor where we search for ultimate answers. It begins where something illusory is clearly recognized as false.

What remains when identification dissolves is experienced as freedom.
Not freedom as choice, but freedom from compulsion: from reactivity, from inner pressure, and from the constant urge to position oneself.

This is Self-Realization — freedom beyond choice.