Open Stance, Open Situation

Suppose you were given the command from God to "keep your options open". How should you implement it? In general, the message is meant for the recipient, so your natural understanding of that is a good starting place. But if you want an additional thought to consider, you can look at both the idea of the open situation and that of the open stance.

In the open situation, you ensure that you are capable of acting on multiple options, for instance, option A, option B, and option C. In the open stance, on the other hand, you are in a mental state where you could recognize a fourth, previously-unseen option (option D) if it were to present itself. Some commitments (for instance to option X) do not take you out of the open stance, while others do.

Trying to secure options for yourself (seeking an open situation) can take you out of the open stance. Being in the open stance can keep you from seeking to secure options for yourself. Maybe there's a way to have both the open stance and the most open situation at once, or maybe you have to balance one form of openness against the other. You might spend time in one place and then the other.

Do you really have options if you are not yourself? If you are not yourself, you have to do something. You may have an impressive choice of things to choose from (A, B, C, and even D), but you are trapped in the position of having those four options and having to choose between them. Whichever one you end up choosing, you have to -- you don't choose it, you are forced into choosing it, because you are absent from your own life. You are coerced by life to choose, and to choose what you choose, so it wasn't really you who chose. You didn't have any options, despite how diligently you acquired the ability to act on A, B, C, or even D.

Being yourself, and being in the open stance, go together, or are the same thing.