Who makes your choices?

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Sir, in the previous discourse you mentioned that one should always choose ‘That,’ instead of money, or fame, or other worldly things. But who is the one who makes this choice? Is that the same ‘I’, that same ego that makes choice? Can it ever make choice against itself? What is that part of us that makes this choice?

(Referring to the trekking at Kedarnath Camp, of which this discourse is a part) When we were trekking, there were many instances when my body tendencies forced me to not go forward. But somehow we choose to go beyond that resistance. What is that part of us that makes these choices?

Acharya Prashant: It is not the part.

Choices made by the parts are always partial. It is your very Core that makes the right choice.

So who makes that choice? The one who believes that he has the power to choose, the one who sees a lot of choices, options, alternatives. The one who says, “I might do this, I might as well do that,” he is the one.

Who is he? The one you live, eat, breathe as, the one you exist as, the one you keep referring to as the ‘I’. This ‘I’ is a creature of thoughts, evaluation, criteria, effort, action, achievement, profit and loss. This ‘I’ is the only one who is…