The understanding of how meditation and path of self-realization is leading to the option of regaining the choice is of extreme importance. What choice to we speak about ?. It is easier to explain it and understand it from the negative side of it. From explaining how inherently when being unconscious and rooted in the mind, we usually lack any free will or freedom of choice in our daily life.
Imagine yourself standing on a train platform in a busy day in Victoria terminus train station in Bombay. Where hundreds of trains are passing through everyday. Your destination is to go to a certain place in north India. This is your desired train to be taken. Yet, imagine that instead of just sitting on the platform, resting, waiting for your train, for the real train, every train that passes by does not allow you to just sit, but pulls you into it, taking you for a ride to an unknown destination. The moment you realize that you are on the wrong train, you get of it, and immediately another train takes you to another unknown and unnecessary destination. You can't avoid this hellish rides. The second you put your feet on a solid platform of non-movement, immediately you get pulled into the movement of another meaningless train. How would you feel ?. Imagine even a worse scenario, where not only you are pulled into meaningless train rides, but eventually after few years of taking these train unconsciously, you simply begin to forget the name and destination that you really wanted to reach in the first place. You just forgot what was the primal purpose of this visit to the train station.

Although this example sounds simplistic, and maybe even humorous, in truth it reflects precisely the state and condition of living of an unconscious human being in ones' life. The trains represent the movement of thoughts in the mind, The platform represents the ability to just Be, to just rest, to stop moving, to just experience yourself with no objects or movement. The unconscious pull to take another train with no destination, represents the pull from the mind, which pulls your attention into meaningless constant flow of thoughts. The lack of ability to just be, and wait for the right train, represents the lack of choice that average human lost a long time ago. The sad fact of eventually forgetting what was the primal destination that we wanted to reach, represents the state where the human has forgot the real reasons for ones' life, the real eternal connection to oneself, and to the creator beyond oneself. Just wondering around in life, chasing trains in the mind, which provokes emotions of usually the unpleasant kind, which provokes actions towards achievements and merits which maybe not of the right kind for our hearts and true evolution. Which eventually lead to lack of fulfillment, lack of depth and harmony in this life. As after all, we had been chasing the wrong trains for many years by now.

Meditation and a real spiritual journey is the beginning of making a decision to stop chasing trains of thoughts. It is the beginning of deciding to re-create the ability to just be. This new ability to just be leads to the creation of a new space, a gap between the passing thoughts and witness of them. This gap is slowly filled with our presence in the head space. As the platform, is not only energetic distance from the flow of thinking, but it represents the birth of the experience of the unconditional "I". That which is not made and defined by thoughts, but that which is witnessing them, letting go of them, and eventually pulls entire attention into oneself. Into the experiencer.
The effect on the quality of our lives is magnificent, if this process is fully understood, matured, and integrated properly. For the first time we have the choice to become sensitive to what is really happening within us. And to begin and inquire for real about "What do we really want", "Who am I", "What are the true reasons and purpose for this life". This new sensitivity can give birth to Awakening to our own presence. Presence which is subjective to itself, and not depandent on relations with outer objects. Now these relations can be based on a choice, which is based on centeredness, mindfulness, one-pointedness, and above all, the energetic freedom to chose our location at every second. It is not about physical location of our body. It is where our consciousness will be present, and what our inner life will be made of.
Without going much into the details of how technically this freedom to chose is born, as it will be discussed in the more practical chapters of "Meditation", we'll just give a brief view of how this automatic involvement in the mind is transformed through meditation and leads to the ability to chose again.
A part of our practice and goal in our sittings is to pull the attention from the mind, or from any moving objects, feelings, sensations into the source of this attention itself. We do so by constantly pulling attention towards the inside of the head space, where this center of awareness is located. The more we do it, the more we solidify the experience of this center itself. The more energy and concentration we pull from the mind into the center of the head space, the more we begin to feel that within this head space is found the experiencer. The "I" in the head space. This "I" in average unconscious human being is basically losing all its' energy and attention into the mind, and by doing so it loses its' own structure and strength. This "I", this center, is actually the platform that was discussed in the trains example. This platform is created and solidified within the head space when we pull attention from thoughts and allow this very attention to become self-attentive. This self attention creates a concentrated energy in the head space which slowly transforms the relations with the mind. It feels as if the mind is moving aside, and becomes more peripheral. The immediate side effect of this change in the relations with the mind, is having bigger gaps of rest within the head space, where the mind slowly loses some of its' gravity force, and just allows the attention to experience freedom from being lost in any object or movement. It gives birth to an existential relief within the head space, where the practitioner feels ones' presence within the head space, vibrating as pure energy, meeting oneself without any mediator, and having the necessary space to focus in a relaxed way and chose to which way to direct ones' attention.