When viewing each individual situation in life as having a choice, it began to consume and confuse me.  I.e. I'm about to smoke this cigarette.  My flesh is addicted - My soul says don't.  Choice comes into play.  I choose to smoke the cigarette and then I feel bad for going against my soul, which in the end, felt like going against God's wishes. 

At what point have I repented enough so that I can move on?  I don't believe in using Jesus as a scapegoat for my sins.  As in, before I sin, i.e. smoke the cigarette, I know I can choose to not smoke it but I still do.  So if I have just sinned, knowing that I could have chose differently, do I just say "i'm sorry Lord" and all is well, I can forget about it?  That isn't the case for me. 

I just figured it out (thanks once again Lord and thanks Jim for allowing the Lord to work through you).  I have to continue go back to what my friend Jim said.  This is where the lack of thought of the Lord comes into play and this confusion/stuck mode is keeping me out of the path to the Lord.  My mind is focused so much on the negative/flesh aspects of this life, that it keeps the focus away from the Lord.  I am what I think.  I think I'm stuck, I am stuck.  My reality is what I think.  So I make a better choice and I think, I have to move on.  Get over it. 

It isn't a point of how much time I focus on repenting or how bad I feel for my choices.  It's a point of knowing that I chose wrong and I learn from it, that's all.  What I figured out is that there isn't a cut off point of when we should feel better about a poor choice.  As long as we don't justify poor choices, then it ends as: repent in progress.  It is always there and we should always know we chose wrong (bad choices stay on the mind because we have a memory that cannot be erased).  This is what repenting is for me.  I repent every time a previous poor choice enters my mind... repenting by never justifing the actions.  I think back to poor choices that I had in my youth, and I still feel bad for them if I allow my flesh to get sucked into negative feelings.  This type of thinking takes us off of my righteous path if we allow ourselves to spiral downward.  Obviously, we still think of it as a bad choice, but how much substance do we give it?  If we give it too much substance so that it consumes us and we become down and out, then what happens?  More bad choices.  When the flesh concentrates on a poor choice to the point of taking us off of the path to the Lord, then we need to stop thinking of it.  All we need to do is know that any poor choice is not right and they should never be justified.  We can't ignore them after we ask for forgiveness and wipe our mind of them.  IMHO, we can't justify them, ever.  They stay with us forever, but it boils down to how much substance we give them.  

Here is the beginning of my next topic, the Ultimate Choice...  Here I am, knowing what I know about the Lord, His Love, His forgiveness, etc.  With this knowledge and wisdom, I sit here and am addressed with a flesh that thinks of doing things that my soul doesn't agree with.  For example, my soul doesn't agree with smoking.  The flesh is addicted to nicotine.  I'm bringing a cigarette up to my mouth and about to light it.  As I do so, here is my thought process >> "My soul, w/ the Lord in mind, is ready to do something that it doesn't want to do.  The Lord guides my soul, and my soul wishes that I didn't smoke this cigarette.  I'm about to light it.  Choice comes in.  I know the good and bad.  My mind is in the middle and has a choice now. Good on the right shoulder: My soul, guided by the Lord, wishes I didn't smoke.  My body is a temple.  Deep down inside, I don't want this cigarette.  Bad on the left shoulder: Strong force of nicotine addition, self talk of"screw it", "your addicted, go ahead", "you haven't had one in a while", "you're having a bad day".  The flesh justifies the cigarette I'm about to smoke via self-talk.  I have wisdom/knowledge of cancer, tar, my lungs are burning w/ every drag I take,  etc..etc...etc.  Now, I evaluate these thoughts with my mind in the middle of the right and left shoulders (my free-will is about to make a choice).  Before the choice is made on whether to smoke this cigarette or not, I basically see the fleshly world to the left and I see my Lord to the right.  The flesh will justfify why it is ok to do this.  The Lord is loving me saying "I wish you wouldn't" and my soul is baring witness to what is right.  Do I make a choice against the Lord and my soul, and light the cigarette?  This was a huge struggle for me.  If I lit the cigarette, knowing I had the Lord sitting there saying "I wish you wouldn't" and knowing my soul agreed, I would be justifying why it was ok to light it!  When I justified, my soul would bare witness to the wrong choice and my soul would feel bad, would fade away, wouldn't be in focus...and I knew this was going to happen and I still did it!  After a while, every time I was lighting a cigarette, if I thought of this, I put it out (because of the wisdom that my soul would feel bad for justifying a bad choice).  If I lit a cigarette without thinking of this, I eventually thought of this after a couple of drags, and I would put it out.  I was stuck in this "choice" mode for a while.  I was thinking I had to deal with this struggle of choice on every situation.  With the Lord's help through my dear friend Jim, I realized that the bad energy in life was a wedge being driven between myself and the Lord.  Giving this bad energy any substance at all would take me off of my path/my special place (I was off of the path because i was concentrating on right and wrong, and the choices).  I finally realized that I didn't  have to deal with individual choices.  I had one Ultimate Choice to make.  Once I made this one Ultimate Choice, it was like taking a Magic/Miracle pill.  This pill takes away all stress.  I have attempted to quit smoking dozens of times in the past 20+ years.  Once I took this pill, I quit smoking as if I have never smoked before.  I did not have a single withdrawal.  I did not get all fidgity and didn't eat like a pig.  I actually began to drink tons of water (another great resource from the Lord), eat healthier, lost all stress, quit smoking, and so on.... all with taking 1 pill.  It boils down to this.  It is NOT mind over matter as people say.  It is Soul, which is over mind and matter.  1 choice on what your Soul is, then be what your soul is, no matter what.  There is only 1 choice to make.  This is why the statistics say that 90% of the people who have remained non-smoking over 1year have done it cold turkey.  It's because the soul/inner-being, doesn't want to smoke and this is what is concentrated on.  If we concentrate on our mind, then guess what...  we get caught up in having to make a choice every time we think of smoking.  Then justification comes in, urges come in, the receptors on our cells start a chain reaction of a huge drive towards nicotine, saying "feed me nicotine", we get flushed, self talk concentrates on justifying why it's ok to smoke, and so on.  But when we make the one and only choice we have to make, you're done.  People were saying to me on day 2-3 of quitting "The hardest days are coming..."  I laughed..  The hardest for me was realizing I only had to make one choice.  When that 1 choice was made, day 1, 2, 3, week 1, 2, etc were not a factor because I quit smoking.  I listened to my soul.  I made the choice of Soul over mind, which is over matter.  This ended with ZERO withdrawals.  The only thing that happened was a forethought of a cigarette that I rolled out of my mind.  I realized this forethought was out of boredom.  So i would grab a glass of water and do something else.  The thought would be gone within 5 seconds.  Again, 90% of successful quitters after 1 year or more have done it by cold turkey.  That means they made 1 choice.  There wasn't a battle (maybe for some), but I bet it was easier than other times they tried quitting.   

Soul, over mind, over matter.  When I was making situational choices of my soul over the flesh, I realized I could just be my soul at all times, thus no more choices were needed.  This eliminated the struggle of thinking about righteous choices on almost every situation.  There was no need for this struggle, I just needed to choose to be my soul.  1 Choice.  I am.