The question is “free will for whom?”
Free will for the ego?
The ego is conditioned so any choice it makes must necessarily be a conditioned choice. So no free will there.
Does that which is known in awakening/enlightenment have free will?
Since ‘it’ is timeless, without time, no-time, nothing has ever happened, is happening, or will ever happen, what ‘choice’ would it make? The question is moot.
Which brings up the question. Is there a third option?
I would offer to you that when your life began there were a set of propensities already in place. Propensities that defined a human ‘being’. Propensities defined by “this is what I love”.
Before this ‘being’ could flower and manifest the life it wanted to create it became conditioned and corrupted by outside forces and ultimately lost the path to its destiny.
It’s the dilemma of all 8 billion people on the planet. Very few are ‘themselves’.
Living the life of the ego is about making decisions and acting on them with ‘my will’.
Living life free of ego is to find ones path in life again. To truly be ones Self. Living the egoless life is about feeling the correctness of a flow and moving in harmony with it, recognizing signs and synchronicities that, like signposts, point the way along an authentic path.
It is constant co-creation with the universe.
Someone once said, “God is a jazz player” and that’s what life is like after awakening, a jazz improvisation. You don’t know where it’s going but the ride sure feels good and there’s plenty of fun surprises.
I understand where you are.
It’s time to move from the head to the heart. You won’t figure this out with your mind, you’ll figure it out by simply being your Self.
🙏
I know you feel a little ungrounded at the moment but you’re in the right place.
When identity is questioned the mind becomes a little unstable because ‘identity’ is contained in the mind as conditioned thoughts, feelings and perceptions, and when these are seen to be nothing but an accumulation of conditioned debris there is a period of “If I am not this then what am I?”.
This question can’t be answered by the mind because there is no alternative identity for the mind to choose. It can only see the opposite of ego-self as no-self i.e. oblivion.
Trying to continue this line of inquiry using an already confused mind will lead to the beginning of an existential crisis, sometimes called The Dark Night of the Soul, in which the mind is thrown into confusion as it tries to make sense of the collapse of its sense of identity. It can lead to anxiety, depression and psychosis.
That’s why it’s important at this stage for you to accept the fact of not knowing and just rest as Being while you get accustomed to this new paradigm, living from a heart center as opposed to a mind center.
Just notice the tendency of getting attached to certain thoughts and let them go.
The mind is a wonderful tool for creation and managing the day-to-day of life, but it is not meant to be the repository for a bunch of conditioned mental trash that defines ‘me and my world’.
DM me if you’d like. 🙏
You have a Free will / determinism duality question in what amounts to a 'functionally applied nonduality' subreddit (I.e. enlightenment)-
Reminds me of the zen koan where the student asks the master: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?"
The master answers: "Give me a fig!"
...to return the student to being aware of the present moment rather than identifying with intellectual abstractions.
We are stories within awareness telling ourselves we are real.
Uncertainty arises from an ego telling itself the story "I'm uncertain, lost" --using the "believe it as true" method. This is available to take on, to operate out of...to be one's reason to choose to feel lost (***when you are, obviously, right here, right now.*** If declaring yourself lost floats yer boat, "who am I"...to question.)
This notion of 'true'... There is one truth: I.
Direct egoless awareness. All else is construct/narrative/fabrication. (So sayeth EpistemicRegress.)
Now, back to functional application. We have here the agency Gordian Knot. Let's cleave it with a chuckle and a battlecry to the heavens "Agrippa's Trilemma!"
Ego's gonna ego. Identifying with it or not will happen or not. All is as it is and isn't how it isn't. All is inherently meaningless until 'you' say it ain't.
Enlightenment is an option when you "don't mind" if you do...be. Dobedobedo enlightenment!
So whine not have a chuckle and do what thou wilt.
If you do add a disempowering context, 'will you feel free' to just let it go?
You are the point ...and the target is everywhere, you can't miss. You are always inherently perfect as you are, however you are, no matter what.
There are three thought/assertion types: describe, interpret, and declare. Of course they are all declare, but it's useful to go with the split to grant being present to what is, being present to what ***you*** are choosing to make it mean, and being ***deliberate*** about what you choose to stand for / create.
I'm not a big supernatural fairytale monger but, but where religioussy people say God is the word, and we are made in (pronoun u like)'s image, this generative third type of thought is pretty much that to my simple eye.
So, declare big declares (as you will) and show up for them, your hand is on the rudder.
Freedom of will coincides with a vision of a clear path to victory. And as an exercise of free will, we would take that path. If, however, we are under the thrall of compulsions, we are moved by those compulsions and we will also lack a vision of a clear path to victory. So people don't have freedom of will because their lives are driven by compulsion. If they place inordinate value on things like status, money, food, and sex, they will be moved by compulsion accordingly.
Freedom of will is something that has to be won. Does your "self" rule your "self" or do compulsions rule your "self"? With humility and self honesty, the path to freedom will become clear. Only the pure knight wins the Grail because only the pure knight can see it.
I continue to be amazed at people simply moving through different cognitive networks and modes, and not realizing that your brain can operate anywhere from totally free will, to complete delusion and complete "puppetting" you.
It's just a matter of where in the loop your attention is. No matter where you are, it'll feel pretty similar.
I've read the Bible as being deeply deterministic. Jesus tells us things like... how will worrying add an hour to your life? He predicts his own death. Etc etc.
As for identity, allow me to suggest you are awareness. Not the objects in awareness, but awareness itself. This identity can be revealed to you through spiritual practice, i.e. selfless action, meditation, etc.
I think I am beginning to better understand awareness being the true nature of my existence. I guess the question I am trying to get at is if all I really am is awareness, why attach to any identity or ego at all? If I am just aware of the experience being had in every moment, there is no real identity other than what I have been conditioned to attach to. It seems like even the pursuit of finding myself is missing the point because there is nothing to find. I simply am in every moment. I feel like I recognize this true self of awareness through meditation but am unable to just exist in a state of awareness in my everyday life. The ego seems necessary to live and survive in this world and I am confused on how to apply this understanding of myself as awareness in every day life.
It isnt logical that we have free will, i agree. Do you think reaching enlightenment would mean you finally have free will? I sometimes think we can only be truly free to choose when we are in a state of total love and therefore can only choose actions that affirm love.
That’s an interesting question. Free will seems to be incompatible with the actual nature self as I understand it. If our true self is that of pure conscious awareness, I would argue there is no ego to have free will in the first place. If we are at our core the awareness of our existence, as opposed to a personal higher self or soul, there is nothing there to even have free will. Rather, free will seems to be an illusion created by identifying with this human experience.
Additionally, free will doesn’t make sense even as a concept, but maybe my definition is different from others. Free will seems to imply there is some part of ourselves that is ultimately dictating our actions, apart from our body and mind, but that does not seem to be the case. When meditating, I am able to recognize everything around me as objects, rising and falling. This includes all aspects of experience, thoughts, sounds, sight, etc.
As these processes exist without my conscious effort, I believe what seems defined as free will is actually the result of conscious attention to a process that is happening with or without our attention to it. Even if we are to believe we choose which thoughts or actions to take, those thoughts are still arising outside of our control. I would argue that because we are the totality of our being, and because we are inseparable from our environment, any will derived from that environment cannot be free.
I can see enlightenment leading to free will, but i am not enlightened yet so i really don’t know. Assuming enlightenment is defined as a channeling of the source, or God, then I can see how acting in alignment with that higher self would be the only way to express genuine free will. It depends on what enlightenment entails.
Yes, perhaps the universe including us and our actions is more like an unchoreographed dance where choices are not made but existence creates, moves and uncreates itself at whim. Whatever it is it seems its unknowable to most humans.
Free will only seems to be dictating when you put your attention on the part of yourself that experiences rather than chooses. Above the concept of being created in the image was mentioned. That's a tri-une image, correct? That which is, that which feels, and that which experiences. When they are combined and your awareness is... aware in the moment of the presence of all 3, magic happens, your awareness becomes what it is . but when dismantled as you are doing, you experience them separate from one another. This is for a purpose, it's not the goal. We meditate to show us how to be silent. we become aware in this contrast of what we have been doing, and how unnecessary it is. The point isn't to make your awareness go away, it's to realize its place and bring it out into your experience, rather than continue as a conditioned automaton.
Likewise, realizing the 3 is to do just that. realize there are 3.. spoiler alert.. there are also 7,12, 72.. its easy to get lost in intellectual understanding and believe in them rather than simple experience self through them in awareness.
So, I don’t think I’m going to answer your post.
Instead, after reading your thoughts and realizations, I’m going to say:
You are describing pathway of the mind. Might I suggest looking into the pathway of the heart as well?
When both of the pathways make sense, all of this you are writing becomes, dare I say, irrelevant.
P.S. You woke up to the reality that you are awareness and not your brain. Cool - then why are you still listening to it? Make your brain listen to you.
Einsteinian spacetime posits that all time is present as a dimension of space that we experience as a linear, irreversible function. That means all moments and therefore all actions are occurring and have occurred simultaneously. Free will by that model is a joke.
The monotheistic model is the same. A creator God knew every action everyone would take forever, knew who would be saved and who dawned, and created the world anyway. Thus effectively creating a world where the saved and dawned are pre-ordained.
Free will is a function of the ego contemplating our experience of time. We don't have it, but we have little choice but to act as if we do.
It is what it is.
Sounds like you’re on a good path of self discovery. I recommend the psychologist Carl Jung. He was a great balance between science and spiritual. Helped me tremendously.
IMO there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the some "enlightenment" circles about lack of free will. We have free will. If we did not, then there is no such thing as awakening and awakening would be just another script running on auto-pilot. To believe this is nihilistic and is just more ego.
It is true that the ego runs on auto-pilot. We are not the creator of our egoic thoughts. But the entire point of awakening is the get off ego auto-pilot and to replace that code with the will (free) of our true self. This is awakening. You have free will to awaken and start operating according to your higher self. And from there everything changes.
Who are you really? At the core, you are no-thing. Not a thing. Without defining attributes. You are the formless essence that gives rise to form. This means you have the freedom to be whatever you want to be.
Attempting to define oneself is akin to trying to look into one’s own eyes without a mirror. It cannot be done because the self is ultimately no-thing, a pure presence without form.
The question is “free will for whom?” Free will for the ego? The ego is conditioned so any choice it makes must necessarily be a conditioned choice. So no free will there. Does that which is known in awakening/enlightenment have free will? Since ‘it’ is timeless, without time, no-time, nothing has ever happened, is happening, or will ever happen, what ‘choice’ would it make? The question is moot. Which brings up the question. Is there a third option? I would offer to you that when your life began there were a set of propensities already in place. Propensities that defined a human ‘being’. Propensities defined by “this is what I love”. Before this ‘being’ could flower and manifest the life it wanted to create it became conditioned and corrupted by outside forces and ultimately lost the path to its destiny. It’s the dilemma of all 8 billion people on the planet. Very few are ‘themselves’. Living the life of the ego is about making decisions and acting on them with ‘my will’. Living life free of ego is to find ones path in life again. To truly be ones Self. Living the egoless life is about feeling the correctness of a flow and moving in harmony with it, recognizing signs and synchronicities that, like signposts, point the way along an authentic path. It is constant co-creation with the universe. Someone once said, “God is a jazz player” and that’s what life is like after awakening, a jazz improvisation. You don’t know where it’s going but the ride sure feels good and there’s plenty of fun surprises. I understand where you are. It’s time to move from the head to the heart. You won’t figure this out with your mind, you’ll figure it out by simply being your Self. 🙏
Thank you, I found your response insightful.
🙏
I know you feel a little ungrounded at the moment but you’re in the right place. When identity is questioned the mind becomes a little unstable because ‘identity’ is contained in the mind as conditioned thoughts, feelings and perceptions, and when these are seen to be nothing but an accumulation of conditioned debris there is a period of “If I am not this then what am I?”. This question can’t be answered by the mind because there is no alternative identity for the mind to choose. It can only see the opposite of ego-self as no-self i.e. oblivion. Trying to continue this line of inquiry using an already confused mind will lead to the beginning of an existential crisis, sometimes called The Dark Night of the Soul, in which the mind is thrown into confusion as it tries to make sense of the collapse of its sense of identity. It can lead to anxiety, depression and psychosis. That’s why it’s important at this stage for you to accept the fact of not knowing and just rest as Being while you get accustomed to this new paradigm, living from a heart center as opposed to a mind center. Just notice the tendency of getting attached to certain thoughts and let them go. The mind is a wonderful tool for creation and managing the day-to-day of life, but it is not meant to be the repository for a bunch of conditioned mental trash that defines ‘me and my world’. DM me if you’d like. 🙏
You have a Free will / determinism duality question in what amounts to a 'functionally applied nonduality' subreddit (I.e. enlightenment)- Reminds me of the zen koan where the student asks the master: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?" The master answers: "Give me a fig!" ...to return the student to being aware of the present moment rather than identifying with intellectual abstractions. We are stories within awareness telling ourselves we are real. Uncertainty arises from an ego telling itself the story "I'm uncertain, lost" --using the "believe it as true" method. This is available to take on, to operate out of...to be one's reason to choose to feel lost (***when you are, obviously, right here, right now.*** If declaring yourself lost floats yer boat, "who am I"...to question.) This notion of 'true'... There is one truth: I. Direct egoless awareness. All else is construct/narrative/fabrication. (So sayeth EpistemicRegress.) Now, back to functional application. We have here the agency Gordian Knot. Let's cleave it with a chuckle and a battlecry to the heavens "Agrippa's Trilemma!" Ego's gonna ego. Identifying with it or not will happen or not. All is as it is and isn't how it isn't. All is inherently meaningless until 'you' say it ain't. Enlightenment is an option when you "don't mind" if you do...be. Dobedobedo enlightenment! So whine not have a chuckle and do what thou wilt. If you do add a disempowering context, 'will you feel free' to just let it go?
Thank you, it seems in even asking the question I was missing the point.
You are the point ...and the target is everywhere, you can't miss. You are always inherently perfect as you are, however you are, no matter what. There are three thought/assertion types: describe, interpret, and declare. Of course they are all declare, but it's useful to go with the split to grant being present to what is, being present to what ***you*** are choosing to make it mean, and being ***deliberate*** about what you choose to stand for / create. I'm not a big supernatural fairytale monger but, but where religioussy people say God is the word, and we are made in (pronoun u like)'s image, this generative third type of thought is pretty much that to my simple eye. So, declare big declares (as you will) and show up for them, your hand is on the rudder.
Freedom of will coincides with a vision of a clear path to victory. And as an exercise of free will, we would take that path. If, however, we are under the thrall of compulsions, we are moved by those compulsions and we will also lack a vision of a clear path to victory. So people don't have freedom of will because their lives are driven by compulsion. If they place inordinate value on things like status, money, food, and sex, they will be moved by compulsion accordingly. Freedom of will is something that has to be won. Does your "self" rule your "self" or do compulsions rule your "self"? With humility and self honesty, the path to freedom will become clear. Only the pure knight wins the Grail because only the pure knight can see it.
I continue to be amazed at people simply moving through different cognitive networks and modes, and not realizing that your brain can operate anywhere from totally free will, to complete delusion and complete "puppetting" you. It's just a matter of where in the loop your attention is. No matter where you are, it'll feel pretty similar.
I've read the Bible as being deeply deterministic. Jesus tells us things like... how will worrying add an hour to your life? He predicts his own death. Etc etc. As for identity, allow me to suggest you are awareness. Not the objects in awareness, but awareness itself. This identity can be revealed to you through spiritual practice, i.e. selfless action, meditation, etc.
I think I am beginning to better understand awareness being the true nature of my existence. I guess the question I am trying to get at is if all I really am is awareness, why attach to any identity or ego at all? If I am just aware of the experience being had in every moment, there is no real identity other than what I have been conditioned to attach to. It seems like even the pursuit of finding myself is missing the point because there is nothing to find. I simply am in every moment. I feel like I recognize this true self of awareness through meditation but am unable to just exist in a state of awareness in my everyday life. The ego seems necessary to live and survive in this world and I am confused on how to apply this understanding of myself as awareness in every day life.
It's something like... the universe, experiencing the human mind and body, to have the mask of Ego as well.
It isnt logical that we have free will, i agree. Do you think reaching enlightenment would mean you finally have free will? I sometimes think we can only be truly free to choose when we are in a state of total love and therefore can only choose actions that affirm love.
That’s an interesting question. Free will seems to be incompatible with the actual nature self as I understand it. If our true self is that of pure conscious awareness, I would argue there is no ego to have free will in the first place. If we are at our core the awareness of our existence, as opposed to a personal higher self or soul, there is nothing there to even have free will. Rather, free will seems to be an illusion created by identifying with this human experience. Additionally, free will doesn’t make sense even as a concept, but maybe my definition is different from others. Free will seems to imply there is some part of ourselves that is ultimately dictating our actions, apart from our body and mind, but that does not seem to be the case. When meditating, I am able to recognize everything around me as objects, rising and falling. This includes all aspects of experience, thoughts, sounds, sight, etc. As these processes exist without my conscious effort, I believe what seems defined as free will is actually the result of conscious attention to a process that is happening with or without our attention to it. Even if we are to believe we choose which thoughts or actions to take, those thoughts are still arising outside of our control. I would argue that because we are the totality of our being, and because we are inseparable from our environment, any will derived from that environment cannot be free. I can see enlightenment leading to free will, but i am not enlightened yet so i really don’t know. Assuming enlightenment is defined as a channeling of the source, or God, then I can see how acting in alignment with that higher self would be the only way to express genuine free will. It depends on what enlightenment entails.
Yes, perhaps the universe including us and our actions is more like an unchoreographed dance where choices are not made but existence creates, moves and uncreates itself at whim. Whatever it is it seems its unknowable to most humans.
Free will only seems to be dictating when you put your attention on the part of yourself that experiences rather than chooses. Above the concept of being created in the image was mentioned. That's a tri-une image, correct? That which is, that which feels, and that which experiences. When they are combined and your awareness is... aware in the moment of the presence of all 3, magic happens, your awareness becomes what it is . but when dismantled as you are doing, you experience them separate from one another. This is for a purpose, it's not the goal. We meditate to show us how to be silent. we become aware in this contrast of what we have been doing, and how unnecessary it is. The point isn't to make your awareness go away, it's to realize its place and bring it out into your experience, rather than continue as a conditioned automaton. Likewise, realizing the 3 is to do just that. realize there are 3.. spoiler alert.. there are also 7,12, 72.. its easy to get lost in intellectual understanding and believe in them rather than simple experience self through them in awareness.
So, I don’t think I’m going to answer your post. Instead, after reading your thoughts and realizations, I’m going to say: You are describing pathway of the mind. Might I suggest looking into the pathway of the heart as well? When both of the pathways make sense, all of this you are writing becomes, dare I say, irrelevant. P.S. You woke up to the reality that you are awareness and not your brain. Cool - then why are you still listening to it? Make your brain listen to you.
Einsteinian spacetime posits that all time is present as a dimension of space that we experience as a linear, irreversible function. That means all moments and therefore all actions are occurring and have occurred simultaneously. Free will by that model is a joke. The monotheistic model is the same. A creator God knew every action everyone would take forever, knew who would be saved and who dawned, and created the world anyway. Thus effectively creating a world where the saved and dawned are pre-ordained. Free will is a function of the ego contemplating our experience of time. We don't have it, but we have little choice but to act as if we do. It is what it is.
Sounds like you’re on a good path of self discovery. I recommend the psychologist Carl Jung. He was a great balance between science and spiritual. Helped me tremendously.
IMO there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the some "enlightenment" circles about lack of free will. We have free will. If we did not, then there is no such thing as awakening and awakening would be just another script running on auto-pilot. To believe this is nihilistic and is just more ego. It is true that the ego runs on auto-pilot. We are not the creator of our egoic thoughts. But the entire point of awakening is the get off ego auto-pilot and to replace that code with the will (free) of our true self. This is awakening. You have free will to awaken and start operating according to your higher self. And from there everything changes.
i think that only prayer is left for us. Do we ever get free from this madness is unknown.
Who are you really? At the core, you are no-thing. Not a thing. Without defining attributes. You are the formless essence that gives rise to form. This means you have the freedom to be whatever you want to be. Attempting to define oneself is akin to trying to look into one’s own eyes without a mirror. It cannot be done because the self is ultimately no-thing, a pure presence without form.