Resource Level Guide: Two - The Human Level
“If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” C. S. Lewis
Your Freewill & Meta Teachings
This is a big topic, one that I hope will enthrall you all. So, before we attempt to answer that question, perhaps we need to establish what freewill is first.
What is freewill?
Freewill or agency is the ability to choose, to determine for oneself, to select a course of action, or a belief. Freewill can choose to do something or it can not choose to do something, and sit on the fence, slipping into the sinkhole of indifference. To choose or not to choose, that is the question. Freewill is the ability to make up one’s mind, when confronted with two or more options, weighing the pros and cons, and coming to a balanced or imbalanced decision, about what is the most appropriate and relevant course of action or belief.
Agency can also be an intentional surrendering to a situation or life itself, deliberately withholding interference in the flow of what is happening around one. It is consciously placing your faith in life, in the intelligence of the universe, knowing that it has your best interests at heart. It is a ‘letting go’, becoming unthread from conditionality, from believing that we think that we ‘know it all.’ It is trusting that freewill is exactly what it is supposed to be, a freedom from any form of constraint or restriction, which is primarily directed towards our own Egoism. It is a knowing that you and the Universe are the same, that you are a part of the All, that your destiny and wellbeing is assured.
Is our Culture a Freewill Collective?
“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” - Sam Harris
The big question is do we really truly know what is the right action to take or belief to hold? Do we have sufficient information that we can trust, or the faculty to determine what is right for us? We live in a society, which is not optimised for our wellbeing. It is primarily a market driven, capitalistic, bottom line, driven system, where profit is the incentive and not the health and happiness of its populations. Even though there is a plethora of information on the Internet, which can assist us in, making up our minds, and choosing the right course of action or belief, we constantly interact with a system that is optimising for profit and not human wellbeing.
Capitalism optimises for bias, it is designed to deceive, to control and manipulate individuals towards making decisions that maximises the narrow band objective of the marketplace.
We have reached the information singularity, which offers us contradictory, relative, misleading, deep fake, falsehoods, all claiming authentic authority. This plethora of conflicting sense making, drives consumer confusion, creating indecisiveness and poor judgments, which are not optimal.
The Unconscious
“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom. “- Leo Tolstoy
We also have our own cognitive dissonance, biases, and unconscious influences, to deal with. If we have not undertaken a full analysis of our beliefs and continue to do so, with the intention of understanding why we hold them, then we are at the mercy of them. This is generally and collectively known as our conditioning. Our conditioning represents all of the events that have ever happened to us, all the traumas, all the negative interactions, all the failed dreams, the depressions, and death urges. The impact of all of that is sitting in the unconscious, influencing our decisions and how we act and what we believe. It is estimated by many trials and enquiries, that 95% of our decisions and beliefs are driven by the unconscious.
Examples of Poor Decision Making or Low Agency
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. “- Søren Kierkegaard
Let’s run through a few examples which illustrate these points. There is a vast amount of data on the Internet, which tells us that the consumption of sugar is not good for us. And yet, we consume, vast amounts of this substance (176 million tons per year) in an array of foodstuffs. In just about every processed food that you can find in the supermarket, sugar is in there. We are told that is not good for us, and yet we keep on consuming it.
We are told that alcohol is not good for us, and yet most of us consume this poison, on a regular basis (three billion litres per year). Caffeine is another substance, which is not good for us, causing all sorts of irregularities, hypertension, anxiety, and sleep challenges. And yet we consume 2.25 billion cups per day. Processed sugar, alcohol, and caffeine are the big three substances, that we should not imbibe in, and yet we do. So, even though we know that it is not good for us, the majority of society utilises these substances.
Of course, dear reader you may have made up your mind some time ago, not to imbibe the substances. The question is why? Did you do this out of fear for your health, or because it was the most optimal decision for wellbeing? If you find yourself asking what the difference is, then read on for more information.
Let’s take another example, which is hyper stimulation caused by excessive interaction with our devices. This is the most powerful and prevalent addiction known to man, in that we hit this activity on an almost constant basis. This is causing anxiety, dysmorphia, isolation, attention deficit, dopamine dependency, and a plethora of other side-effects. Our systems are jacked into these devices, creating addictive dependencies, which are not orientated towards wellbeing. And yet, there are nearly seven billion smartphone users in the world. We know that the use of our devices is not aligned with wellbeing, and yet we continue to use them in unhealthy ways, and the society that we live in, continues to sell them to us.
I could continue with examples of lack of exercise, insufficient water consumption, excessive intake of red meat, insufficient vegetables, smoking, pornography, too much television, watching the news, insufficient time in nature, lack of quiet time, working too hard, et cetera. We are drawn towards activities and behaviours which are not aligned with our own wellbeing. As defined above, we do this because we live in a society that does not optimise for our health, and we suffer from our conditioning, which generally creates a negative, unworthy feelings, which drives us towards consuming and living in sub optimal states.
Do We Have Freewill?
“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision. “- V.S. Naipaul
So, do we have freewill or not? The answer is yes, we do have freewill. However, we have slowly eroded our agency by giving it away bit-by-bit to the negativity of the circumstances we have experienced. We have made choices to align ourselves with substances and activities which are not in our best interests, to supposedly offset the drudgery, boredom and suffering we experience. We have agreed to allow ourselves to be greatly influenced, by a market driven system, which aligns for profit, power and control, and not our wellbeing. We have agreed to give our power away, to those that we believe know better. We have given into our own subconscious desires for substances and activities, which do not support and maintain our wellbeing. We have renounced our ability, through indifference, lack of interest or pessimism to make good, long-term decisions about our own happiness and prosperity.
The Continuum of Agency
In general, we have opted for short-term hits of pleasure, of dopamine, of costly highs, to alleviate the pain and suffering of being a human being. We are using our freewill, but not in the most optimal capacity. Optimising our agency, requires facing something within us that we would rather ignore. It is easier to opt for pleasure in the short-term that is unhealthy, than self-controlled abstinence which is healthy in the long-term! This represents the range or continuum of freewill or agency.
Of course, some of you who are reading this, have and continue to line yourselves with your own wellbeing. You have recognised your own freewill and are pushing against the tide of indifference and powerlessness and are working hard to free yourself from the addiction of treating ourselves badly. You are moving up the continuum of agency, towards thresholds of greater freedom and autonomy, which brings more power to love, to follow your bliss, to be happier for longer periods.
Care - The Core of the Challenge
“No one has free will until they are an adult, and by then the choices that were made for them, have already set them on a course that gives limited freedom in the choices to be made. “ J.D. Stroube
Ultimately, the challenge comes down to care for others and for ourselves. The defended and wounded-self utilises two vectors of approach, around the lack of care. The first is placing our own needs above the needs of others, because we value ourselves more than we value others. We have made a decision using our agency that our wellbeing is more important than others. Ostensibly, it is covered by the phrase ‘I don’t care enough about you.’
The second approach is about care for ourselves. This is a product potentially of platitudes like: 'life is tough', 'there is no meaning to it', 'no one cares about me', 'why should I care about myself', 'I’m not worth it.' 'I don’t care enough about me to do anything about the state I’m in.' This self- destructive line of pseudo reasoning is the root of the challenge. It all comes down to self-worth.
Sometimes both approaches are working in tandem, in a ‘push-pull’ dynamic of selfishness and self-worthlessness. We defend ourselves against the world but are too wounded to take proper care of ourselves. Our will has been battered and broken, bruised and brutally beaten.
Our Shadow Selves
When we begin to examine our actions, behaviours and beliefs, more deeply, looking for the shadow behind them, questioning why we do things, then we are using our freewill or agency in a positive sense of aligning ourselves towards the optimisation of our capabilities as a Human. In my article called Impeccable Living, I outlined a process, which I believe leads us to optimising our capability to exercise our freewill. Ultimately, our freewill begins to recognise that there is a power within us, beyond the human personality or ego. That power allows you, your human personality, to make its own decisions, about your future, your happiness, your growth and evolution. The power resides with you. Don’t give that power away, utilise it for your own wellbeing, for the wellbeing of the planet, for the wellbeing of humanity. Short-term pleasure-seeking fixes that alleviate the anxiety, pain and suffering, ultimately support a system that is not optimising for your wellbeing, or the fragile biosphere, or the dwindling resources, or the pollution that we dump and hide from.
I recommend that you examine your shadow aspects, which represent your unconscious patterns, which pull and direct you towards beliefs, activities, and behaviours, which do not align with optimising for your wellbeing. I have published several articles on this site, which deal with this process.
Oppression
“But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift-and our greatest responsibility. “Amie Kaufman
We could say that our agency is being supressed by the oppressive circumstances that are thrust upon us, by an uncaring and corrupt world. And that is a relatively truthful statement. However, ultimately, and this is a hard truth to accept, we are only truly oppressed by ourselves. What do I mean by this? It may appear that there is only an external oppression, but that is just a reflection of our internal state. When we are not fully asserting our freewill, we exist in a state of internal oppression, for we are not allowing ourselves to be all that we can be. We have not allowed ourselves to evolve to the highest levels that we can achieve. Our essence nature is totally free, completely at will to become anything that it desires to be. It is the inner example which lights the way, calling us home.
Asserting freewill is the process of freeing ourselves, from the emotional reactions we have to the negative experiences that befall us. When we free ourselves from the negative, emotional responses to circumstances, which arise from our unconscious, then we are truly beginning to assert our agency, working the edge of our wounded selves. Freewill is looking into the dark, terrifying places of pain, trauma and fear, within us. Freewill is accepting where we are. Freewill is freeing ourselves from our wounds. Freewill is assiduously working upon ourselves, no matter what the circumstances.
Freeing our will is becoming a rebel with a cause, standing firm against the defeatist flow of our conditioning, with compassion, for our failings, our indecisiveness, our collapses. We become the bootstrappers, lifting ourselves out of the mire of our own misery, by our own bootstraps. Others may show us the way, but we are the only ones that can free ourselves. When we face ourselves, looking deeply into the face of our conditioning, we find our lost inner children, our innocence, and the reason to carry on against all the odds. Nobody has ever said that freeing ourselves by our own freewill was going to be easy - but it's worth the struggle!!
Setting Ourselves Free
So, free your will, or conversely, will yourself to be free. The two amounts to the same thing. Cultivate your independence through heart centeredness. Assert your freedom through compassion and kindness. Free yourself from your emotional triggers, so that no matter what the world throws at you, you can remain in your equanimity. This is ultimately what freewill is; freedom from all that restricts us from loving ourselves and loving all others, from having compassion for ourselves and all others; for forgiving ourselves and all others - it starts with us and then we apply it to the world around us.
When we stop moving in circles around the sinkhole of indifference, we take the first step towards the pole of being away from non-being, which is the destiny of our becoming. Each step away from indifference is the movement upon the continuum of agency, towards freedom towards optimising our freewill.
All experiences begin to collapse into one experience, as we move away from the past and future into the present, where we are infinitely free to be the primal pattern that was designed for us. Perhaps you find yourself with nothing left to lose, well if that is the case then let that be the unknown key that unfolds your true path.
Intentioned Use of Sub-optimal Substances & Activities
Should we desire to imbibe in sub-optimal substances or activities, then to ensure that it they do not have too much of a negative impact upon us, I suggest the following approach:
Become aware that one is potentially going to use a sub-optimal substance or activity, as opposed to doing it absent minded.
Intend that its impact upon your system will be as low as possible.
Consciously undertake this sub-optimal, substance or activity, by being mindful of your intent.
Transmute its potential impact upon you, through the level of conscious discernment.
The higher the level of conscious intent and discernment in the process, the less impact the substance of the activity will have upon your system. Recall that it is okay to have treats, so long as we are maintaining around 90:10 ratio, across any given week. Do it intentionally, do it consciously, do it with personal consent and not compulsivity.
Mutual Respect Fosters Freewill
“Remember your connection with the cosmos. Remember your connection with the infinity and that remembrance will give you the freedom. “Amit Ray
Of course, when we begin to assert our free will, we should observe that others also have the right to assert their freewill. The only system that allows for everyone to assert their freewill, is one of mutual respect that recognises that we share one consciousness, expressing in unique, conscious ways. When we acknowledge and observe another’s freewill, and they in turn observe our freewill, then both polarise towards a ‘service to others’ orientation. When this happens, the universe recognises a sea-change, which amplifies and accelerates our own freewill. We are sending a signal to the Universe that we have reached a level of self-love, which is committed to reducing guilt, shame, and fear, and that we have fully resolved to free ourselves from not only an external oppression, but our own internal oppression, which was inhibiting our uniqueness from rising to its pinnacle.
Hope, Faith, Knowing and Being
This quaternity represent thresholds upon the continuum of agency. All four are really one energy, which is the driving force of life itself, relating to differing frequencies of freedom.
When we reach the threshold of hope, then we have found the strand to eternity, it is like Ariadne ‘s thread leading us through the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The power to find a way forward has descended into our lives. The light the guides us home has ignited and awakened the spirit, pulling us towards our future.
When we pass through the threshold of faith, then the light that guides us forward suffuses us conviction and confidence - it is our north node, the light that shines from the end of the tunnel. Faith reshapes experiences into positive expectations.
The threshold of knowing without doubt, is the portal to an extremely high frequency, which signs the imminent collapse of our conditioning. In the face of the force of knowing, all negatives begin to dissolve into their opposites, and the gap of duality begins to shrink. Knowing, beyond rationality, and logic, formalism, and models, is the key to wholeness.
The threshold of being, is the entry point to the kingdom of heaven, dropping us in to the present, which collapses all distinctions into the eternal and the infinite. Beingness is the meaning of free will, which is total freedom from conditioning, symbolism, conceptualisation, culture, and mind constructs altogether. Being is the sacrifice of personal action, abdicating the impudence of believing that we know better. Beingness is free from inherent form, and because of this, it is free to be anything that it desires to be.
Finding Our Destiny
“I can help you, Jorge. I can give you back yourself. I can give you your will.' He held out his hand, palm open. 'Free will has to be taken,' I said. Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns
Agency is your birthright; it drives your individuating process. It builds determination and fortitude, it erects healthy boundaries, and cares for yourself, others and the planet. It fosters self-esteem, enables your heart to heal, and allows you to open to your own beauty. Agency is the gift of life, to be who you are meant to be, beyond conditioning, beyond suffering, beyond societal constraints. Take your will and make it happen, push it to its limits in pursuit of self-expression, which recognises that others are also free to do the same without your interference., without your judgement, and with your acceptance.
May the source be with you - for the source is at one with you, and you are at one with the source…
Wonderful