Living without Free Will?

 Living Without Free Will ; Susan Blackmore

at the Science and non-duality conference. What does she think she is doing?



The usurping of the will by a split mind operates an illusion of freedom to choose between - as if independent from. This sense of self is the so called waking conscious mind - which is largely defined and predicated upon what it is unconscious of.

Clearly actions arise from a formulation of reality and a triggering of past conditioning that runs as a subconscious routine with unconscious elements. In fact the action of keeping unconscious what is not acceptable operates as the primary defence OF a masked presentation of self that is hardly 'in control' - and is yet invested with the need and obligation for control and compliance within its accepted reality - because it is disconnected from true willing by design. True feelings, true desires are not generally felt safe to embody in a world of judgement, blame and rejection.

But the word 'accept' is where choice truly exists - for in choosing to accept a masking off or dissociation of self for whatever reasons in early life, one now has the freedom to own that choice as a choice and change it for another. So if finding social acceptance and validation from others has driven your behaviours - you can notice this as  pattern of dissonance if indeed it is not really living the life that moves you (free will) but conforming to beliefs and ideas that do not (or no longer) serve you. So you are free to refuse to accept what you recognize is not You and costs you the fuller experience of your living - as the more aligned focus in who you do recognize yourself to be. But you are not free to become what you are not, though you may be free to attempt it - and defend the attempt - while it yet seems meaningful to you to do so. But freedom to submit to a compulsive or tyrannical substitute will is hardly a conscious appreciation of freedom!

Until thought itself is observed in act - there is only the term 'conscious thoughts' assigned meanings within a currency of thinking that operates the blocking of free awareness.
So what exactly is meant by free and by will? The mind in its act of defining, predicting and controlling outcomes is a conditioned reaction despite assigning itself to the pinnacle of evolution. It operates blind to the reality of who you truly are or who anyone or anything truly is - and cannot but be so while employed for the purpose of control.
Free will in its true sense is an allowing and balancing within a whole of which the mind in judgement cannot know.

The story of Jesus is of the yielding of a false sense of will for the alignment in the true. He called it the Father's Will - for it is of the whole for the whole - through the particular needs - that may not be what social mores dictate or expect. For true needs are denied by society predicated upon evading the fearful and diverting from the knowledge of the evasion in surface gratifications and observances.
Always your experience is the result of definitions you have accepted true of you in any particular situation. If you get this - your acceptance of your own recognition is your freedom to be curious as to exactly what core beliefs and definitions are playing into or setting up experience or patterns of relationship you say you don't want.

Your natural desire is 'prayer' in that it aligns and attracts to you the pathways that bring fulfilment. It doesn't need words or belief in a religious set of ideas - but being truly acknowledged consciously is no longer hiding or downplaying something that moves you.
The moment of suddenly noticing yourself in act - at the level of belief or definition can come in any kind of way and in different timings - but it is the awakening or stirring at a level the surface mind generally denies you - until you more persistently and consistently choose to release the illusion of control that fear triggers the need of - and embrace what you will freely. Even such an honesty aligns choices from otherwise drifting in self-negative habits - no matter how well camouflaged in apparently positive forms.

Life does not call for interference from the surface consciousness to unfold lawfully - in terms of being true to its foundation. It is the loss of the awareness of true foundation that set a mind scurrying for fig-leaf thinking in which to seem to be self-existing and self-determining. Uncovering this is an illusion is not another basis upon which to make a more subtle fig-leaved model of reality. The subjective experience of void, is a restoring of a true Unconscious - that is the wellspring of Life and not a well full of corpses with a heavy lid over it. Graphic metaphors, but terror operates the loss and denial or usurping of Will. And the only 'life' it permits is the sacrifice of your Sovereign will for a set of rules that become you. Or rather operate a placeholder where your true presence would be - were you to accept who you are - and live as if it is indeed true.


PS: God Gave You (created You) Free Will - so you are stuck with it eternally - whether you align in it for joy or determine to prove you have none or have a corrupt and evil will, or anything else your focus in thought and feeling of being generates. The subset of freedom regarding true and false - which is masked in the idea of good and evil, is simply that Reality, God or your being is NOT coercive upon you. But in coercing the will - you will generate dissonance that you may interpret as guilt and punishment - and seek to mitigate or out-source.One way of offloading guilt is to go around 'correcting' or undermining others - so as to be the one - or aligned in the power to deconstruct others and tell them what is true. But destroying is not creating - no matter how much gratification ones derives from the will to sacrifice others.

Hanniffy Dinn said to the video:

They don't get it. Your soul is in a higher dimension, your brain is quantum biology. It's just a receiver.

But they get what they are free to choose to tune into - just as you are in your experience. So Perhaps they are also serving your deepening recognition of how your consciousness focuses and 'tunes in'.