62 - Do we have Free Will?

What is our role in society and our lives?. Does the personality have free will? Who is running our lives? Do we disappear as individuals when we "awaken"? Are we God? Why do some people choose evil?

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well. In the last podcast, I alluded a little bit to free will and some of those issues, so let's devote this podcast to answering some of those questions that may have come up. First, let me ask you this question. Say you created a pair of sunglasses. Pink sunglasses. Can those sunglasses think? Can they ponder things? Can they think? No, they're just sunglasses. You wear them. You look through them. In fact, when you look through them, don't they color your world pink? Isn't your vision colored by your sunglasses? Yes, of course. Well, the reason I'm using that as an illustration is because as we've explored in past podcasts, we make our own thoughts. We hallucinate a thought. That can be a good thing. I mean, thoughts are wonderful tools. We can project into the future. We can solve mathematical problems. We know how to start a car, how to interact with others, all based on thoughts and habits. Thoughts are a very useful tool. They're simply representations of reality, but they aren't reality themselves. Thoughts can disappear and we're still here. People can have all sorts of thoughts about their lives and get amnesia and they're still here. They just don't have the thought context to guide them. It's good that we can think and that we have this useful tool of being able to hallucinate up a thought. Once we convert consciousness into a thought, once we condense it down into a thought, it's an object that we look through, just like sunglasses are an object that we look through. Our thoughts color our view of reality, just like those pink sunglasses do. We're not our sunglasses and we're not our thoughts. Personalities are made of thoughts. We're not our personality, just like we're not our thoughts and just like we're not our sunglasses. We use our personality just like we do thoughts in order to guide us. It's a useful tool. We need a personality to walk down the street and say hi to people and to get through our day. It's a wonderful thing to have. The problem though, as good as thoughts or these hallucinations can be, including our personality, every time we create an object, it's in our field of consciousness and it blocks us a little bit. It's kind of like space debris. It's fine to have a few chunks, but if you get too much, it's hard to navigate through space. Well, the same with thoughts and emotions. If we get too many of them, then it's hard to navigate and see clearly through our inner space. We are the ones that create our thoughts. We are the ones that create our personality, but we're not either one of them, just like we're not our sunglasses. The sunglasses don't have free will. They don't think. They don't have free will. Either do our hallucinations or our thoughts. They don't have free will. They're objects just like sunglasses. So is our personality, an object just like the thoughts and the sunglasses. It does not have free will either. It doesn't even think. It's just a lens through which we look or through which we flow and navigate through life. It's a lens or a group of lenses that we've cobbled together and we call them our personality. These lenses can change. That's why we go through therapy to change some of these lenses or people get amnesia and they forget some of these lenses. They're still there. They just aren't seeing through the same lenses, so they create new lenses. We are creators. We can create. Now, why are we creators? And who's looking through these lenses anyway? Well, that's what awakening is called, and it's called the one. There is this oneness that's looking through these lenses. Rumi has a line in one of his poems which says something like, he that looks through your eyes is God. Yogananda says it's not right to say I am God. Better or not quite right to say that. Better to say God has become me. In other words, those lenses have melted off enough so that you recognize that the divine is looking through your eyes. You don't have a personal vested interest in I am William or I am Mary or I am Jennifer looking through these eyes and I will not give that identity up. It's a thought I myself created and I want to keep it. No, in awakening, yeah, we hold on to that useful fiction. I am a William because it's helpful. People need to know what to call me, but not really. I could get amnesia and change my name to John or even without amnesia, people change their names. A lot of times people get married and they change their names. So we're not really our identity at all. So this idea of free will, often when people talk about it, they're talking from an identified perspective of I am my personality. I am it. I am my personality. That's what we are hypnotized to believe. We're so identified with it. And what undergirds this hypnosis is our culture. You know, a culture is a cult, cult chore. It's group hypnosis. And I love what a psychologist, Walensky was his last name. That's all I can remember at the moment. But he wrote a book, Trances People Live. And he said, when people come into his office, he doesn't have to hypnotize them. He has to dehypnotize them because they're only looking through their thoughts and they believe them so deeply. Again, that's what therapy is for, to loosen you from your thoughts. There's even a kind of therapy, narrative therapy, that you start to change your story, start to change your thoughts. And as you change your story and your thoughts slowly, slowly, just as much as you can handle each session, but you change them into a more positive thoughts, it continually lets more light in, more light in, more light in, and you feel better and better and better just because you're changing your thoughts. The point is we're not our thoughts. We're not our personality. And when people are talking about free will, and they're doing it from the perspective of their personality, you'd have to just say it doesn't exist on that level, just like it doesn't exist on the level of sunglasses don't have free will. Yes, the lenses do affect the way we see the world, but they have nothing to do with free will. So that whole debate, people get all worked up, but it's really sort of nonsensical. And, you know, another thing that scares people, oh, if I awaken, I'll disappear. And I'm afraid to disappear. I'm afraid to awaken. No, all that disappears is your blocks, is your hurt and pain, the separation that causes hurt, fear, and anger when you're separated from yourself. That's what these lenses do. They both give us a lens to look through, but simultaneously, the personal lens of the personality separates us from the whole, the one. As these lenses loosen and dissolve, guess what? The hurt, the fear, and the anger dissolves and loosens. You open up into your vast oneness, your infinite potential, your deep knowing, and deep power, and happiness, unlimited happiness. Every good thing that shines through when you think you're an individual person is still there, but it's not blocked at all. So if you think you're happy when you're awakened, you're uber happy. You're super happy because you don't have any blocks. Any happiness that shines through when you're a little personal self, or you're never a little personal self, you just believe you are, any happiness that shines through then is only coming from the infinite. And when there are no blocks, there's only infinite. You don't have to do something in order to get happy. You are happy all the time. That is your nature. You are peaceful. You don't have to do something in order to become peaceful. You are peace. You are happiness. You are well-being. Your joy, your knowledge, all these things that we aspire to, the irony of it and the joke of it is it's already here. There's nothing you have to do except stop doing things. What do I mean by that? Stop blocking yourself. Stop putting lenses on that aren't needed. Yet you can be in this world, but not of it. What I mean by that is in awakening, you are fully shining through and flowing through your body-mind mechanism, and it's reorienting more and more and more progressively to reflect the fullness of who you are. Yet you can retain it. You don't have to let go of the whole mechanism. You need it to be in this world. So you'll retain it. So you're in the world, but not of it. You're using your personality lightly. You understand what it is. You enjoy all the things in the world. But since you're already fundamentally happy and connected and full of well-being and peace and joy, you don't have to grasp all these things in the world. You just enjoy them. And if they disappear, you're good because that is your nature. Good. Remember how people would come up to Jesus and they'd say, good teacher. And he would say, there's nobody good but God. And it's the same principle. Only goodness flows through, comes from the infinite. When the personality disappears, there's only good. And so anytime Jesus did something good and somebody congratulated him on it, he'd say, oh, this only comes from God. It's a fact. It's a fact for all of us. Jesus isn't different than you or me or anybody. Either is Buddha, either is anybody. The difference is, is they're very clear and they show us the way. But you have these, you're the same thing. You're the same nature as Jesus or Buddha. So back to this free will. So that means if sunglasses don't have free will and me as a personality doesn't have free will and thoughts don't have free will, thoughts don't think and personalities don't really have personality. They're just thoughts. They're just lenses lying on the ground that you suddenly put on and live life through. Do I have free will? Feels like I do. What's going on inside of me? Well, the reason why it feels like you have free will is because you do have free will. And what I mean by that is the personality is an inanimate object. It has no free will. But the person that's look or the being that's looking through your personality has infinite free will because that is the one. Some people call it the divine, some people call it God. It is the one. Now, Jesus just went around and said, the father and I are one that got him killed. So I would not be saying stuff like that. That was not a good move. I like, again, Yogananda saying that's not quite right to say it that way. Rather, you'll be better off saying God has become me or God is becoming me. And what does that feel like when you feel into that? Doesn't it feel like your lenses are melting off? Your blocks are melting off and progressively there's more light and light and light coming through you. That's what happens in awakening. If you've been around a fully awakened person or a deeply awakened person, I say it that way because it's probably an evolution. There's probably no end to it because anybody in creation keeps evolving and evolving and evolving. And I don't know that through a body you can ever be fully finished with the openings that are possible to you. But when you're around one of these people, there's so much light that comes out. I've been around some you can't even get off the ground. And I say that maybe, you know, you take it with a grain of salt and go, yeah, sure. And that's what I would have done. But I'm telling you, it's true. And when I've had this kind of energy come through me, I can hardly get off the ground, even when it's just with me. The same energy is coming through all of us all the time. It's just how many blocks do we put in the way. So do we have free will? Yes, we are the infinite or the infinite is us. And that's what orchestrates the entire created universe and beyond. So it's infinite free will. It's infinite creativity. That's you. And that's why you feel it that way. And that's why people, even with their lenses, can do so many things because it's the infinite shining through them. They can play music or poetry or philosophy, or they can plant gardens and vegetables, or they can make sailboats or they can do whatever. They can even be mean, awful people if they want to go down that road. That's another story. Why would they do that? Sometimes in our separation, we're so focused on what becomes a blocking ourselves, the hurt, fear and anger. We get into that and that's what we amplify. And that's how we see the world. We've got those sunglasses on so tightly. We think it's true. That's called being really identified with your separation. And so you see some people acting that way and it's, it's just tough. But after they hit their head against the wall enough times, it knocks those glasses off. Anyway, do we have free will? Yes. Are you a radiant being? Yes. When you awaken or as you awaken step by step, little bit by little bit, God is becoming you and those filters are falling and melting off. In the Bible, it talks about Paul, the scales melting off his eyes as he was awakening. That's what it felt like to him. And now we could see clearly. It's like all those lenses just melting off. Typically for most of us, it's a slower process. It's a little here, a little there. And we'll talk about that later. But the main thing, free will, when your problems melt away, you're still here. You're the infinite self. And in prior podcasts, we talked about, you know, it's like a hand. It has five fingers. Every finger is separate from the other finger, has different sensors and nerve systems going through each different finger. So one can feel one thing and the other can feel another thing. They're separate. Yet the oneness coming through all the fingers can feel all of it at the same time and make sense of it. That's the one. Individual people are like individual fingers in the world. It's still the same oneness coming through all of us individual people and cats and dogs and just like coming through the fingers. So as the scales drop off, you know, we do get more intuitive and often we do feel what the other fingers are feeling or the other people are feeling because we don't have so many blocks and we become very connected to the world around us and less in our thoughts and our emotions. We use them as appropriate, but we don't get caught in them. I think we'll talk about that a little bit in our next podcast. But for now, yes, free will. You have it. You have infinite free will. Just don't get confused with your personality. Be open to letting the stuff that's holding you back in the ways that it is holding you back to let it go and use your personality as a vehicle to help your infinite flow in this world. It's a natural process. Okay, I enjoyed talking with you. I look forward to the next time and I hope you have a great week. Take care. Bye.