WHAT Freewill?

With Wordless Wonderment, Watching

Where, Withal, What

When, Why:

WHO

Am

I

Those that believe they have freewill DO have freewill (just try to convince them otherwise!) -- although they may cry in their beer and feel guilty when events go against them, because it's their responsibility for and failure to "do the right thing"--and fine for them. Even those who don't believe in freewill, nevertheless unconsciously act as if they do, because their cultural conditioning and physiological/cognitive structures rule by evolutionary default—i.e., the cognitive metaphors (e.g., Causation as Force, Contact (or Proximity) and Movement = Control) that are mapped from the sensory-motor experience of earliest awareness of, and interaction with the physical world, drive the deep structures of cognition and spontaneous behavior. Only the Awakened are exempt from this reality and their actions are indistinguishable (and/or uncanny) to the ordinary.

When the question of freewill--"do we or don't we?"--arises, it’s worthwhile to ask oneself this question: "When did I make the decision to become born?". If one doesn't effect one's own birth and its circumstances, one is on this earth involuntarily from the get-go, so in one sense freewill is automatically suspect. Aside from those who are convinced that they DID plan their own birth (and arguing with them is pointless), those who allow that it's true we are born involuntarily, nevertheless invoke freewill for all ensuing actions. Fine, but when one's feet are placed on a descending path (i.e., born into physical life on earth, which is a one-way street (namely, birth-->youth-->middle age-->old age-->death) and if we think of non-freewill as the incline downhill (and subject to gravity, say), the capacity to NOT proceed downhill is nil.

Here’s another question: "Can you tell me what you're going to think next?" This is a non-starter for virtually everybody, since they will automatically say "Oh, such-and-such and more such-and-such, of course!" without realizing that they're already, ipso facto, clueless because it's impossible to know what you're going to think next; the extant thought is already there and is automatically displaced by the next one and the next, without your volition.. There is only one valid, authentic reaction to such a question: shocked or at least bemused silence. And that reaction can only arise from the realization that, 1) what you presently think is already in the way of your saying/thinking what you'll think next; ditto for the next thought, and the next, etc.; 2) actually, the questioner "caused" that instant thinking in your brain by asking you the question in the first place; 3) you're always one step behind your thinking and you DON'T KNOW whence it arose or whither it’s bound.

Jan Cox used to say: "The mind is always the last to know." If you ponder this deeply it gets under your skin, it changes you by, as it were, holding a mirror up to your thinking process, which interrupts and interferes with its automatic course. If, in light of this immediate, eerie, in-your-face evidence to the contrary, you still think you exercise freewill, well, you're in good company—because, even for the rare bird that catches a glimpse of it, it's all but impossible to remember (bear in mind) as an ongoing enterprise. If you think that you DO know what you’re going to think next, well, you’re in good company and I wouldn’t dream of debating the point with you.

It’s so interesting: everywhere you hear great authors, artists, inventors, et al. in interviews freely admit that they don’t know where their inspiration comes from or foresee the finished form of their art, and, indeed, are often surprised and nonplussed by it!...while everybody nods their head, saying, “Isn’t it true, oh yes, isn’t it so true.” Yet no one sees that it is categorically no different in their own work-a-day world; absolutely the same in the purview of their quotidian thinking, speaking and doing, instant by instant, breath by breath, year after year. Yes, very interesting. Hidden in plain sight; but accessible only to the thoughtfully attuned, objective, restless voyager, hungry for clarity, and unable to look away or pull the wool over his own eyes when he comes face to face with it. One big problem, however: if you should see it, HOW TO REMEMBER IT when your very design and conditioning, like the red cape to the bull, continually agitates and misdirects…while the sword, aimed and poised, is the invisible agent of the only certainty in your life.