The simple truth about free will

Vic Shayne
2 min readOct 8, 2019

by Vic Shayne
author
Consciousness: The Potentiality of All Existence: Exploring reality and belief as a subjective experience

Before answering the question about free will, it’s helpful to first go into who we believe we are.

The mind is influenced, psychologically, to accept the idea that you are an individual who is separate from other people, nature, objects, phenomena, and so on. This creates an imagined being that we call “me” or “I.” It is also called the persona, the mask to the world, the center, the ego, the egoic mind, the self, and the individual. This being is made out of an accretion of thoughts that we have been conditioned to accept as real and important. The egoic self, or sense of “I,” believes it is attached to, and identified with, phenomena, thoughts, the physical body, relatives, memories, relatives, work titles, accomplishments, failures, race, religion, and so on. It is the whole kit-and-kaboodle of who we think ourselves to be.

It is this egoic self that believes in free will, which is the idea that we, individually, control our thoughts, decisions, actions, and destiny.

No action or decision exists in isolation
Think carefully about this: There is no action or thought that exists in isolation. Every action, decision, and thought comes about only because of the entire movement of consciousness. Before your next decision there must be a prior decision. Before your next act there must be infinite other acts that bring you to this point.

Your decision to do something right now has been affected by untold and incalculable influences that have brought you to the next step. Everything that has happened up until now bears upon, and leads to, your next decision and action based on factors that are too complex and dynamic to trace or track. Billions of people, nature, animals, and the forces of the universe create waves upon waves that influence all of life in one single network.

This is the way life works — nothing exists in isolation, and everything exists in relationship to everything else.

To suggest we have free will is to ignore all of what precipitates and affects the next moment, which is the entire movement of consciousness.

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Vic Shayne
Vic Shayne

Written by Vic Shayne

NY Times bestselling author writing about reality beyond thought, consciousness, and the self to uncover what is fundamental. https://shorturl.at/mrAS6

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