Understanding Our Free Will

"I acknowledge that I have the power to change my beliefs and values."

In our search for enlightenment, one of the troubling aspects of this search is our understanding of free-will. Many of  us believe free-will endows us with unknown powers to make decisions and create things other animals cannot do.

This free-will or rational power -- the power to think and create -- that separates us from everyone else is not fully understood by most of us.

Whenever we begin to raise questions about the origins of our beliefs and values, we inevitably must accept that free will is one facet of the broader teachings we received from our parents, society, and our experiences. For those who seek understanding, there is no debate that what we know about this world and ourselves came from others.

Some  examples of this mind-conditioning process are expressed in how we learned our ABC's, English, mathematics, history, social studies, and so forth in a structured, systematic fashion  designed primarily to make us like everyone else. This developmental process enables us to share a common identity of citizenship. 

Similarly, what we believe is free-will is not some magical knowledge or spiritual ideals floating in our minds. It is nothing more than what we have all been taught to believe about ourselves and others. It's a living, changeable, knowledge base.

Nevertheless, free-will is much like all our other illusions. We believe it represents the reality or facts of life that we have embodied in our beliefs and values.  Unfortunately, traditional free-will is an illusory freedom.

Meanwhile, it's very difficult to believe we used free-will to create unpleasant situations in our lives. Surely, we don't believe  free-will is responsible for our debts or home foreclosures. Nor do we believe free-will is responsible for our alcohol and drug addictions or for our overindulgence in unhealthy fast foods. And even if we bring ourselves to accept this, that we created all this emotional and psychological turbulence in our lives,  it's still difficult for us to comprehend just how it happened.

The more information we have, the greater our free-will. The less information we have, the more limited our free-will. And some societies create greater illusions of freedom than others.  This is particular obvious in religion and justice.

In religion, regardless of the religious order, most of us believe what we were taught and what's acceptable in our society.  And even when our curiosity is piqued about our religious beliefs,  our beliefs and values prevent us from using our free-will to explore other perspectives. These are the inherent consequences from free-will.

The inequality of justice is another consequence of free-will. We can disagree with something and act on our disagreement, but there are expected consequences from our actions.

This means our free-will extends only so far. It is limited by society and the beliefs and values we have embodied in our lives. We can, however, argue successfully that we have greater latitudes in expressing our free-will disagreements than many others who live in more restricted societies. 

Our free-will is also limited in literature and art. We can write what we want to write, at least to a certain degree of acceptance. Society still places restrictions on what we can write and have disseminated by mainstream media communications outlets.

Meanwhile, we do have the Powers of Mind to change our beliefs and values. And with our Powers of Mind we have the clarity to understand that free-will is based on our awareness of being enlightened.

I acknowledge that I have the power to change my beliefs and values.