We Have Freewill, Don’t We?

by Nick Andrea

Yes, we have freewill. Let me illustrate. I am at a meeting with someone when my stomach begins to rumble with hunger. I have a banana outside in the car, however. The meeting ends and I go out to my car to leave. Now, I can choose to eat it, or not. I am free, right?

Well, not exactly. Why am I hungry? Because I am living in a body that requires certain things for it’s subsistence. It is conditioned. If I don’t meet those conditions it will perish. Sure, I can fast and put off eating this banana for hours, days, even weeks. But, eventually, the cells in my body will conspire together to form a volition to eat that banana. And then I will.

Thus, our apparent freewill exists within a context of no freewill. The world we inhabit – the world of form, which includes our body, our emotions, and even our thoughts – is an endless stream of causes and conditions stretching backwards and forwards into infinite. And, there’s nothing you, nor I, can do about it.

Think about it for a minute. Withdraw from your ordinary perspective of a human being and look at the world from the point of view of the wild, naked All that existed before the universe was created and will exist after it ends. Look at WWII, or the life of Jesus Christ. Look at the current nuclear crisis in the Middle East. Are these not all elements of an evolving consciousness, an evolution which cannot be stopped, but which also includes painful growth experiences along the way? This is the universe moving, rolling on in an endless stream of cause and effect.

Ok, back to Earth. So, I can choose to eat the banana, but my choice is not really free. I have freewill AND I don’t. Where does this paradox resolve itself?

Intuition, or, the action of the formless essence within you, seeing forwards and backwards in time and space, and telling you what is. “Whoa, buddy. Say what?” Intuition is that part of you that’s not bound by the world of form, it is formless. It was never born. It will never die. It has never known anything other than non-duality. So, while you see yourself as distinct from Bob, Jane, and Dick, it only sees itself. So, intuition can see forwards and backwards into other points in time and space, which exist on the fabric of reality called the Unified Field. Thus, it can read the direction that the world of form is moving in and tell you about it. Let me use another example to illustrate. A movie is playing at a local theater that I’m sure my friend Anna would love to go see. However, she doesn’t answer when I call her, so I leave a message. Tickets are selling out fast, though, so I need to get them soon if we are going to go. My intuition says, “Get them.” Being unbound by time and space, my intuition is seeing that future point in time and space and knows that she is not only available but she will get my message and call me back. This is, of course, absurdity to my logical mind which is part of my conditioned self. But, I get the tickets, she calls me back, and we go.

So, here’s the punchline: since the intuition always knows what is, the only choice is to align with that or not. By aligning with it, we are at peace. But fighting it, we are at war. This is the only there has ever been and the only choice there will ever be.