No man is free who is not master of himself – Epictetus
We live in a place of action where tide and season are forever in motion. A place where we must choose who we will be and enact our will to make our way.
That choice is our free will and we may choose what we do, how we do it, and most importantly why we do it. Within the ‘what’ there is often little choice. We must go to work; we must clean the house and do the things that maintain our life. But how we do what we do is always our choice. We may do it begrudgingly, with gratitude, with care, or with carelessness.
The final area of choice is the most important because it affects the ‘how’ and often the ‘what’.
The ‘why we do what we do’ is the deeper truth of who we are being, and energy creates our view of the world.
The why we do what we do is the source of our power, it describes who we are being. You need a reason to get out of bed and can’t climb a mountain without a good reason. The ‘why we do what we do’ is the deeper truth of who we are being. It tells the mind who we think we are. This ‘who we think we are’ becomes our background noise that then attracts whatever belongs to its frequency. If we don’t care it does not matter, if we do care then the mind will manifest more according to the meaning we care about it.
The why, tells the mind what we think is important. It is then duty-bound to get more of what we say is important. If we do because we feel we are ‘not enough’ then not enough is what the mind will give us to see in the world.
We live within a state of free will but much of our will has been relinquished.
We are given freedom of will, to choose what we will and will not be and that will is persuaded by the things we deem as important. But much of the importance we carry has been created by people who do not have our best interest at heart. The commercial world has made it important to want more of the things we do not need, as if a new mobile phone can bring true happiness or that a shampoo can give us well-being. Social media has created a monster that makes it more important to care more about what other people think of us than how we think of ourselves. The corporate business world has made it important that we look to what we can ‘take’ rather than give.
The greatest act of freedom is to choose love over fear – Soren Kirekegaard
These influences become our persuasion and take our will towards their ends causing us to act out of fear. Fear that we might lose what we already have or fear that we might not get what we are told we want. And so, our acts are created by fear rather than love.
The other great usurper of our free will is Habit. If we do not consciously choose, then our habits will choose for us – their path is well trodden. They have the power of many years of action and will put to sleep our consciousness. They will make our decisions come from what has been, not necessarily what we wish to be. But we may always bring our consciousness to our acts of the day and decide afresh why we are doing what we do; to bring a reason that is true to our purpose of life.
Divine Will
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment. – Eckhart Tolle
We hold a deeper will within ourselves that is born from our wish for love.
It is a will that enables us to create the space and opportunity for our greater dreams; to find the people and places where we can enact our love of live. We may create this love in the garden, in the kitchen, with friends, in moments of meditation or in simple acts of humanity.
When we respond to this divine will, we shall liberate the soul, the resulting grace gives us freedom from the illusion of our separation from life. In that moment, we become love, whole and alive having met our greater self.
Article by author and artist
Toby Negus
Article published in More to Life – Edition 69
