Free Will: It’s not Fair!

by Paul Smetana
(Australia)

I just was writing a great article. Got to almost the end of the first page, and the bloody thing … disappeared.

Talk about lack of free will. Which is what I was writing about.

Now, I’m gunna start again.

Free Will. Do we have much of it in our lives?
IF a major Tsunami comes down your street, what can you do.
IF you have to go somewhere at a certain time, meeting people you don’t want to meet, again where’s the free will.

I’m Diabetic, and have to eat in certain controlled ways. My moods elevate blood sugar, and no matter what I’ve tried, I can’t rid myself of this crappy disease. So where’s the free will.

But it’s interesting. What do I think free will is. Often it’s a sense of open freedom, peace, and joy of being alive, that seems to be taken from me by all of life’s seemingly lousy things.

Then I scream about UNFAIR! Even though I have been a meditator since I was 16, and even though I have many wonderful ways to gain peace and quiet in my life, [Even wrote a book} today is an example of “When things go Wrong”.

Victor Frankl wrote about this after his time in a concentration camp, which is certainly a place where free will is deliberately totally extinct. Yet he discovered that despite having no free will, and no control at all, it was possible to bake in beauty, peace and love.

There is a part of us that is totally unfettered, and is totally free, where free will is proven over and over again. It is also true that often, it is the lack of freewill that teaches us what it really is and how to get it.

I must say that right now I feel A lot better. The idea that I have free will despite the physical limitations that endlessly convince me I have none, is coming back.

Life really is pretty good. Life really does have an amazing capacity to move you into a true feeling of free will, regardless of circumstances.

Much of this can not be placed into a “How To”. It’s just what being alive can do for you, and despite the way I started this article, ……. I am now Grateful.

P.S. All of this thinking about Free will came out of the last article I wrote.
In a very condensed version, I wrote that the life I am living, had been set up by me, before I was born, to become the Me I wanted to be. This goes against a certain brand of free will, where you strive to achieve what you want in this life. I wrote that if what you want for yourself isn’t happening, it might be because it’s going against the more powerful desire you designed before birth.

And this Idea of personal fate vs. manifesting has had Juni and I really thinking, hence today’s article.

Happy reading,
Paul