You Can Call it Free Will, But It’s Not

One thing we really take for granted all day long is the experience of free will and self-determination. We go through our day believing that we are controlling our thoughts, controlling our actions. We feel like we direct our thoughts, we know what we want, we plan our day – our whole lives, in fact – and we act on those plans. We have goals, we choose the actions that will lead us to that goal, and thus we are in control of our destinies. Wow, life should be great all the time!

Why isn’t it? If you are in control, why isn’t your life great all the time? Well, first, what you think of as your life being “great” is when things are going according to plan. After all, you know best, and having your plan be met is the only way you’ll be happy, right? Wrong. You’ve seen over and over in your life, in painful abundance, that this clutching and clinging to the fantasy of your “ideal” life or experience always fails, always disappoints. So if there is actually freedom from this pain, as is promised, there must be some other way of looking at this. Am I saying you must give up control? Not at all. I’m saying you never had it.

What is this “I control things” experience, actually? You say, “I feel like I am deciding to read this right now.” I challenge that. I say it feels like what it is, but that you are, by habit and definition, calling this very feeling “I decide.” Your words are lying to you about what is really going on. There are thoughts and actions taking place. Your day unfolds and you appear to be making split-second decisions to keep it all on track. It happens quickly, and everything seems to be going fine, so you have no reason to stop and doubt whether it is really you deciding and controlling.

No reason, that is, except for this one thing: It sucks. All day long, having to know, decide, analyze, plan, figure, project, second-guess, wager, risk, plot, and think think think think. Do you like it? Think it all through, make sure it’s good or they’ll come get you, it will all fall apart, they’ll stop loving you, you’ll be humiliated, you’ll die, you’ll be on the streets, you’ll have to move in with your mother. It’s all up to you! Don’t mess up! Not a single misstep or you’re screwed! Guess what? None of this is true. You are all taken care of already. You don’t have to do – indeed, you cannot do – a thing. Sit back, relax, have an iced tea, and watch the life happen. As essence, you can’t be harmed. It’s all going to be fine.

Is it okay to actually do this? Can you kick back and just watch, without making things happen? Won’t all the wrong things happen if you stop trying to control? Well, look and see if you are controlling in the first place. If you find that you aren’t and never were, and things have been going along fine so far, then there is no worry, is there? So let’s try an experiment.

Stand in the middle of a room and wait, without any plan. Just wait and see what you do next. Will you still be standing there twenty-four hours from now, without a plan? That’s one of the possibilities, but it’s not likely. Something will probably have moved you off that spot by then, like hunger, or fatigue, or the need to walk the dog. If the phone rings, you are likely to walk over and answer it. If you have an appointment, the thought will probably enter your head and you will automatically get your things and head out the door.

As you stand there, watch for the moment that the movement happens, without a plan. There might be a thought that precedes the action and there might not. If there is, watch the thought arise without a plan. Did you plan on that thought arising at that particular time? Did you plan what the thought contained?

Notice how automatically this happens. Observe how mechanically you are moved around. Once you stop naming this action “I am deciding to do this,” and observe what is really happening, you will see that all your actions are automatic. Even the thoughts coming to you are automatic. The feelings that arise are automatic. This is a mechanistic, apparitional world, and you are part of the apparition. You are a stimulus and response machine. Everything you do is based on all the other things in the apparitional world that led up to it. You can’t make it be any different, because you’re not even controlling your own thoughts.

Watch this in action throughout your day. If you can’t “decide” what to do next, just wait. You’ll do something. And the best part of this is, it will be effortless. It’s effortless! Life without planning is life without effort. Without planning, you’ll suddenly find yourself in the middle of a task you’ve been dreading for weeks, having fun and accomplishing more than you thought possible, effortlessly.

It is the false sense of control that causes most of the suffering in the life. Without the belief that you have to make everything happen just right, all the tension in the body drops away. All the frantic searching in the mind for the right action, the right move, several steps ahead all the time, anticipating all possible responses from others, the guilt and second-guessing afterwards, etc., it just stops. So how do we get rid of the “sense” of control? Well, it’s not really there in the first place. The “sense” that you control things comes from your label, not from the experience itself.

You have an experience of being in your day, wherein thoughts arise, feelings arise, actions arise. You can see it all happening. This is the experience you have. This is the experience that you have learned to label “I think,” “I feel,” and “I do” (or “I decided to do”). Those are simply labels – words alone, nothing but words. Look at what is happening, without labeling it. If you don’t say, “I decided to get out of bed,” is it possible that getting out of bed just happened, and your label colors the experience for you?

Do you think you would stay in bed all day if you didn’t decide to get up? Try it. Just lie there without a plan, and see what happens. You might indeed stay there all day. But you also might just get up. Wait and watch for the first sign of movement. Wait and watch for a thought to arise that says to get up. Getting up happens, and we have learned that the name of this action is “I decided to get up.” And then we go around insisting that this is what is really happening! It’s only a name!

What if you learned as a kid that water was a solid. And whoever tried to point out to you that you could put your hand right through it, you would argue, “Yes, I see that, but it’s a solid.” It’s the same thing happening. I’m not pointing out that you see something different from what is real. You’re seeing reality. You’ve simply mistakenly labeled it something else: “I control my life and actions and thoughts.” It’s a false label for the experience of reality that you have.

So it’s just a belief that has you living in this limbo with the burden of responsibility. Do you need to change your belief? No. None of this has anything to do with you. Just be with what you know, right now. Pay attention to what is going on right now. There is seeing with no seer. There is feeling with no feeler. There is action with no actor. There is knowing with no knower, and this whole imaginary world of you and your free will appear to take place within that knowing. And the knowing is what you are, not the person.

The stimulus-and-response machine is noticed by you. The person masquerading as “you” is observed in awareness. The thoughts in your head belong to no one. The pains and aches in your body belong to no one. The sense of control belongs to no one. These things are free-floating, smack dab in the center of awareness, and are attached to nothing and no one. If it feels “personal,” check and see if that is not just the name you put on it, and not the actual experience. How can something feel personal when there is no person? Reality does not lie. Your words and labels, however, are very good at lying.

Just be, without calling it “I control this.” You never did, so you’re not giving anything up. Watch the actions, observe the thoughts, without imagining that you are making them happen. Enjoy the movie. Float downstream.

Be without a center of control, be without a body, be without a history, be without an opinion, be without all the traits that make you special. Just be.

Be no one, in no one’s body. What a blast! Living, with no body! Sensing and experiencing, thinking, feeling, with no person! No harm can come to you. No worries, no fear, no needs. Just aliveness.

Alive. Aware. Here. What more do you need?