About the Free Will

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
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Soror O
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About the Free Will

Post by Soror O »

The free will has been puzzling me. First I try to formulate what it means to me:

To witness ones own emotions, mind and body and make choices regardless of their impulses/
To see emotions, thoughts and bodily urges as information - not to be acted upon automatically.

____________

Maybe the free will has puzzled me in the past ten years because I used to identify it with "wanting" (which I see now as false). About ten years ago I went through this period, which was marked with errosion of will/ wanting. I was emptied. Back then I had strong sensations of being a puppet of God. Before this episode I was a strong willed person - if I set my mind to something, I had it done. Period. After this episode I have been little bit struck, baffled - afraid to have any will or use it. Also I have this indifference in me - most things are fine with me either way. I have referred to this by saying: I don't even want the things I want. So I now see that in order to be, I don't need "the want".

How do you perceive the free will? How would it relate to the sevenfold system of the hieroglyphic key?
If you want to reborn, let yourself die.
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Nefastos
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Re: About the Free Will

Post by Nefastos »

Soror O wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:08 amHow do you perceive the free will? How would it relate to the sevenfold system of the hieroglyphic key?

To answer the deep question but briefly, I perceive free will being ability to focus on some or other principle of experience/reaction. In this way, the seven human principles of the Hieroglyphic Key become like seven layers of depth. And when I experience something, I may choose, in case and to the extent I have reached free will, whether I would like to answer to the situation with kâma, or manas, or buddhi, or whatever.

Thus, the "free will" is the innermost point, the upanishadic atman, which is not any limb of the system, but the middle point. In this particular use, five- and six-pointed stars work better than the original seven-pointed Key. The atmic or monadic point is the star's middle, working through any a ray it chooses at the time. But it has to learn to use them all equally, in different situations. Otherwise, it remains bound. This balancing act is the great challenge of the fifth initiation.

This is, naturally, a simplification. The Key is actually one whole, and the question is about emphases. Also, since every principle lives in each other, there are actually 49, not 7, possible ways of experiencing and thus reacting on a situation.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Gangleri

Re: About the Free Will

Post by Gangleri »

I'd define free will as a freedom to action in a certain direction. In a given situation, when man is not in stress or even battle, one can think oneself as more free than one truly is. In principle, man is "bound to be free", but because the human system is such a complicated one in its diversity of modes of action, the human subject usually is simply following the first impulses or modes of action that are bound by desires, intelligence / logic, or some other mode of being that makes a common man blindly following his urges and even initiates to some degree only learning to take a semi-absolute correct way of action and being in a situation or other.
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Soror O
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Re: About the Free Will

Post by Soror O »

Nefastos wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 11:52 am
Soror O wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:08 amHow do you perceive the free will? How would it relate to the sevenfold system of the hieroglyphic key?

To answer the deep question but briefly, I perceive free will being ability to focus on some or other principle of experience/reaction. In this way, the seven human principles of the Hieroglyphic Key become like seven layers of depth. And when I experience something, I may choose, in case and to the extent I have reached free will, whether I would like to answer to the situation with kâma, or manas, or buddhi, or whatever.

Thus, the "free will" is the innermost point, the upanishadic atman, which is not any limb of the system, but the middle point. In this particular use, five- and six-pointed stars work better than the original seven-pointed Key. The atmic or monadic point is the star's middle, working through any a ray it chooses at the time. But it has to learn to use them all equally, in different situations. Otherwise, it remains bound. This balancing act is the great challenge of the fifth initiation.

This is, naturally, a simplification. The Key is actually one whole, and the question is about emphases. Also, since every principle lives in each other, there are actually 49, not 7, possible ways of experiencing and thus reacting on a situation.
Thank you for the enlighted answer.

I think that I the movement from "wanting"/reaction based being to this new-found (inner) stillness has been difficult for me. At the time when it started, I was terrified because it felt literally like dying. Now, ten years later, I see that it was only a process of shedding some skin.

Still, it is fascinating to see how the old reaction based being and the new proactive, more conscious being interact within. The work really never "gets done", for there is new layers of conditioned reactions awaiting in the folds of my persona. Yet, when one has truly unfolded even a single conditioning, one has unfolded them all - for these conditioned reactions are quite simple by nature, usually built around different forms of fear.
Gangleri wrote: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:32 pm one can think oneself as more free than one truly is. In principle, man is "bound to be free", but because the human system is such a complicated one in its diversity of modes of action, the human subject usually is simply following the first impulses or modes of action that are bound by desires, intelligence / logic, or some other mode of being
Yes, one ought to be cautious to regard himself free, for the bounds of unconscious conditioning are multi-faceted and subtle. Freedom is reclaimed over and over again in the now. And how common it is to identify oneself to one's own emotions and thoughts and regard it as freedom. Also thoughts are in many cases only masked emotions. Real freedom is beyond identification, yet it is not.
If you want to reborn, let yourself die.
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Nefastos
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Re: About the Free Will

Post by Nefastos »

Soror O wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 10:19 amReal freedom is beyond identification, yet it is not.

Yes; the real freedom is a paradox, like the universe itself.

Paradox means that something is a living thing, not an intellectual schema. But this demands a wrestle. Intellectual demand cannot be overstepped to the experience of miracle, but the miracle must be wrestled from behind the intellectual. As long as there is something that can be analyzed, the analysis should continue. At one point, however, the mind will observe that it has travelled full circle. At that point, it must be relinquished. This is perhaps the hardest point of the journey, because here one must crash, but how that crashing is done, remains extremely delicate an issue.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Cancer
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Re: About the Free Will

Post by Cancer »

My way of reformulating and clarifying the question "Do we have free will?" would be: "Is the universe such that it could have been different due to the actions of conscious agents?" Answering this immediately runs into the problem of defining the property of being able to have been different. For the statement "The universe could have been different" to be evaluated as either true or false, there would have to be something in the universe for the statement to be "tested against" - we would have to see whether it corresponds to an actual state of affairs or not (assuming the correspondence theory of truth). But since the statement doesn't claim anything about the actual state of affairs in the universe, only about potential states that have not and will never exist, there is no way of finding out whether it is true or false. In this sense, it has no truth value, and it seems that the concept of being able to have been different, of potential states, is only fully meaningful in more limited contexts.
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