TruthFreedom

I have watched Leo's video on free will, and have to say I disagree with him. My belief is that we do have free will, and my belief is reinforced by what I have read about the Hindu belief in karma. I have always thought that we have choices in life, and I think that it is most beneficial to believe that we do in fact have free will. It's very easy and convenient for some people to believe in determinism, because it lets them off the hook for evil actions. I believe we can set the wheel of karma in motion by the choices we make, and that good actions will bring good consequences in the future. Here is the Wikipedia description of free will related to karma in the Hindu belief system. I think it would be beneficial for some people to read this. I have highlighted the part which describes why this is important. "The doctrine of karma explains that while prarabdha karma shapes current life, we still have the free will to make choices in the present. These choices create agami karma (karma that affects our future). The present situation is influenced by the personal choices made through past actions, and the free will to make choices in the present shapes our future.[50] According to Swami Mukundananda's interpretation of Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18, verse 63: "[t]his free will to choose between available alternatives has been given to the soul by God. The freedom of choice is not infinite. One cannot decide, “I choose to be the most intelligent person in the world.” Our choices are limited by our past and present karmas. However, we do possess a certain amount of free will, for we are not machines in the hands of God. Sometimes people question that if God had not given us free will then we would not have done any evil. But then we would not have done anything good either. The opportunity to do good always comes with the danger of doing evil. More importantly, God wants us to love him, and love is only possible when there is a choice. A machine cannot love for it does not have any freedom of choice. God created us with free will and provided us with choices so that we may choose him and thereby exercise our love for him. Even the all-powerful God cannot force the soul to love and surrender to him; this decision has to be made by the soul itself. Here, Shree Krishna is calling Arjun’s attention to his free will and asking him to choose."[51] Karma is not the only factor for fate, and therefore, the Hindu concept of fate is not deterministic or fatalistic. Along with an individual's actions, gods, personalized time, death, or nature can influence fate"

Exactly, and it was hilarious 😂

If awakening makes you laugh your socks off, then it's definitely awakening 🤣🤣🤣

God Schmod.

God didn't experience being God? Hahahahaha

Who? Me, or God? "I" didn't experience it or God didn't?

I love how everyone is discussing these deeper topics as if they actually matter, When in fact, everyone has the awareness to realise that it is all nonsense. Lalalala.....shewadiwadi

As God, I can confirm that I have attempted to un-see Oneness. Does that help?

My reply to both of you is: It is obvious that you are stuck in the mental game of questioning endlessly and needing answers. What nobody wants to admit is that we are distracting ourselves from real Truth. Truth is lived, not questioned or pondered. "Those who speak do not know. Those who know do not speak" -someone

And not questioning anything. Leo, once when I was watching one of your videos with my Dad, He said: That guy needs to get out more. Maybe everyone here is questioning things too much and just needs to live life instead of pondering every facet of existence. Maybe I'm wrong, but please consider my perspective.

you are taking life too seriously.

It's a honour to speak to you, Mr President.

I hope this topic is appropriate for this section of the forum. Basically, I have had a moderate alcohol problem for the past seven years. For some periods of time it became severe. I have attended AA meetings and studied the subject endlessly, and things have improved, but alcohol is still having a detrimental affect on my life. I am often isolated without much human contact, and find that I get some brief relief from uncomfortable emotions when I have a drink. The problem is that I need human contact, and I usually facilitate that contact by drinking some alcohol first. This leads me to behaving in bizarre ways, having delusions and embarrassing myself, as well as offending people. The problem is that people don't always know I am under the influence, so they assume I am just weird or crazy. I often wake up and in my head I go through what happened last night. It's not usually something serious, but it's enough to make me cringe inside. Like I say, I have improved my situation quite a lot, and I only have four cans of beer a day, and some days I have nothing. But when I am under the influence, I can forget about everything. It seems too difficult to give up this small pleasure. Does anyone else have experience with recovering from alcohol?

I think that many people have many different ideologies and beliefs surrounding many different topics. People like to believe that they are "aware", for example, they see someone with a swastika tattoo and assume they are a Nazi, however the same symbol is often used by Buddhists. What I'm saying is that no matter how knowledgeable you become or believe yourself to be, there is always the possibility that you could be completely wrong. Knowledge is not intelligence, it is just the gathering of information. As human beings we are born absolutely clueless, and it takes YEARS just for us to be able to form a coherent sentence. We take so much stuff for granted, mainly because of the ideas we were programmed with by our parents. Once you become fixed in your beliefs, you rescind the possibility of having new insights. Speaking personally, I have practised looking at everything in the world without labelling anything and also seeing the world as ONE, which probably makes me appear quite unusual, as I don't have much of an opinion or reaction to any specific thing. This is because I have become aware that all beliefs are relative. And then I reflect for a second, and realise that that is also just a belief. All the education you have received in your lifetime has come from other people who were also born clueless and have tried to figure things out, the same as you. I have done a lot of deep thinking, so some people think I am a genius, but then I might be completely unaware of some very basic things about society or whatever. What I'm saying is that it is probably a good idea to start by accepting this lack of awareness. Fuck, what do I know?

your mother is probably awake