How Can I Master Something When There Is No Free Will

[Pia]

First of all i am sorry for no perfect english i am no native speaker?

Okay so i watched Leos video about no free will and understand how it works But after that i found myself unmotivated with tasks because i was wondering how i could achieve anything in life if i have no free will...?

[Guest]

The idea that you can make choices based on what you want still remains true. It's just that you just don't decide what you want. 

What I'm saying is that there is still a will. It just isn't free.

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

Edited February 8, 2016 by MN

[Amplituda]

The  idea is to work on self development and realize what YOU really is all about. After that, work on overwriting your subconscious mind with  negative and not needed for YOU. It's not easy but you go step by step and if you can at least identify how much garbage you have inside your mind ,you'll be already ahead of 99+% of the world population.

[A way to Actualize]

The video from Leo on free will is contradicting in a way. I completely understand his perspective, but why do enlightened people like Matt Kahn, Teal Swan, Abraham Hicks talk about free will. The choice between fear or love is what they mean I think, or the point of focus in nothingness. 

Note: not in like 'who made the desicion', but I they mean that the observer self has a point of focus. 

The problem with this teaching is that you can ask yourself 'who am I', and still not be nice. For the people that do want to be enlightened, the who am I is not gonna get you far. I highly recommend the teaching on self-love that is overlooked here.

Edited February 9, 2016 by A way to Actualize

[Naviy]

What is free will? There was time, when I tried to meditate on will.

Thoughts and decisions (which are feelings+thoughts) come and go. If you meditate hard, you will be able to notice, that you are aware of any intention or motivation, but only when they come. But who made them come? Who made a decision to make a decision to do something? According to my observations, any decision or intention come into "the field of awareness" by itself, like any other object in awareness does. You do not decide which intention will come next. 

If you think, that you decide, then I'd suggest you to meditate and find out - what it is like to make a decision? How does it feel like - to make a decision? Also, try to find out - what "will" is. How does will feel like? How can you spot the movement of will and what was there before you noticed this movement? What or who triggered the movement of will to appear? You did? How exactly did you do that? Try to find it out by watching closely (meditating).

Edited February 9, 2016 by Naviy

[Draconis Chaser]

@Pia

But you do have free will, don't you?

The catch is that it is not ACTUALLY, fundamentally free (or yours for that matter), but the fact remains that you can choose what to do and what not to do.
The underlying causes of your choices are not really yours to control (think of reflexes, for example, you react to hot surface even if you don't want to), and yet, here you are, on this forum, looking for a way to solve your problems, right? 

Practically speaking, you do have a choice and free will to run your life, but strictly practically.

As MN said, I would think too much of it now, though.
This whole concept of no free will requires that you have a bit more experience in personal development, exactly so that you don't get discouraged up front.

[Ayla]

The YOU that you think you are right now, perceives Free Will. 

The REAL you, is part of a free will "soup". 

 

[Electron]

Whatever you are doing right now is a result of a complex phenomenon, but more significantly it depends upon the current circumstances and your past conditioning towards that kind of circumstances. If you condition your mind appropriately, you will be able to take better decisions. But notice that you don't consciously take any decision, the decision just comes and you feel like going with it. 

[abrakamowse]

There's no free will, that is true. But we don't know it. It's good for you to understand it from a theory perspective, right now we are not aware of that so we just do whatever we need to do. The important thing about free will is to understand that nothing is under our control. Not even enlightenment. The best way is to let it go, stop controlling things, try to be mindful, aware of what's happening, observing your actions like someone who is not you, like if you study an object and let awareness come to you by itself. Don't change nothing, continue doing what you do, and meditate a lot. The most useful meditation that I found is the one that Leo posted who is called mindful meditation. 

 

http://www.actualized.org/articles/mindfulness-meditation

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Draconis Chaser said:

The catch is that it is not ACTUALLY, fundamentally free (or yours for that matter), but the fact remains that you can choose what to do and what not to do.

Putting it another way might clarify this thing about free will.

It appears that you can choose what to do or not to do.  Things in this phenomenal world (world of experiences) appear to be a certain way. There is an appearance of a certain type of reality.  If we do not investigate and just take things for granted then we often wonder why things happen the way they do, or we take on beliefs (fixed concepts/thoughts/ideas) that limit our capability to see beyond the veil of the belief.  This is the veil of ignorance (not knowing), one of the aspects of Maya.

So, do we have free will.  Look deeply and find out.  Don't leave it to belief - your own belief or that of others - because when one takes on a belief it rules - and limitation is its game.   Liberation cannot be achieved as long as one is attached to beliefs of any sort.

joy

 

Edited February 9, 2016 by walt

[Genghis Khan]

There's no YOU to have free will. You are not mastering an instrument because you don't exist. You are just a thought, thoughts are just sensory phenomena just like sight and sound, which is just colors and vibrations, the thought that you exist is not exempt from that. This text on this screen are just colors contrasting in random patterns rationalized by other senses called thoughts. That's all it boils down to, is random phenomenon.

[Ajax]

Don't worry about what Leo said at the moment, you will get it eventually.

Just remember this... The meaning of life is to have worthwhile goal(s) and go after it.

[abrakamowse]

@Genghis Khan  very true, I am still in the process of accepting that there's no "me" or "I"... that's a hard one Lol.

Accepting there's no free will took me a lot, I hope it doesn't take me so much to accept the absence of "me", thanks for the insight.

Edited February 9, 2016 by abrakamowse

[Genghis Khan]

Indeed there's a reason Leo said it requires atleast 1000 hours of deep contemplation. But once enlightenment finally occurs there's no more struggle 

[Adam G]

@Genghis Khan You had me with the thought of self as a phenomenon.  But you lost me at the assertion of its randomness.

[Argue]

On February 8, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Pia said:

First of all i am sorry for no perfect english i am no native speaker?

Okay so i watched Leos video about no free will and understand how it works But after that i found myself unmotivated with tasks because i was wondering how i could achieve anything in life if i have no free will...?

I'm not sure what you mean by free will but don't doubt yourself. 

[Leo Gura]

On 2/8/2016 at 8:20 AM, Pia said:

i was wondering how i could achieve anything in life if i have no free will...?

In the same way you always have, without free will.

How does the Earth keep spinning around the Sun? It has no free will.

How does your heart keep beating every second? It has no free will.

What the heart is doing every second is way more complicated and delicate than whatever you're trying to achieve.

[Guest Kingkong123]

On 2/11/2016 at 9:25 PM, Leo Gura said:

In the same way you always have, without free will.

How does the Earth keep spinning around the Sun? It has no free will.

How does your heart keep beating every second? It has no free will.

What the heart is doing every second is way more complicated and delicate than whatever you're trying to achieve.

So your theory is just that. Theoretical.

[abrakamowse]

Everything is an illusion, so it's not weird that free will is one too.

 

http://www.learning-mind.com/5-thought-provoking-quantum-experiments-showing-that-reality-is-an-illusion/

[Eastbranch]

This is a topic that I've been studying, meditating on, and thinking about for probably 20 years. Obviously none of us knows the real answer, we just need to come up with an answer that feels most true for us based on our experience. I often find that the most perplexing questions in life have their answer in the concept of duality. In other words, there are two opposing, yet correct answers. My belief is that we do not have free will AND we do have free will. We do not have free will because everything has already happened, all at once (see the B theory of time, string theory, and parallel universe theories to start approaching this concept). We have no choice but to operate in this field of choices. However, we do have free will because we choose what path to take through the universe of possibilities that already exist. Think about intuition and deja vu. These are like clues in the field of choices before you. We are not moving through time, but moving through space to arrive at the point we choose, in the universe that already exists.  It's a simple concept that answers the free will verses determinism question, it's based on emerging science, and if you can wrap your head around the concept of living in space rather than time, it makes perfect sense with our lived experience.