Hello and welcome back.
My name is Pratika.
This is part two.
Beyond free will,
Discovering the freedom of being.
In part one,
We explored the mystery of free will and the question,
Who or what is choosing?
We looked at the sense of being a separate I,
The one who says,
I think,
I feel,
I choose.
And we quietly begin to question whether this separate self is truly the ultimate source of life.
Or whether it is an expression of something much deeper.
As we continue this exploration,
Another important question naturally arises.
If there is no separate controller,
Then what about responsibility?
If the individual self is not completely independent from the movement of life,
Does this mean that our choices no longer matter?
Does it mean that nothing is required of us?
Perhaps we simply move through life without care,
Without intention.
Without awareness.
But perhaps the opposite is true.
The recognition that we are not separate from life does not remove responsibility.
It deepens you.
When we believe ourselves to be a completely separate individual.
We might often leave from a place of self-protection.
A way to control the outcomes.
We try to secure the future.
Which are to depend.
And identity.
Defend and own an identity.
That we believe must be maintained.
And much of our energy is spent trying to manage life rather than meeting life directly.
But as the sense of separation begins to soften,
Something changes.
There can be a greater openness,
A greater sensitivity.
Greater compassion.
We begin to recognise that every thought every action and every choice.
Exists within a vast web of relationships.
Nothing truly exists in isolation.
A word we speak,
A kindness we offer.
The way we greet another person.
All of these are movements within the larger unfolding of life.
Responsibility does not disappear.
It becomes more intimate.
It becomes less about carrying the burden.
Everything depends on me.
And less about avoiding responsibility.
Nothing depends on me.
Instead,
There is a deeper recognition.
I am participating in the unfolding of life.
Perhaps this is a very different understanding of freedom.
Many of us imagine freedom as the ability to make life unfold exactly as we wish.
We have complete control.
To always choose correctly,
To avoid uncertainty.
But perhaps this is not freedom.
Perhaps this is simply another form of limitation.
Because when we believe we must control everything,
We are constantly struggling with life.
Perhaps true freedom is not found in controlling the movements of life,
But in discovering our inseparability from it.
The wave does not control the ocean,
And yet the wave is not helpless.
The wave moves.
The wave expresses.
The wave participates.
The ocean is expressing itself through the wave.
Perhaps this is the mystery of being human.
We are not separate from life.
And yet life expresses itself uniquely through each of us.
Each person,
Each being,
Each moment.
Is a unique expression of the whole.
And beneath all of these expressions there is something quietly present,
A stillness.
And awareness.
A presence that has been here through every thought,
Every feeling,
Every experience.
Before the personality was formed,
Before beliefs were created.
Before the story of me began.
There was simply inseparable awareness.
This awareness does not need to control life.
It does not need to become something else.
It is already complete and whole.
Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of the wholeness of being.
The discovery that what we truly are has never been separate from life itself.
The person continues,
The personality continues.
Choices continue to arise.
Life continues to move.
But something fundamentally begins to shift.
The burden of being a separate individual,
A separate controller,
Begins to soften.
There is a deeper trust,
A deeper awareness.
A deeper intimacy with existence itself.
Perhaps the deepest freedom is not found in becoming the perfect chooser.
But in discovering the awareness in which all choosing arises.
Not in standing apart from love,
But in awakening to the truth.
That we have never been apart from it.
Perhaps free will.
Was never the deepest question.
Perhaps it simply invites us to look more deeply.
Into the one who believed they possessed it.
And in that looking,
What begins to reveal itself is not a separate self.
But the quiet presence in which all life unfolds.
And perhaps the question,
Who is choosing?
Quietly opens into another.
What is this being in which all choosing arises?
And in the silence beyond the question.
There is simply the freedom.
BING!
Blessings to you.
