Free will has often been associated with the word ‘choice’. If you have been on the journey long enough, you would have experienced the contradictory and paradoxical occurrences of what seems to emerge from this thing called ‘choices’.
For example: when you are in a situation where you feel stuck and someone comes up to remind you that you have a choice, and when you feel that you have made your choice, another comes to you to reveal that you didn’t have much of a choice in the first place except an illusion of it.
In my own limited observation, the words ‘choice’ and ‘no choice’ have much to do with the concurrent situation a beholder is in rather than a conclusion. I have this beloved friend, from observing my sharing with another friend, came forth to ask me this, ‘G, I thought that there is no choice?’. A loving smile surfaced in response to her question with the answer of, ‘if one finds himself in a space where there is a choice, then there is a choice; to arrive at a space of no choice is similarly where one is. There is neither a hierarchy nor any truth in either also.’
Now we have often heard too that the life stories of each individual is contracted with or scripted in the Divine. If that is true do we have a choice? Apparently yes as each movement denotes a somewhat different path. Yet, I am beginning to observe that although the outer reality seems to be of a different path, the inner experience and conditionings that is lodged deeply in the mind at least for that moment in time has not left. In that context, whatever and however your outer reality seems to differ due to a physical choice we have made, we have never left our place of origin. In that case, where is there a shift since it is the internal experiences that matter and not the outer reality?
In truth, the choice has never been yours except what is true in your heart at that moment. The illusion of choice comes to be due to the multidimensional conditionings that has been ingrained thus allowing a mirage of apparent differing experiences which either confirms in you that you have made the ‘right choice’ or the ‘wrong choice’ when in fact there was no such thing or is not even a basis of consideration in the first place. It can be said that the illusion of choices arises because of the existence of delusion. If you were clear all the while, would the word ‘choice’ even occur in the first place?
Yet, the choice or rather free will as given to us does not really denote an action of choice but rather in the noble intent of perceiving otherwise. It is similar to the saying by wise Masters ‘to choose again’. It is in this free will of perceiving otherwise that brings about clarity and hence the next decision or physical action or not. This becomes a natural movement following the clarity bestowed. In other words, you never moved except being moved by the natural force of the perceiving; whether consciously or unconsciously. In the free will of perceiving, the sane is automatically drawn to what is more true to the heart at that occurring moment which ultimately brings about only peace and surety to the being of the beholder.
When we are finally awake to this, there is really nothing to ‘do’ except to pay attention to what is happening in the abyss of the mind. While it is true that in certain circumstances some sort of physical action is needed to be in alignment yet as mentioned above, it becomes a natural movement rather than one which has planning in it. In that course of natural movement, you can be sure you are already a closer step to reconciling what was never needed to be reconciled in the first place.