Free will, the universe and traffic jams

We had a conference call yesterday, me and my wonderful 'pod' mates on the Super Coach Academy Course.  It probably didn't help that I joined the call after sitting in the Mallorcan sun for an hour with a large glass of wine but by the end of the call I wasn't sure whether I was completely insane or didn't exist or was absolutely insane and did exist or a combination of all four.

So - this blog is a way to  fathom my way to the few things that (besides a wine glass) I can hold onto as real.

Here we go. Things I know:

I am conscious.

I am aware of my version of the world around me. As quantum physics is continually making clearer, the spotlight of my consciousness changes whatever is being perceived. My consciousness is a reality creating machine. Essentially, without my consciousness, the world as I know it does not exist.

I think.

I have a commentary of my experience going on in my mind that interprets the world, myself and other people. This is my thinking. It is not accurate or objective or real in any sense but it can change how I feel. Many of the fellow 'peas' in my pod group love how Cathy Casey one of the Three Principle experts talks about her frustration at being stuck in traffic. We feel our thinking even when we have years of knowing that our thinking is not the truth.

I am connected

I am connected to the vast intelligence around me. This intelligence coordinates the tides, the turning of the earth, the rhythms of my body. The quieter my mind, the clearer this connection. When I am in a state of flow or meditation or yoga practice   or gratitude or awe or deep feeling there is nothing between me and that space. This is the place of my insight, my intuition, my higher purpose.  It is the place of Carl Jung's archetypes and the great ideas I have in the shower.

These principles are unchanging and indisputable. Like gravity. Almost everything else - my beliefs, my thoughts, my opinions can change from one breath to the next.

This leads me to the big question: who am I?

Who and what is the me that is connected to the intelligence? Am I connected to it as a wave is to the ocean - with no separation or independence? Or am I connected to it as a hose pipe is to a tap in that I can shape the force, the pressure and the shape of the intelligence that I transport?

There are many people who I know live in a way that continually and deliberately honours the universal intelligence. Michael Neil, Steve Hardison, Byron Katie, Cathy Casey, Mark Howard, George Pransky, Steve Chandler, Deepak Chopra... There are many artists and inventors who may or may not see their work as having come from this place of higher intelligence but whose work is so universally moving that it clearly does - Einstein, Jobs, Adele, Presley, Twain, Mozart, Steinbeck...  All of them are utterly different from each other and yet clearly either live in or regularly plug into something that transcends and connects us all.

This makes me believe that we are not simply waves of the ocean.  We shape the vast intelligence through our own humanness just as a sunset is different from a sun rise and a daisy is different from a great oak. The Clare Dimond expression of the universal intelligence will be different to the Michael Neil version.

The next question then is whether we have any say in that 'humanness'. Am I in control of the 'me' that shapes that intelligence? Do I as an individual have any say in what I do or am I being moved, being breathed, being thought, being put to whatever purpose the universe has for me? Research by Benjamin Libet has shown that movement is initiated in the brain before a person is conscious of the decision to move. This indicates that we may well have far less control over what and who we are than we believe.

So, is free will an illusion?

 

 

I think I'll stop there. Another wine anyone?