Free Will Doesn't Exist [2 Ways to Recognize]
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- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
- Direct experience in non-duality demonstrates that free will doesn't exit. Is intention an aspect of doing? Are they the same thing? Watch and find ou This video is likely to bring about some questions, so feel free to post them in the comments 😀
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The recognition of Non Duality, Awakening and Enlightenment seems to be reaching critical mass worldwide. If you resonate with Adyashanti, Ekhart Tolle, Angelo Dilullo, Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, and Ken Wilbur, you just may find a home here as well.
Oh wow Josh!! Loved this, and had no inclination to have to bear with you! It all came very naturally. Love that intention is and always has been right here. This made complete sense to me. Did not seem muddy at all. And yes, it is a bit of a difficult topic and loved the navigation that showed up Skipper🚢💜
Thank you 🙂
You explained free will flawless by distinguishing the agent from the intentions! I always wondered why I suddenly changed my diet for the better without having reasoning or bias around it! The choice just happened and the doing itself was part of the fun as well as the curiosity. Thank you.
This happens all on its own.🙏
i had to re-listen to this video multiple times. the analogies are very helfpul (intention & pull towards the center). the point is SO CLEAR. 🙇♀❤, OMG it is that simple? 🤯🤯🤯 infinite gratitudes 🙏
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Very clear. Thank you.
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Really great video, Josh. A few years ago I listened to some similar thought experiments by Sam Harris. One of them was something along the lines of “I want you to think of a movie. Any movie. It can be one you’ve seen, or one you’ve heard of.”
Then he explained that whatever movie happened to come to mind, simply came to mind all by itself. You can’t say why it was that movie as opposed to one of thousands of other movies it could have been. Such a simple experiment but also very revealing .
That's a fun way to explore this!
This is something I’ve been grappling with. If you can, would you please put into words what it revealed to you? The movie I thought of was Snakes on a Plane. That’s just weird right? Especially considering I didn’t get to see that one. 🤷♀️
Thank you so much Josh! This was extremely valuable. It helped me to see more and more that "control is an illusion". Realizing this makes it so much easier to let go and just be. So freeing! It feels like a door has opened up. Much gratitude. ❤🙏 Alara
Let go 😉
@@So-Awake- Thank you! 😃
This was very clear for me. Intention is inherent and interwoven into experience. ❤🎉
Very succinct, yes!
Love your presence friend!
Great just yo hear you gently talk about all this 🍃
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Also, when one makes, or appears to make, a life changing decision - in this case, going back to university as a mature student, which involved a lot of paperwork and red tape, etc. - it can be difficult come to terms with non doership, even though there is also a sense that the situation is merely unfolding. In a way, the answer I want to hear is an affirmation of non doership, a categorical rebuttal of the notion that ‘I’ had anything to do with what is happening. This is my sticking point. Thanks, Josh.
You may find that this is where desire begins to obscure the moment. All desire is reflective, and oriented around pain and lacking. The discomfort with doing is heady and thought driven. Stillness here, even while in apparent action, stillness full engagement and awareness of the sensational sphere.
Certainty in your voice is a transmission in its self. A message that I once found so terrifying now nothing but peace. ❤
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An exceptionally helpful way of thinking about time , (“it’s moving from all directions into a convergent space we call the present moment.” )Wow!
Time, intention, free will , agency etc. Difficult subjects to grasp and discuss!
Looking very forward to the video on time!
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Thank you, wonderful analogies. Your video was not muddy at all, clear as it gets. The actual process of agency falling away is muddy with anxiety, pain, resistance, surrender, grace and beauty. ( my experience of current process) when I feel lost I re-orient myself to grace, unconditional love and gratitude that always has been and is.
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Very helpful, and going to listen again! Can be very helpful for many of us who got caught up in 'The Secret" and all of those false manifestation ideaologies. Thank you Josh!
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I was confused why i seemed to still have intention, not anymore, thank you.
when you spoke of the feather it became so clear in explaining my life last 6 years, however my question is , explaining yourself when family cant believe this career minded person is no longer present? look forward to time video😃
Want and desire are reflective. Thoughts... And explaining anything is also not required. Sit with the inquiry of requirement awhile. Is it required that they understand? Does their discomfort mean anything about this, here/now?
OMG you shared this experiential knowing w such presence and clarity. Will listen again. Grateful for your Being in the world ❤
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Yes. This had value! I now feel that I was/am always awake.
Thank you. I watch you so much, and since the strange flat world etc that I’m going through, you have felt like a guide and a friend.😉
Glad you're here!
Thank you for this wonderful and clear sharing Josh ❤️
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My desires are IT’s desires
Intention of looking at intention. Just intention :D
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This is so perfect. I wrote a paper about the suspension of personal agency in improvisational "flow" states, and am presenting it at a conference next week. I was just revising and looking at more research and decided to check out this channel to see if you had said anything about personal agency. You hit so many of these ideas, and described everything so clearly! Thank you.
Amazing
Wow! So appreciate this message .... again!
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Thanks you ❤
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thanks. something i need to be with more,though it does often seem things are just happening.
Know experience until there is no one experiencing
But now I'm definitely falling into chaos. This is video 74 of a series of videos that I am watching and saving with the aim of understanding the non-existence of free will and interpreting this fact as something less chaotic than my current conclusions. Because, as free will is not real and all our interpretations and emotions are the result of the chaotic interaction of neurons, then there are no feelings, reality is not real, but interpretation. Values do not matter, life does not matter.
Well, at least there is no guilt, but there is also no merit, and if there is no merit there is no reward. But if there is no reward, all the effort is useless, and if the emotions, which are all that remains of this mess, are also not real, then why live? It is a waste of unnecessary pain and sacrifice.
There are no values and feelings. They are just ''things'' happening, like a chemical chain reaction. I suffer from a type of depression that makes me incapable of having emotions, and I also have ADHD, and to overcome these problems I delved into the mysteries of the mind, and unfortunately I was forced to understand that my motivation is the shit of a molecule called dopamine, and that my emotions lost during depression are also other molecules and neural interactions that were corrupted in my brain. It was then that I noticed that there is no value, no meaning or purpose in anything, and that given my conditions I am the only one capable of understanding this, because since I have no emotions, I am not connected to anything, and I can be the most intellectually sincere and less hypocritical.
But that wasn't what I wanted, to be more exact, now that I understand everything, I haven't been to my job for days, soon my money will run out, I won't have a living, I'll start abandoning everything and now every night I sleep crying and with a pillow wrapped around my head trying in vain to shut my mind to free myself from this pain of knowing that I am just a chemical chain reaction and that it doesn't make any difference whether I fight or not. Honestly, it's the first time I've felt anything in years, and it was definite dread and agony. I don't think I can live anymore. I just wanted to bang my head against the wall until I forgot, or walk down the road and go so far and so far and... I don't know, disappear, die, fly. I don't know.
But I'm here, I'm here because I want to know, how. How are you okay with all this? How do you deal with this and not go down like I did? How can you love someone knowing that they only love you because circuits in their brain induce this cooperative behavior, and that the same applies to you? How can you try to move forward if it's the future that catches up with you and there's nothing you can do to change it or change yourself? Please if you can, I need help.
There's a lot of to over here... Go to the website and reach out. Let's chat.
Important video. I still can feel a resistance in my chest about "trusting life fully".
From the separated self it's so "obvious" that "life is a bitch" and you need walls and ideologies to give a sense of direction to avoid chaos and entropy.
And from the presence, the thing is that it's not false in a level, but at the same time there is this feeling of background "gravity" and direction life has already built in, that the ideologies that appear and dissappear are not arbitrary nor "are good because they are ours", but they do align more or less with that gravity.
Here relies the pitfalls of both multiculturalism and conservative ideologies. One says "there is no direction, any culture is as good as another", other says "there is no direction, we must fight to defend the one we happen to have". Both share the lack of felt trust in life's built in direction.
When aware of it, ideologies may evolve and become more and more refined manifestations in the service of life, but when they are hold by fear and tribalism and not trusting that life has a inherent sense of direction, they become resistances and sources of unnecessary suffering.
The precious take is that even suffering is built in into the system as an indicator and repair system from misalignment with the direction of life. We are "doomed" to fall into life's well, be it screaming or enjoying the fall of the rollercoaster.That universe's entropy is the waterfall force that generates the power that paradoxically allows life to explore the opposite direction of increasingly complex systems. As Josh says, both outward and inward directions happening at the same time, entropy and life evolving, ultimately cancelling each other from nothing to nothing.
Of course any intent to define that builtin direction of life with words will be flawed, but for now this seems to work for me: "increasing possibilies while minimizing suffering/effort/energy".
But as always the only trustable guide is resistance itself. Where am I resisting, where am I contracting to trying to pass through that "appetizing" needles eye, or preventing to pass through the "hellish" one, instead of identifying and enjoying the fall of the vortex that passes or not passes through there?
A very vivid insight! What else is there? What more? What less?
Hi Josh. If there appears to be an intention to wake up, does that imply an orientation to what is actually occurring?
I was going to say this talk was ‘thought provoking’, but ‘thought revoking’ seems more apt. Looking forward to the discussion on ‘Time’. Many thanks.
Simply notice the thoughts that surround the intention. Are they orienting around wanting/needing/desire? What is the feeling of the intention?
@@So-Awake- Thank you.
@@So-Awake- Does this mean that will is just a thought structure revolving around some phsical sensation?
Will seems to be entirely dependent on the reflective nature of thought. Experiment a little. Is every outcome dependent on thought? Can you guarantee an outcome? How do you know? Another thought...
Wanting is thinking :)
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@@So-Awake- thank you for sharing the breath friend
This was very beautifully and clearly said! Thank you!
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Very helpful and intuitive pointings! Thank you! Please keep this up! Look forward to video on the nature of time- very pertinent to the message in this video!🙏
In the midst of creation and destruction! 😉
Yes … Great value Josh … makes all sense, in a sense
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Hi Josh. I’m so glad I found you. I’m really enjoying and getting benefit from your videos.
I have some big questions so around doership.
First, it feels like Life is Doing all these things, for the sake of play/fun. You talk a lot about play.
Maybe we don’t wanna call it doing. Maybe it’s more accurate to call it appearing, or maybe Focusing on a particular set of circumstances that are not things but rather a flow of circumstances, flow of flows.
But whatever we call it, there is at least the appearance that is happening, that Life is enjoying as a playful endeavor.
When I, as the character, return into stillness, into what I originally am, then I am one with That.
That/Life is me - not the character but all of life, all of everything.
If I am That then every choice that the character is making is the choice made by Life.
I am That and hence I have agency.
Unless it’s more like Life spins the Top of Form not knowing the path and trajectory it will make. And from that initial random spin the Universe just keeps unfolding.
And I as the character am just one of many parts of the seamless whole universe.
Maybe that’s how it is and built into the spinning of that top are woven in many different intentions by Life/ God/That.
It just seems to me that Life is living through my character as well as all the other connected parts of reality.
And because Life is living through me it has some type of intention and agency. And if I connect to That in stillness then I can realize oneness with the original agency of Life.
(of course I am always connected to That as I am That. )
It seems to me that Life can live through different characters either thinking they have free will/agency or thinking that they don’t have agency. And Life desires to feel both experiences.
Lastly, the feather analogy for me is missing a component, and that is this :
In the example, the feather has no way to explain how it moved from one branch to another - so why would it take ownership of that movement . One moment it was sitting on a branch the next moment it was flying through the air, and then it was on a new branch.
I think if this happened to a person we would be wondering how the hell that happened. Lol.
Whereas, if I as a human walk from my bedroom to my living room, I can point to the mechanism of walking to explain how I have, as an agent, moved from one room to another.
I guess the reason why I am so resistant of “believing in non-doership “ is because I can’t imagine that Life wants to live without agency in this character.
It seems to me, that agency is the mechanism for play, or having fun
How else can one play if there is no agency?
Could it be that some characters have different interpretations of awakened reality? I guess I don’t want to lose the power of agency. That actually sounds depressing.
And I can see all the awakened beings like yourself seem quite happy.
I just wonder if language trips over itself in describing what is going on.
When you talk I see you talking. I know you don’t use the word I but still there is something happening there.
You are radiant and warm and funny and talking.
This is really hard for me to see.
Thank you for considering my sincere questions.
Kristin
This is a good question, and one probably best explored in more of a real time venue.
I would say it’s more like I have no intention.
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Hi Josh. Thanks for the video. You said, "Here's the best part: you're on the path. The intention is already to wake up; see if there's any sort of conceptualization around that intention because that is the truest intention-to realize that is intention in a nutshell. And see if there's any kind of agency that wants to orient itself around this naturally occurring and fundamental intention." I feel there is a conceptualization around the intention to wake up. Can you clarify the recommendation to "see if there is any kind of agency orienting itself around this intention."?
Is intention an action, or the immediately inevitable? Does it come from you, or is it already there?
Wow- this was an incredibly helpful video, Josh. I am relatively new to the “path” and am slowly experiencing deep understandings of the way life actually is outside of the minds perceptions. My mind does have a question about this- recently I have been drawn to shadow work and have been fussing over how I seem to naturally repress emotions, so it is very difficult to feel my feelings in the moment. It seems clear to me now that repressing emotions is not in my control, nor is the desire to transmute them… nor is the desire to type this message. This is all just happening. Does this seem accurate? Right now this realization feels quite mental rather than fundamental “knowing”, but it is all quite mysterious and amazing.
Edited to add: Maybe the flavor of my question is more in the realm of “doership” rather than “free will”.
I love your shirt BTW!
It can move from conceptual understanding to transcendent understanding, yet a key element seems to be letting it all go. Then letting that go. Then letting that go. And so on...
You can find the shirt here if you want one!: www.etsy.com/listing/1407257680/skeleton-ouroboros-unisex-t-shirt?click_key=681f456e3884a318c14ab2cdc57265fc0e84658f%3A1407257680&click_sum=7b6869ee&ref=shop_home_active_6&frs=1&sts=1
@@So-Awake- Ok, so I just need to let go of the cognitive understandings. Like Mooji says- “empty, empty, empty”.
I can definitely feel the ego trying to cling to these mental realizations and pat itself on the back for the “progress” it is making. It is just so subtle that I often don’t realize that is what is happening. Thank you, I will keep letting go.
Cool- thanks for the link!
It's okay to have a sense of progress at first. It seems to be part of the identity letting go and moving into the self making a better self. And yes, we let that go, just as we let go of the practices that measure our engagement to the path. Hold on loosely.... Then let go. 😉
Thank you!
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how do you experience sleep? what is your experience of sleep like? How many hours should we sleep for healthy body?
The body sleeps on its own. Four hours of sleep seems consistent, then 6 hours. Sleep as long as the body sleeps and point attention to thoughts when that feels interrupted. Pay attention to thoughts that say there 'should' be more sleep and so on...
Allow what is natural and effortless to unfold with everything.
@@So-Awake- Thank you for replying
Hi Josh. If there is no free-will, everything is pre-determined. Thus there cannot be karma. We don’t actually make own decisions, after all, we are the one conscious awareness. A number of scientist including Donald Hoffman, PhD. and Robert Sapolsky, PhD. tell us free-will doesn’t exist. Again, without which there could not be karma. Where this becomes confusing is that Adviata Vedanta teaches there is karma. Also, I have heard Rupert Spira claim in one video, there is pre-determination, and therefore no choice, no free-will, and no karma. Yet, in another of his videos he says there is free-will and there is karma. Are we having fun yet?
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Further- an interesting off-shoot/ discussion would be how to , or whether to “plan “ our lives and whether this is relevant on any level or even possible! What if I just switched off?🤷♂️
What if? That's a worthy experiment!
Could one say Everything moves thru the Now? It can sure seem that way.
Everything moves to the now... Everything in the now moves to the now. Potential now is still now.
Ok my good Sir. Here is a question. Yesterday I was sitting at work and I got a thought saying that I should go to a store and buy something for my garden. So Im kinda watching that thought and then after work I end up going to the store and buying the thing that I was thinking about buying a couple hours earlier. And this happens a lot. A thought will come about something and I end up doing it. So to me it seems like thoughts and actions sometimes are related and that they arent just mere reflections of "this" and just window dressing of something that has already happened. So if there is no free will how can this happen? Is it just coincidences and luck? Like a thought will come and then I ended up executing the command by accident? Any thoughts on this?
This is a really good question, and it can be tough to parse this out in a way that is easy to understand. Let's start with thought in general. Are thoughts yours? If so, can you control a thought? Give it a shot. Without inserting more thoughts let a thought arise and stop it. It seems impossible. So from here, we can ask did you choose, or did the thought influence?
The nature of thought is always reflective, even when contemplating a potential future event. It seems that the thought is referencing something that has been done, and projecting that into the future. Yet without that reflective memory, is there still a sense of agency? First hand, direct experience gives deep insight into 'no doership,' yet without that firsthand experience, it makes sense that skepticism arises. I get it...
It gets more complicated because free will leans into the mind's perception of how time functions. The mind sees time as a one dimensional line of past flowing into future, yet if we sit in stillness enough, we see that it doesn't quite work that way. Everything outside of the moment is simply potential, including the past... I know it's tricky...
Regardless, I encourage you to play with it a little and maybe you'll find that a belief in doership and free will lends to the illusion that such a thing exists. This is a great question, and please never ever take anyone else's word for it. Let direct experience be your guide. 🙏
Thank you bro. Yeah. Its truly weird and its seems like its impossible to find something solid. Sometimes it feels like thoughts just appear like leaves blowing in the wind. And it also seems like there is no connection between thoughts and doership/action. Like my mind would say go to the left but I actually go to the right (happens all the time, lol). Other times it feels like there is a clear/causal connection between thoughts and action. Like a thought will appear "I need to go to the store and buy milk" and then I will actually go to the store and buy milk. Its like "it is" and "is not" at the same time". Anyways:) Warm regards all the way from Norway and thank you so much for your reply!
Since I was like 13 I realized free will doesn't exist. I don't think it's awakening though, just due to logical deduction unfortunately. Doesn't make the shit things in life any less easier to deal with.
Insights don't equal awakening, yet they do seem to point toward liberation.
You used the word Will a number of times was that your intention?no disrespect intended.😮❤
The nature of everything is paradox. It cannot be avoided. 😉
@@So-Awake- And so it will be.
I can exist for existences sake with no need for intention. You seem to claim we cannot.
Existing for existence's sake is intention 😉
Wow! Thank you! It's so helpful!!! Much love! 🤍💚
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