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Charles Day
www.desmoinesmeditation.com
It's precisely this issue of free will that hangs up most everyone, because
giving up free will means giving up the illusion of an independent,
autonomous, controlling self or ego that depends upon its existence.
These perceived differences result from different causes and conditions for
different individuals, differing genetics, parenting, conditioning, and learning
experiences. Both perceptions, whether as master of one’s ship or as a
victim, are real. They are produced by different causes and conditions that
lead to the general sense of having either a lot of or very little free will or
control over one's destiny.
For practical purposes it's good and even advisable in living in a world
governed by conventional thinking to act "as if" free will exists, even while
realizing that it doesn't. Ironically, transcending the experience of having
free will and realizing that our sense of self or ego is simply a continuously
changing composite of body, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and
consciousness, leads to spontaneously and un"self"ishly becoming more
compassionately responsible for ourselves, others, and the universe.
All our experiences, including the separation of self and other, result from
categorizing, creating boundaries, and dividing the unified whole or
oneness into the multiple dualistic appearances that constitute what we
perceive as our individual physical and mental reality. Our physiological
and neurological limitations prevent us from perceiving and experiencing
the subatomic molecular interconnections and interactions between our
body, the air, and the objects around us. We mistakenly take as real the
illusion or appearances that we created in order to function practically in an
apparent dualistic universe. The Hindu Vedic scriptures are referring to this
misperception when they state that “What is real is unreal, and what is
unreal is real.” Our perceived reality of independent and separate objects
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is unreal, while the interdependent, unified whole that we fail to perceive is
what is real.
Eckhart Tolle in his book, The Power of Now, calls the ego a useful
conceptual myth or “operating principle” that enables us to deal with the
perceived duality that constitutes our everyday experiences.