Freedom as the Journey, Not the Destination

Now that we’ve established that free will is an illusion, it follows that freedom is less binary and more a process. It breathes. There's an opening and then a constraint.

In a way it's analogous to what's happening at the quantum level. Each choice we make has an impact on cause and effect, right? Each choice you make becomes a cause, has an effect, and then it also opens up new choices that weren't available before. 

So there's an opening and a closing. An opening and a closing. 

And in this way our freedom breathes from options and choices to constraints. Options to constraints. 

We can start to see this really play out in our lives. For instance, you might decide one day that you’d like to move to a new city. Suddenly all kinds of options open.

Then you choose a place. Now options are constrained. 

You’re adapting to your new surroundings and choosing a new market, new dry cleaner, new school, etc. The options open again and they narrow and they open and they narrow and they open and they narrow.

And I think that is the right approach to thinking about a relationship with cause and effect. In a sense, freedom starts to wave through us, move through us, with times of more openings and closings as we relate to cause and effect in our life.

Being governed by the constraint of cause and effect allows for a deeper connection with the whole universe. One cannot be separate and at the effect of causality. 

This is the moment of liberation that's available to each of us in respect to our relationship with our own agency. It is the ego that wishes to reside in the notion of complete agency. How could you be connected to anything or anyone if you had full agency?

Think about it. If you could do whatever you wanted, where would you be connected to anything or anyone? Because you would exist outside of the realm of cause and effect.

If nothing you did had cause or effect, then there could be no connection to anything or anyone. We want to be part of cause and effect. 

Because that is connection with everyone and everything in the whole universe.

Causality is the connective tissue of all things. 

And because of that, because of our interwoven nature with cause and effect, what we do actually matters.

If we could do whatever we wanted outside of the realm of cause and effect, then why would it matter what we did? But it does have an effect, doesn't it? So, now you know that every choice you make – everything you actually do – ripples out, dominoes out.

It matters. 

And our job, living day to day, moment to moment, is to bring as much awareness as we can, to bring as much choice as we can, to grow, to evolve. That's the work: balancing our freedom and conscious constraints in all areas. 

Embracing this determinism, embracing this causality, part of the chain of cause and effect from the Big Bang till now. 

It's an incredible birthright; one that is not limiting but liberating. And that's my contention. Let us continue to unhide the hidden. 

Thank you for indulging me in our inquiry into freedom. I’d love to hear some of your thoughts! Did this conversation open up anything for you?