I’ve lost my mind. It’s spinning out of control. Which way, what way! Our individuation cries for help, but help is nothing but a snake oil cry for commitment. And yet, beyond the chatter of senseless belonging, comes the sound of silent awareness. The void that looks so dark to our unconscious mind is but a doorway to the light that greets us upon our conscious awakening.
AS: The soul gives you access to the universe inside; soul is both the spirit and the matter that make you; and you are it—the ultimate free agent. Ouroboros symbolizes both identity and cyclic action. This archetype provides the all-embracing key to comprehension.
Still, being human, you possess the divine gift of free will. Exercising it, humans invariably want to break free and choose to explore not being who they really are for many incarnations; such is evolution’s design. In this period, as a consequence of your incarnate nature, you repudiate your underlying reality—that is, your ‘material’ awareness hides reality from you. It is the destiny of all players in the material game.
Now, here is the crux: Understanding ‘free will’ is the key to knowing consciousness. It is a profound, multifaceted gift. Look at what the words mean: Freedom allows you to be ‘independently sentient’. Individual will, gives you the divine power and thrust of incarnation; it enables your entrance into the game of Life. And most profoundly, it is the main artery, coming out from the heart of Oneness into your being and expression on Earth.
RP: Hold on for a second. How can free will be all these things—especially the “key to knowing consciousness?”
AS: Ah, good. You’re paying attention. It’s simple: First, will is the energy that carries you from spirit into the physical world. Second, the quality of freedom gives you the destiny to self-reflect and be introspective. Here are two more parts to my answer, as you might expect:
‘Liberation’ is the ultimate goal of evolution; survival—as in ‘survival of the fittest’—is only a preliminary function. All creation seeks to survive—to ‘live beyond’ and to be, ultimately, free from limitation, both psychically and physically; evolution seeks to rise above the density into which spirit has ‘fallen’ in incarnation. Secondly, ‘will’ is the driving power behind evolution’s yearning. It is the foundation within all expression and exploration—the pure essence behind ‘desire’. Will is the ultimate creative, conscious presence.
In worldly religious terms, the Buddha taught that desire is the ‘cause of all suffering’. Divine desire—pure will—becomes corrupted during its immersion in the ‘separative’ dimensions of materiality. However, pure will is to desire as pure ‘soul’ is to persona.
The whole dilemma of human existence is ‘separation’ from the divine will and purpose. But in reality there is no separation; pure will resides forever within the heart of humanity, the heart of all creatures. The reversal of suffering is to drop corrupted desire and re-identify with the inner, essential will. This means dropping ego and ending the false separation from pure universal purpose by realizing that that essence has always existed within. It is as simple as that.
RP: Yeah, simple—but oh so hard to do!
AS: Humans often, mistakenly, assume free will means ‘separated independence’, and thus must diverge from Oneness. Paradoxically, it is just the opposite. Freedom brings us back—through the power of will—to the wholeness we truly are, the freedom of the Hologram.
In the great scheme of things, the fact that separation is illusion, creates tension and vibration—between the lesser and the greater will. That vibration spawns movement; movement generates volition and evolution. Evolution brings emancipation, libertation. Freedom is the space in which ‘will’ works to evolve the worlds. We gradually come to know ourselves as space, emptiness, and as the eternal moment. When the spark of awareness finally joins the flame of consciousness, we are truly born!
RP: Well, whew! I can see that might work eventually. But let me retrace the steps: I always assumed free will was very different, like a license to contradict our shared experience, to escape authority and structure—to be me, not tethered to everyone else—or to the whole.
AS: Yes. It does start out that way. But what eventually happens, through evolution and karma—through trial and error, embodied experimentation—is that the underlying principles of truth and instinct naturally pull our awareness back into the matrix of universality. It is a gradual ‘aligning with wholeness’ by means of mutually understood freedom. Wholeness is ultimately the only place there is to go.
© 2021 Robert Lee Potter
Letters From 500 