Ruminations on Reality: Free Will
The Aether, Time, Consciousness, Intelligence, Matter and Energy
Part X of a multi-part discussion
The ideas in this article are dependent upon concepts which were introduced in Part I, The Aether; Part II, The Three Faces of Time; Part III, Consciousness; Part IV, Intelligence; Part V, Life; Part VI, Mathematics; Part VII, Matter, Part VIII, Electromagnetism in the Matrix and Part IX, Infinity (aka Space).
Free Will
This hypothesis explicitly excludes a third-party divine being acting willfully upon reality, and this prohibition extends to the Aether itself. While boasting of the greatest consciousness possible, it is not an active actor in the way of a deity. It does not dictate the specific terms of our existence — rather, it provides the space, time and opportunity for us to create our own destiny.
Nor are we in such a straitjacket in term of operating within our environment that we are without choice in our ‘fate’. Within the strictures of our environment, our consensus reality and the capabilities of our physical organism we have the freedom to exercise our will as we wish.
An indication of this freedom lies in our ability to change our environment—we have the ability to pick up and move from one culture to another. This might be as significant as relocation to a different county or as small as changing jobs. It may even be as simple as adopting a new outlook on life and seeing one’s current situation through new eyes, thereby changing the way one reacts to the events of life.
While we may not be able to single-handedly change consensus reality, changing our own situation within the whole does prove a degree of free will.
Consensus reality — the reality we were born into — is the reality that was created and agreed upon by the collective consciousness of all of our predecessors. It is the reality that we learned and adopted as children, thereby strengthening and continuing this reality. It includes all human cultures, traditions, systems, inventions, methods, organizations and institutions. Anything that humans have created, from the material to the philosophical or religious, all are a part of our consensus reality.
As individuals it is very difficult to effect change on the consensus reality — the inertia of which is massive and is cemented too strongly within the human psyche. In this regard the individual might be considered nearly impotent.
But the power that we do have is prodigious — this is the power to change ourselves. By changing ourselves, we will necessarily change the way those around us react to us. In some cases this will cause discomfort or anger and those people will fall away from you. In other cases, you become a model that others will attempt to emulate, making similar changes in themselves and thereby influencing those around them.
If we are able to learn the right lessons ourselves, make the right changes and teach those lessons to others, the spread might be exponential. Therein lies our individual power—and it is tremendous.
Here ends Part X of my Ruminations. Part XI, Manifestation, will be released shortly.
