It seems to me one of the most important characteristics of sentience is free will. As human beings, we all have the ability to choose.
Or do we?
We seem to find restraints everywhere we look. We are bound by laws, restrictions, obligations, duties, policies, responsibilities, handicaps, social mores, habits, rules, genetics, etc. How much free will do we actually have when we’re surrounded by limitations?
Do we, as human beings, have unlimited choice, in all things, in all areas of our lives? What about those times or those situations where there seems to be no choice, or the choices are extremely limited, or the best choice seems to be the lesser of two evils? Where’s the free will then?
History is full of examples of real people who have transcended their lot – people who overcame the constraints of race, sex, poverty, lack of formal education, politics, religious restrictions, caste, or physical limitations. What about them? Did they choose or were they destined to have those limitations in the first place? Did they choose or were they destined to overcome them?
Free Will and Personal Power
Consider the strong correlation between free will and personal power. The more powerless you feel, the fewer options you recognize. Conversely, the greater you grow in your personal power, the more options appear before you. My model – The Diamond of Mastery – illustrates the relationship between personal power and possibilities. At the lowest point of the diamond, power is at its lowest and nothing seems possible. At the highest point, power is at its highest, yet it’s as narrow in scope as the bottom segment of the diamond.
Does this mean the range of possibilities is no wider at the top than at the bottom? Well, yes.
Does this also mean free will also narrows? Yes, but for very different reasons.
Maximum Free Will
Consider the nature of observer mode, which cuts a wide swath across the middle of the diamond. observer mode is neutral – without judgment, without criticism, without censure, without approval or disapproval, free of either condemnation or praise. From a neutral perspective, everything is equal: the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the hard and the easy, the true and the false, the tall and the short, the thick and the thin – plus everything in between. The best brainstorming, the best questions, the best critical thinking, and the widest range of possibilities come from this place of neutrality. The more neutral you are the better you can weigh the pros and cons. Neutrality give you that broadest, highest, deepest, clearest view of any situation. You can see what you do want; you can see what you don’t want, and you will have a pretty strong idea of why, of all possible options, what you choose will be true for you. From this fish-eye, wide-angle 360-degree vantage point, you have the absolute highest level of free will.
Narrowing the Scope
From this center band of neutrality, the diamond narrows in both directions. Going down into interpreter mode, you have fewer options because you distance yourself from your personal power. In a sense, you forfeit power – which is a choice in itself. Going up into partner mode, you have fewer possibilities because you eliminate the ones you don’t want and concentrate your personal power on the options you’re still willing to consider.
Let’s take a closer look at this idea of forfeiting power or concentrating it.
Picture this. Your town (or city) has a municipal water supply, stored in tanks in anticipation of need. When you want a glass of water, you turn a tap, and water comes to you from the supply. If a pipe breaks somewhere between the tank and your house (or a drip in your house) water leaks (or flows) out and ends up as wastewater without having been put to any good use. Perhaps all available personal power is stored in a big cosmic tank somewhere. Certainly, all you could ever want is available to you as easily as turning on a water tap.
interpreter mode is like living with a leaky tap. Drip, drip, drip. Through your thoughts, emotion, or actions, you let your power leak away. Except it doesn’t end up in some civilized “wastewater removal system.” It puddles around you, muddying the ground you stand on, creating a mire of difficulty. If left unattended long enough, you end up struggling in a quicksand of limited possibilities. Your free will gets stuck in the mud.
Conversely, partner mode is like having access to a power hose. One flick of the tap and power gushes out in a steady stream. You point that power at something you want, and it concentrates from possible to probable. Your free will becomes more narrowly focused.
Losing and Gaining
Toward the tips of the diamond – in either direction – your possibilities narrow even more.
Going down, you hit victim mode, where it feels as if you have little or no choice. Because you have assumed the role of Victim (in the story of your life), it’s extremely difficult to acknowledge the past choices that brought you to this point. But all along the way you have been forfeiting power, relinquishing responsibility, choosing by refusing to choose, and perhaps finding advantage as well as pain in your helplessness.
At the upper tip of the diamond, you access your personal power at astonishing levels and create with seemingly little effort. However, your free will has concentrated by previous choices into a laser-like point. The range of choices available in creator mode may be as narrow as in victim mode, but that’s the only similarity between self-mastery and self-deprivation.
Somewhere in observer mode, you chose to go in a particular direction. Perhaps you decided to become a writer, or major in science, or go to law school, or move to Ghana, or join a nudist colony. In making that one choice, you discarded a whole slew of other choices. You became discerning, shifted out of neutral, sharpened your focus – and “limited” the extend of your free will. Of course, you retain the power to go back to neutral at any time.
Mastering Free Will
Free will is one of the most important aspects of growth. It’s the well-spring of purpose, it expands personal power, it sharpens the energies of manifestation, it channels self-mastery. Free will is a gift.
Free will is also one of the most important obligations of sentience, because only through thinking and choosing, only through free will, can we live in love and joy and peace.
Whatever Mode of Mastery we operate from on any given day, we always have the choice to live today to the best of our ability. Today we can choose frustration over anger, choose flexibility over frustration, choose cooperation over flexibility, choose enthusiasm over cooperation. (Choose any progression that describes your own situation.)
Today is the only point of choice available to us. The gift of yesterday’s choices brought us to today’s choices. What gift do you want today’s choices to present to you tomorrow? If you feel constrained, bound, limited, or struggling – move into observer mode energy and give yourself expansion, assurance, or calm tomorrow.
observer mode is amazingly freeing, wonderfully open, restfully secure. But after a while it may begin to feel unfocused, detached, uncommitted, too loose, too free. Clearly, you’re ready to master partner mode.
Just as partner mode is an expansion of personal power, it’s also a concentration of possibility. Narrow your options. Choose what you do want, and form your partnerships with those possibilities. Toss the options you don’t want out of your basket of possibilities.
Yes, by concentrating your free will you constrain it, but you’ve step into a realm of greater personal power.
Tags: Choice, emotional mastery, Free will, personal power
Thanks, Kathy, I needed just this today.