Free Will

Choice D: None of the Above

Yes, we have free will. Sort of.

But it isn't about the association it has with the values of the A, B, C, D multiple choice options we believe ourselves to have. It's more along the lines of choice "D", none of the above.

We walk through existence with the ability to make at least one choice. That much is true. But not all choices are created equal. And the freedom we think we're exercising? It's mostly an illusion carefully designed to keep us exactly where we are if you are walking through life unaware.

What Is Free Will?

Ask most people what free will is and they'll describe it as an opportunity to make a decision at any given moment. The process of choosing from a fork in the road or an active selection between any of several options. Turn left or turn right. Take the job or don't. Say yes or say no. Go, stay, try, don't, be happy, be angry, be.

But what we call free will from a human point of view can be summed up as an intellectual exercise in defining, judging, and weighing preferred outcomes based on our human desires. We measure the options against what we want, what we fear, what we think will make us happy or successful or safe. We calculate. We compare. We choose.

And we believe this to be freedom.

The Life Review: What I Was Shown

During my life review on the other side, free will was shown to me as something very different from what we are taught here in material existence. Instead of the multiple choice scenario of A, B, C, D in any given circumstance, we really only have a single choice. That choice is based on whether you choose to be "awake" or "asleep" to what you really are and why you are living out your incarnation. It is not the freedom to pick between multiple choices.

Every choice you think you're making stems from this singular choice of "awake" vs "asleep".

If you make a choice based on an awakened state, all choices, situations, and circumstances will roll out to reflect that singular choice. If you make a choice based on the intellect and its desire for outcome, then the choices you believe you make, situations, and circumstances will reflect that choice.

Free will as a choice was never about choosing the "good" or "bad" choice, it is about the choice between "awake" or "asleep". Every other choice is programmed into the illusion of existence.

In this sense making the "right" decision is not always "right" as we judge it through human understanding. And making the "wrong" decision is not always "wrong." In fact these qualifiers could be changed to decisions based on the heart vs from or for the intellect and ego.

For example, hurting somebody by firing them, or ending a relationship could be judged as not being "good" on our human scales. But that choice made from the heart, is neither good nor bad, but aware, awake, and with the understanding that what is meant to happen will.

We are tied to each other in ways the intellect cannot comprehend. Our decisions are never just for us, they're for the whole, whether we realize it or not. Every choice ripples outward, touching lives we'll never see, creating circumstances we'll never trace back to their origin. A choice which resulted in the "mistake" you made ten years ago might have been exactly what someone else needed to encounter to learn what they came here to learn.

The framework of right and wrong, good and bad choices, it's too small. Too human. Too limited to capture what's actually happening when we choose. And it isn't what I experienced on the other side.

Often we use good and bad to qualify choices based on judgement. And I was someone who was not judged in death, regardless of what I had committed here during my existence. Ironically, when by human standards, you would say I was someone who should have been judged. I was not only not judged, but unconditionally loved. However, I was made very much aware of the difference between decisions made from an awakened state vs the ignorant and asleep state. I was given the gift of being able to feel what the difference between those choices are through experiencing the resulting suffering within others from their perspective.

This incarnation is a mirror. What you choose internally is what gets reflected externally. If you choose the awakened state, reality bends to reflect that choice, not through magic or manifestation, but because choosing to be awake IS the transcendence of reality itself. If you choose to remain asleep, caught in the illusion of A, B, C, D, your reality will continue building itself around your desires, your fears, your endless efforting.

Everything in your existence reflects this single choice, made over and over again in the "Right Now".

Why the Illusion Exists

Your free will, as you believe it to be, is what feeds your version of reality. And everybody else's. Every time you engage with the illusion of choice, weighing options, calculating outcomes, trying to pick the "best" path, you're generating the fuel that keeps your reality running. You're doing. You're efforting. You're feeding the machine.

The belief that you're making meaningful choices between distinct options keeps you locked in the game. It keeps you thinking there's a puzzle to solve, a correct path to find, a way to win. And as long as you're thinking that, you're trapped in the very framework you're trying to navigate.

Reality doesn't care which option you choose.

It cares that you believe you're choosing.

The Intellect vs. The Heart

Your intellect will always search for comfort. Your choices, whether you realize it or not, have always reflected this drive.

The intellect wants safety. It wants predictability. It wants to know the outcome before committing. It wants to choose the path that will hurt the least, cost the least, risk the least. And so it calculates endlessly, measuring every option against an imagined future where you remain comfortable and in control.

This is how you know when you're choosing from the intellect: There's analysis. There's a weighing of pros and cons. There's fear of making the "wrong" choice. There's a need to know the outcome before you commit. The intellect needs certainty, and when it can't find it, it creates anxiety.

Choosing from the intellect feels like strategy. Like trying to outthink reality.

But the heart operates differently.

Think of drawing a heart. You start at the bottom, at the point. As you draw upward, you travel away from center, sometimes far to the right, sometimes far to the left. The line moves outward, creating distance, creating what looks like separation.

But no matter how far from center you travel, the line always curves back. It always returns to center. The heart, by its very design, brings you home. It is your GPS.

This is how real choice works. You can move far from center, you can make what looks like a terrible decision, a devastating mistake, a complete wrong turn, but if you're awake, if you're choosing from the heart rather than the intellect's need for comfort, you will always return to center.

The path itself is the teaching. The wandering is the point.

Choosing from the heart doesn't feel like effort. It feels like recognition. Like “Knowing” without needing to know why. There's no calculation, no weighing of outcomes, no fear of getting it wrong. There's just clarity. A sense of direction that exists beneath thought.

The heart doesn't need to understand. It simply knows.

Here's what makes this difficult: the heart will often lead you toward choices the intellect finds terrifying. Ending a relationship that looks perfect on paper. Leaving a job that provides security. Walking away from what everyone expects. The intellect screams. But the heart remains calm, certain, unmoved by the noise.

Learning to recognize which you're choosing from, intellect or heart, asleep or awake, is the work of transcendence. Not the choices themselves, but the awareness of what's driving them.

Free Will for the Awakened

When you consistently choose from the awakened heart, something shifts. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But undeniably.

The constant anxiety about making the "right" choice begins to fade. Not because you've figured everything out, but because you've stopped believing the choices are what matter. You recognize you're making the same singular choice over and over again regardless of circumstance, regardless of endless options to choose from. You make the free will choice to be awake, and the specific circumstances become less important.

Synchronicities increase. Not because you're manifesting or attracting, but because you're no longer forcing reality into your preferred shape. You're flowing with what is, and what is begins to flow with you.

Your relationship with failure shifts. What once felt like evidence of your inadequacy becomes something that serves rather than condemns.

The opinions of others lose their grip. Not because you've become callous or disconnected, but because you're no longer seeking validation from outside yourself. The heart knows. That's enough.

And perhaps most significantly: you stop seeking. Not because you've found all the answers, but because you realize the seeking was the trap. You're already free. You always have been. You were just choosing to believe otherwise.

This is what free will from the awakened state looks like. Not perfect. Not problem-free. But free.

The Myth of Mistakes

You've truly never made a mistake in your life.

You cannot make a mistake. You can only be unaware.

And because you are unaware, you will experience the consequences of what looks like a mistake. You'll feel the pain, the regret, the "if only I had chosen differently." You'll carry it as evidence of your failure, your poor judgment, your weakness.

But the "mistake" serves you. It serves everyone who comes into contact with it.

The "bad" decision that led you to lose an opportunity taught you something about attachment, about worth, about what you're made of. The relationship that ended in heartbreak revealed patterns you needed to see, wounds you needed to feel, truths you needed to face. The job you didn't get redirected you to the path you were actually meant to walk.

You were unaware when you made the choice. That's all. And the experience that followed was designed perfectly, precisely, to bring you into awareness if you can see it.

There are no mistakes. Only lessons, opportunities for you and all, disguised as what you would judge as failures.

Expensive Will vs. Free Will

Can you do whatever you want? Sure.

You can ignore everything I've just said. You can pop champagne corks until you drop. You can chase every desire, indulge every impulse, follow every whim the intellect presents as a "choice."

But then "free will" becomes "expensive will."

Because you will return. You will come back to the same lessons, the same patterns, the same moments of reckoning. Maybe not in this lifetime. Maybe not in a way you recognize. But reality is persistent. And the teaching you avoided will be waiting for you, dressed in different clothes, wearing a different face, but carrying the same essential truth you refused to see.

You can run the bill up as high as you want. But eventually, you pay.

Love vs. Judgment

Here's the truth beneath all of this: the choice between love and judgment is the same choice you're making between awake and asleep, between heart and intellect.

To love yourself is to recognize you are already whole, already complete, already free. This is the choice of the awakened heart.

To judge yourself, believing your choices and "mistakes" prove you're broken, incomplete, not enough, is to believe you need to fix, improve, or become something other than what you are before you can be free. This is the choice of the sleeping intellect.

Which are you choosing, right now, in this moment?

Not in some abstract future when you've finally "figured it out." Not after you've made the "right" decisions and achieved the "right" outcomes. Right now. In this breath. In this awareness.

Are you choosing love or judgment?

Conclusion: The Observational State

Free will is not what you think it is.

It's not an active choice made in the moment between A, B, C, or D. It's not a decision tree where you calculate the best outcome and select your path.

Free will is an observational state.

It's the awareness, in each moment, of whether you're choosing to be awake or asleep. Whether you're "Transcending Reality" or feeding it. Whether you're operating from the intellect's need for comfort or the heart's return to center.

If you think free will is an active choice between options, if you believe you're exercising freedom by picking A over B, you are caught in reality, not transcending it. You're doing exactly what the framework needs you to do: believing you have power while remaining perfectly, invisibly trapped.

The real choice, the only choice that matters, is this: Will you recognize the illusion? Will you stop feeding it? Will you choose, over and over again in the Right Now, to simply be awake?

That's freedom.

Not choice A, B, or C.

Choice D: None of the above.

Just awareness. Just presence. Awakened.

Choose.