Fate, Free Will, and Freedom

Daniel Watts

I was asked a question about Freedom this weekend. And why I can support and hold views from seemingly opposing “sides”.

I love generative conversations, and what can arise inside of them. I don’t think I’ve ever really verbalized this.

Divorced from any ideology. Or right left polarity. Because that doesn’t factor in for me…. this was my answer:

“It is observable that we live in a paradigm that consistently serves up duality to demonstrate the nature of reality.

The purpose of incarnation is to engage with what arises inside the tension of these dualities. To engage with what is real. To love what is true.

One of the fundamental dualities we engage with are the forces of fate and free will. (There are so many, but let’s just look at these two)

Free will is an essential substance in soul evolution. The individual soul must be able to freely respond to the forces of fate. It is from this friction, this tension, we resolve past karma, that our soul ripens, it’s how we are matured. It is what creates the spiral.

If we live in an environment that removes free will across the social strata, that dictates a predetermined set of responses to social engagement, we remove opportunities for soul growth. And generation after generation degrades. Their growth is stunted. Arrested.

If our ability work out complex human questions is co-opted, and we are provided pre-approved answers. If we all assimilate to the same beliefs from outside pressure. If we impose strict societal consequences for stepping outside of the bounds of the approved ethical code. (Which is largely an set of reality inversions to begin with.)

Things will continue to become more and more confused. More and more distorted. We will have choked off our ability to evolve.

Right now, on both sides of the equation there are spaces in our society where one cannot color outside the lines without enduring ritual public humiliation from the group in which the person feels belonging.

It’s an attempt at homogenization. Nothing can grow and flourish in a homogenized environment. We need diversity.

Freedom is worth fighting for because it is the ability to apply free will to the forces of fate that allows us to get off the wheel of Karma. That allows us to answer our own complex questions around values, morals, desires, and ethics.

If our ability to choose is choked off, it retards our growth. It leaves the entire collective adolescent and immature.

When one zooms out, they can see the bigger game at play. The lack of evolutionary tension in that game. And honestly. It isn’t pretty.

If that succeeds, the entire matrix inversion will be complete. We are already experiencing rapid devolution.

Where truth is mired in illusion. Not mired in variety.

We just freed ourselves from the chains of this phenomenon. And yet there are areas we are complicit again in pigeon holing people into shockingly few pre-approved archetypes. Once our entire society is “labeled”, we’ve lost.

Utilitarianism can be a cancer when it is centered around extreme safety consciousness. Having an ideology of “never ever experiencing or causing harm”. Which pops up in different flavors on both sides of the spectrum. (I’m not for causing harm, I’m saying the ideology is flawed)

We need to be able to take some risks. We need space engage consequences, (the effect of our “cause”) and take responsibility for our free choices.

This is the spiral . The sacred third that springs up from the center point of grappling with fate & free will.

If we don’t preserve our freedom, what is point? Why have we incarnated? We will become slaves to a bigger agenda”