Читать книгу The Philosphy of Peace - Gino Aliji - Страница 9

We all have free will,

Every choice in our lives,

Nothing can force us.

The Law of Free Will is one of those universal principles which is not easily spotted in our daily lives. Yet, it is always there, just like all the other principles upon which our whole universe is based. In fact, it can be best seen by looking at all the situations in our lives where we don’t seem to have any choice.

Nowadays, there are people who feel like they have no choice in how to live their lives anymore. They have responsibilities, need to take care of children or elder parents, take care of the household, spend time with friends and go to work. Hobbies or other activities that are liked are almost always a marginal part of people’s lives and only get a few hours a week of dedication, if at all.

All this might make it seem like there is no choice but to keep running inside the hamster wheel we call our daily lives, but that is actually not true. If we only decide to look at our lives more closely, we can find that we do in fact have a variety of choices to pick from on a daily basis. For instance, we can choose whether to get out of bed in the morning, brush our teeth, have breakfast, what clothes to wear and so on and so forth. If we think about this more closely, we even have full control over our decision-making when it comes to making choices involving more serious consequences. We can choose whether to do harm to another being or not, we can choose whether to steal items from a store or not, and we can choose to take on a dangerous job or not.

As it turns out, we do actually have a wide variety of choice that we can make on a daily basis in our lives. The thing is that most of the time we stick with a certain set of choices because the consequences of the opposite choices keep us in check. For example, we don’t kill another human being cutting us off in traffic because we know that this will probably mean having to serve a prison sentence – or in some countries even the death penalty. Also, we don’t take goods from a store without paying for them because this will probably have negative consequences, too.

So, in truth, we have an almost infinite amount of choices available to us at any given moment but we only consciously select a few of them, preferably the ones leading to consequences of a positive nature. The rest of the choices just remain in what may be called a state of potentiality. Those unselected choices are always there as a potential which might be made into a reality, but often isn’t because of the types of consequences that come with them. Next time you have a negative encounter with a colleague or friend, just observe the many different ways your mind then starts conjuring up ways of hurting them back, taking revenge or giving them a taste of their own medicine. All those choices of taking action remain a potentiality of the mind until they are actively selected and turned into reality.

Making choices is closely related to the Law of Free Will because free will or the freedom of will is expressed through the selection of choices. This universal principle is also called the Law of Free Will because, technically, we have absolute freedom in making our choices. We have the freedom to kill, to steal, to hurt, to destroy, but most of us generally tend to limit our set of choices based on certain moral values and societal rules put in place so that the selection of choices with negative consequences are kept at a minimum.

There are some people who would argue that there is always the middle way, the way of passivity or taking no action. However, there is never a middle way when it comes to taking choices, this is an illusion. Choices are always binary in nature, meaning you either make a choice or do not make it. Either you kill or you don’t, either you love or you don’t, and so forth. When taking the middle way or the way of no action, then you are actually choosing not to act, as opposed to taking action. There is never a point in time in our three-dimensional existence when we do not make choices and take decisions. Even when we choose to do apparently nothing, then we have chosen the passivity, or the way of no action, which in itself is still an activity.

And this is how we exercise our free will day in day out by making choice after choice, taking decision after decision. However, there is a much more important point to make here. While we have the mental faculty to assess and judge our own choices based on moral values, the Law of Free Will as a principle does not care about what choices we make and what the consequences will be. It just establishes the freedom for all conscious lifeforms to make an almost infinite number of choices. This is one of the reasons why things like wars and weapons of mass destruction are not only possible but also a reality here on Earth. Because the universal Law of Free Will allows for it to happen. It was a choice or a set of choices that were taken by human beings of their own free will. And the consequences that come with the actions resulting from those choices need to be recognized and accepted because the consequences will always become a reality together with the actions. They practically go hand in hand, if you will.

What this means for us is that we need to become more aware of the choices we make in our lives and the consequences that come with those choices. Do we still want war, poverty and the pollution of our planet be part of our lives? Do we still want conflict and negativity to be part of the reality we live in? If not, then we actively and consciously need to make the right choices in order to change that.

Through our free will, we have the power to change the circumstances of our reality by taking choices that come with consequences which support a peaceful and loving world. For each and every one of us can make the choice weather to support war efforts of various nations or the way we react toward an unfriendly fellow human being. Since we make new choices every day, it is never too late to choose to make a change. Granted, some types of change take longer to manifest in our reality than others, especially turning this world into a place filled with love and peace, but once the choice has been made and the corresponding action had been taken, the consequences of those actions will become a reality eventually.

This is the way of the Law of Free Will and this is also our chance to take our own decision-making into our own hands and effect a positive change both in our lives and on this beautiful blue planet we call our home.