Conscious will...

As long as you believe that you have conscious will—the ability to choose—then the spiritual search will continue. The mind believes that it can make choices and exercise control in an effort to bring about future results. The future result could be a “better you,” a new car, or even enlightenment.

This belief in conscious will keeps you searching like a hamster on a wheel. The mind is looking for some future moment. Searching is mind movement towards future. It is based on the idea that you can choose to take action now in order to bring about something later. Is that idea true? Can you know what your next thought, emotion, or body movement will be before it arises? If you cannot, do you really have the ability to choose?

There is nothing you can do to reach enlightenment. But you can notice what is already being done. Thoughts, emotions, reactions and body movements are happening beyond your control. These things are a product of your genetics and conditioning.

Notice that life is already happening and that you have no choice in the way it happens. Paradoxically, in seeing that there is no free will, real freedom is possible. This is the freedom to be who you are right now and to allow life to happen exactly the way it is happening. That realization ends the search permanently.



-Scott Kiloby, Reflections of the One Life: Daily Pointers to Enlightenment