FreeWill
Do We Have Free Will?
Someone sent us an article wanting to know our take on the subject of free will.
michael read the article and added commentaries and took callers.
This developed into several radio shows of discussions (links below).
The Los Angeles Times’ article, in the Science and Medicine section, dated October 17, 2023, titled ‘Stanford scientist, after decades of study, concludes: We don’t have free will.’ Robert Sapolsky is the Stanford neurobiologist and the author of the book “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.”
Friday, October 20, 2023 MindShifters Radio MP3 excerpt (DoWeHaveFreeWill Part 1). Sapolsky is ‘trying to figure it out’ If we don’t access our higher Source then the faculty of Choice is not there and what is left is simply decisions from carbon based memory (CBM), running stories and programs from the past. In that sense, Sapolsky is right. But we do have choice. Sapolsky claims himself as a liberal atheist, thus he is rejecting the availability of his own higher faculty. The key is to process the disintegrative energy without forming it into a story – it won’t matter if it is ours or generational. If there is a reason for it to be cognitive then it will appear into awareness. Otherwise figuring it out is an impediment. The power within us, without resistance, can process it. Takes a significant amount of work to get out of the desert (the unconscious).
Monday, October 23, 2023 MindShifters Radio MP3 excerpt (DoWeHaveFreeWill Part 2). Sapolsky says “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.” What dr. michael ryce calls The One World Religion of Blame. Denial – one always sees the problem is outside of themself, then they are run through the law of resonance. Where physiology is the controller there is no room for free will. The brain is controlled by the multi-generational database (CBM) and that inclines one toward behavior (automatic decision system runs the show). However humans have the ability to do something different than what fires, or is triggered, we have a higher faculty of choice. We can originate something new. Sapolsky uses choice and decision as interchangeably the same thing, they are not.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023 MindShifters Radio MP3 excerpt (DoWeHaveFreeWill Part 3). Sapolsky seems to be talking about influences that ‘run the show’ (Perception). A predetermination mind? Yes if just functioning as physiology. But when we wake up it becomes a different game. Purpose, Power & Commitment – your purpose is what steers you. If conscious our goals are set on purpose. Our higher faculty of choice exists if we activate it. We all come in as pure Love. But our culture specializes in knocking Love out of us and then sends us out to find somebody to love us.Five Spiritual Faculties: Reason or Choice, Will, Intuition (Inner Tutor), Imagination (Image in something new) and True Enlightened Perception (Actuality). Most people are run by influences in CBM and are stuck in the desert (unconscious). And they will run things until we wake up. Forgiveness removes the corrupt data and changes the outcome. Then you can enter the promised land – conscious creation. Cheap copy of the spiritual faculties: Resonance, Will-power, Psychic, Fantasy and Perception (personal reality fueled by CBM).
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 MindShifters Radio MP3 excerpt (DoWeHaveFreeWill Part 4). Gregg Caruso a philosopher at SUNY Corning and co-director of Justice Without Retribution Network, said he agreed with Sapolsky and that not having free will is preferable in life. Caruso advocates the approach to criminal activity by focusing on cause of violent or antisocial behavior instead of blame. michael explains that ‘focus’ is a creative act. Focus on what you DON’T want and that is what energy you send out and draw in. Medical students’ disease (also known as second year syndrome or intern’s syndrome) is a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of a disease that they are studying. The condition is associated with the fear of contracting the disease in question. Peter Tse, Dartmouth neuroscientist and author of “The Neural Basis of Free Will” disagrees with Sapolsky. He says inputs are imposing parameters rather than determining specific outcomes. Too much variability at play to think of our behavior as predetermined. The reality our mind constructs is not based on the 5 senses but based on what that information resonates within the mind. Take responsibility and forgive. Get rid of Blame and Punishment.
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“Stress: Portrait of a Killer” full documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs which we have referred to for years. Sapolsky’s video on being in Kenya every year to continue an ongoing research project he’s been working on for about 30 years now. This is the unique story of his Keekorok baboon troop, and how after the alpha males (the angry stressed members of the troop) died from tuberculosis, the remaining troop (mostly females) very quickly transformed into a very peaceful troop, and since then, a peaceful approach has become a cultural norm for them. A norm that has continued for 20 years now, and that also transforms other aberrant baboons from other troops that may wander into the troop.
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Side note: read full story “Choice By Love” https://whyagain.org/choice-by-love/ A survivor of the concentration camps said ‘I had to decide right then,’ he continued, ‘whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life–whether it was a few days or many years–loving every person I came in contact with.’ His decision was not made out of any religious belief but because he had witnessed how love regenerates and how hate destroys…he CHOSE to have a different perspective.
