Free Will?
Let me go ahead and say it!
Nothing can ultimately keep us from Divine Love – how can it?
‘Well, for starters,’ you may reply, ‘what about free will?’
Well, I agree that will appears to be an extremely potent weapon in resisting the Irresistible. Like some scurrying, little mouse it imagines its escape to be final before turning a corner to find its unfriendly, feline hunter one step ahead of it. Please let me explain.
Free will may not be that free after all. I appear to be free to choose what kind of coffee I’ll order when sitting here in this Lincolnshire, coffee shop. Shall I go for a latte or a soya cappuccino? No I think that I’ll go for an Americano with a little skimmed milk! Decision made. But is it that simple? Have I really made a decision or has the devious subliminal advertising of my surroundings influenced me. Has the choice of my coffee-drinking companion unknowingly influenced my own, preferred caffeine-fueled fix
Of course, apart from cash issues, such hidden influences don’t really matter in the overall scheme of things but with Divine Love it’s a totally different story. Either we are free to finally say NO to the Divine Presence or we can’t. Let me humbly suggest that we can’t.
Now of course it’s at this point that I will upset many of my Evangelical Christian friends for their whole raison d’etre is choice and free choice at that. Jesus died for our sins and we have a choice whether to accept God’s forgiveness or not! If not, well I wouldn’t like to be in your hell-bound shoes!
The reasoning behind this goes something like this. The Divine has granted us the power of free will, one that can refuse the very advances of the Love that gave it in the first place. Now there is something a bit off about this. If Divine Love, knew that the gift of free will would cause some of his beloved creatures to walk away from its very essence, straight into a godless eternity then would its granting constitute an act
Free Will?
of love? Rather, would it not be a somewhat, sadistic, ticking time bomb that would ultimately get rid of the apples of the Divine Eye?
I used to believe the free-will narrative on things but after my own rollercoaster life experiences, no longer.
No, will is, I believe, an illusion of sorts, one that helps us skip merrily through life believing that we are our own boss and that nobody tells us what to do. Yet, it lies, for within the human community, we are all influenced by the pull of the skewed, imitative desire of those around us. Pulled this way and that, we individually believe that the desires which regularly bubble up from our psyche-soul have their origins within, in other words, they stem from Me. Bouncing around the bouncy castle of life we’re oblivious to the frustrations and turmoil that haunt us from beneath – the controlling puppet strings of another’s passion and psychological needs. Their object of desire becomes ours and the subconscious battle for supremacy commences.
So, all a bit depressing you say! Well yes, if those around us are the only ones drawing us into their somewhat crazy desire fields. Thankfully there is a way of escape though, and that is to be drawn by the mimetic pull of Divine Love. Desire was birthed in the Source of All. It is the desire expert, the past master of its healthy default settings, the settings that tune us into liberty and life. This realignment with the One of our beginnings is the path of true freedom. Exchanging the hooks of contagious acquisitive desire, we involuntarily lay everything down, as we’re finally drawn into the Divine Embrace, like a prize salmon that’s had its final fling.
Some will be drawn into this awakening experience during their space-time sojourn, others will discover it post the illusion of death, or perhaps, as some Eastern philosophies suggest, on the space-time merry-go-round of a future life. Yet none will be cast out or expelled. To believe otherwise is to crown Free Will as the god of space-time and beyond.
In the Divine Presence, will, whether free or not, shall melt away, unnecessary in the Ocean of Divine Love. A homecoming where two have become One. The mystic catches glimpses of it and yearns for more, no longer interested in the matrix of desire.
Writer Dylan Morrison 
Thank you for sharing; I like it. I’m wondering if you could try to use a little more simple vocabulary, though…
Hi Shelby. Which wee words were proving difficult? Let me know and I’ll try and break them down into simpler terms for you.I think I posted a wee glossary of terms a while back on my blog that might help a wee bit. Here’s the link.
❤ Dylan
http://wp.me/sOzBH-glossary
Thank you Dylan. No words can express how meaningful your words are to me. I grew up Free Will Baptist, so you can imagine what a battle this had been, breaking free from the old free will illusion. At some point I jumped on the predestination bandwagon, and that seemed a better fit and a safer way to travel, although I’ve since discarded the old religious jargon and finally embraced the Love of my life, the One who doesn’t plan on letting me go. Ever.
Thanks for dropping by Debra. Yes, once we realise that it’s not up to us to find or please the Divine it’s a great weight off our shoulders. To see that we already dwell in the Mystery of Divine Love releases so many of the religious knots that we tied ourselves up in. Ours to enjoy Spirit Breath and not to keep it at bay through our faulty beliefs.
🙂 Dylan
An excellent post, Dylan. I like the way you say what you say here. Fundamentalist place all their hope on a God that demands obedience, which guarantees their eternal future. Fail to obey, and die. Obey and live. To me, such a God/Being/Presence is not Divine Love, it is Imperial Authority and Power. What a sad thing. It is especially sad to see ones children tied up in this, which is true in my family, and distances us from each other.
How can a truly loving Divine presence turn away from anyone? I don’t believe it’s possible at all. These old doctrines were formulated as ways to control the message, ending by distorting it. It was all political manoeuvring by the early Church Fathers, radically changing what Jesus taught and lived.