Non Duality (Who's Making the Choices?)

It's common to hear a flat statement in Non-Duality circles like, "There is no free will," or "The choice maker doesn't exist!" What's that about? If there is no free will why does it feel like we're making choices all day long? In this video, I address the common question, "Is there free will?" Firstly I explain why it feels so triggering to us to hear that we have no free will. To understand this there has to be some understanding of how the sense of a separate self and the seeking mechanism of mind are related. Then one can begin to get the "taste" of how the personal sense of choice is actually a very limited experience of choice which endlessly reinforces the sense of separation and lack.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

What is your experience of free will and/ or choice?

[@cherryb33]

When I experience the moment as just arising it's so clear there's no free will or choice and never could be. Great video, thank you!

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

@@cherryb33 wonderful, crystalline kaleidoscopic presence 💥

[@cherryb33]

@@SimplyAlwaysAwake 🤩

[@ann337]

For me, there was always a sense of frustration and almost futility bc I couldn’t control the outcome of my life despite best efforts... so it was always fighting the flow of reality and life bc the hopes/wishes I felt myself to be desiring never quite materialized. I felt I was being driven by future outcome/goals but really it was just fear propelling the forward motion of a life being lived in a future timeline. That’s definitely the way the mind organizes reality, a cognitive functioning that never gets closely examined. There are thoughts arising from nowhere. I can’t control their coming and going. The feelings and sensations come from nowhere. I liken these automatic processes to other seemingly uncontrollable functioning like brain activity, heart activity, sleep and digestive activity. Clockwork yet spontaneous. Life is a process, an arising of all things simultaneously. Accepting that personal free will is a highly hypnotic illusion is ironically freeing, and seeing there’s no need to respond to the flow of life with resistance for a preferred alternative, that could never be, is freeing. Peace of acceptance 😊

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

@@ann337 I totally agree with you

[@mattspy4316]

You find the coolest spots to film your videos!!! ;)

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

😂

[@SnakeAndTurtleQigong]

“It doesn’t mean it’s real, it’s just our experience.” So true, thanks! 💙😁🐡

[@Kim-sherie]

For me, being able to give up any idea of free will was when the struggle really stopped. And when a question does arise I know exactly where it comes from. This ego never wants feel helpless.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Truly… and yet helplessness is the entryway into deep intimate mystery!

[@Kim-sherie]

@@SimplyAlwaysAwake yep. A true surrender into helplessness. Beautiful and wondrous 😊

[@sawdust4dinner322]

First 2 minutes of this is all "anybody" should need, fantastic sir.

[@dar_jada]

After your last video, I dreamed I was trying to look in the rear view mirrors of my car. Then I realized I couldn't see anything because they were gone. I turned around and realized I'd dismantled them and thrown them in the back seat. When I recalled this dream in the morning, I started laughing at the message from my subconscious which seems to be don't look back. It will be easy for me to remember now to not look back because of the laugh I had about the dream. In my dream the car was stopped. I will just rest here...now. Thanks as always for these brilliant pointings.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

That’s great 😃

[@nat998]

Cool dream 😀... Like that sweet song by Boston, "Don't Look Back"...

[@human5715]

I was hoping you would address this. Thanks for doing so and for every other video of yours, they are very helpful and invaluable 🙏

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Welcome

[@cookiemonster9276]

Beautiful! Thanks man 😊.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Welcome 🍪

[@geoffreylevens9045]

Some years ago, I have no idea why, I started to pay close attention to my "decision making". What I found was that for most every decision, large and small, I would go through a lot of mental effort analyzing the possible outcomes and implications, finally reaching a decision. Sometimes that would only take a few seconds. But then I what I actually did, the action I performed, did NOT match my decision so often that it became obvious that I really do not have free will on the personal identity level, that it is an after the fact conclusion based on not examining reality and wanting to have control.

[@nat998]

Ah Geoffrey, you sound like me... I too wrestled with the whole decision making dilemma only to find life seemed to constantly pull the rug from underneath me on an almost comical level - leaving me most affronted lol. Now I ride shotgun and enjoy the scenery. What's to be will be...

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Dude! You are right on the money. This is exactly it... the thought system conveniently ignores when an apparent "decision" (thought) we have made does not come to fruition, yet when it does the thoughts suggest we chose it ;)

[@TheEvaluna1975]

The more "choices" the more regrets for what could have been "better" and the more we suffer... this makes awakening so desirable that it's so relieving to know it's always available to us... but I guess the only way out is to stop seeking and relax... let it go... let it flow... isn't it?

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

well said

[@JsThorn]

You keep posting on what I’m working, like almost every day 😂 almost scary

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Synchronicity!

[@KK-qd6ro]

He has a way of doing that. Almost like he has free will! hahahahaha

[@lynbrowne931]

I’m so conditioned by my upbringing and beliefs it’s difficult to truly know when acting on free will isn’t caught up by this. I chose to turn situations into being positive experiences as best I can.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

😊

[@lucasdesiqueira6122]

Love your Channel by the way, Im glad I found you with Alan in Simulation, you have good quality non dual teachings 🙏

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Thanks for coming

[@loristerling1169]

So beautifully said!❤

[@louisevs9152]

this is solid gold. Thank you Angelo.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

You're very welcome

[@milotdauti6991]

omg u so awesome :) this video was so fluent 🥹 made me cry at the end - thank you 🙏

[@KK-qd6ro]

Thank you I am/we are the feeling tone of being 💜🙏

[@cg3536]

I used to struggle to keep up with these videos. Trying to make sense of them. There have been doubt thoughts about recent insight but they are faint and just thoughts! After the insight the video and what’s presented is so much more clear. I always had the sense that once a shift happened I would understand. Now it’s known that I could never really understand and that understanding has very little if anything to do with this. Yet somehow the video just makes sense now. A thought arises wondering if I have just constructed a no-self. But that’s just another thought. Well that was fun playing with the mind from here.

[@MissRomanticKitty]

It's an excellent video. Thank you.🙏

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Welcome 😊

[@KK-qd6ro]

Thank you for all your interesting videos. While the human body here has no "free will " The being does. ; o ) Really enjoyed your graphics. The anonymous masks was a nice touch.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Thanks, donn me sone told me I have to step up my thumbnail game or KZbin won’t serve my videos fully :0

[@SurrealMcCoy]

This is the rock upon which my sense of separate self foundered. The feeling of free will was the glue that held my ego in place. Looking inside now I see that "decisions" arise from emptiness. Who is there to "chose" that is separate from what is?

[@scottmcdowell27]

Love this!

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Thx Scott

[@VeritableVagabond]

I don't know, let me check -- hmm nope, can't find him.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

😂

[@rickhobman3322]

There is no one to have free will. There is no free will to have a person.

[@ashleysmashley444]

Your shirt is super trippy

[@HelloTiggs1]

Yesssss!! Wow!

[@theflarpus]

Awesome

[@rosinamarie13]

Learned about soft will & Hard will vs Determinism by watching a very old talk given by scientist, philosopher and inventor of the bell helicopter- Arthur Young. He incorporated a mathematical equation to determine his position on it which was fascinating.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Interesting

[@Stefan69whatever]

There is really just one choice in every moment: to open or to close, to extend or to contract, to orient towards form or formlessness, to resist or to be one etc. The mind likes to believe it has chosen. spirit chooses indeed but that is something of a transcendental mystery. Spirit may have a good reason for contracting. Why else would it?

[@stvn0378]

Thanks

[@tineltinel1568]

Sorry i'm late, You said : "The thought caught my attention”, so does attention become the absolute landmark, life itself, or is it still a relatively possible landmark subject to experience? Suffering is the uppermost layer, covering all the layers of our lives. I mean all of us. I am convinced that it is not the base layer. For this game, or for the big game, you choose, it is a cost and not a price, this being already a composite, the layers of (or in) life being the sum of already composed elements. The understanding of the transition is the understanding of each moment movement also of all of them. Even risking to move all, just în one way. So, you are the scientist, I am the dreamer . Excellent experiences. Tank you again. Sorry for related english issues. Daniel, Romania.

[@petecalgaro]

Choice is a thought! 🤯

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Ding ding ding 🛎

[@davidssuharevskis3]

Hey, Thank you for your great work! What happens if we are adding little bit more complexity to Non Duality. Yes, we are all fractals of One. And jet we have several dimensions, traveling thru those dimensions increases our ability to experience or perceive reality. From the first dimension mineral world, till last dimensions where we are transcending physical vehicle. Apparently for higher developed being(also humans) there is some sort of free will. We can make choices, learn lessons to liberate us from this karmic wheel faster. But the "choice" is a bit different then we are used to understand. We are "choosing" one event instead of other. That's how we are making parallel reality with in this dimension and both events are playing out- but in one of them we are liberating us faster from karmic wheel, what allows us to grow and experience this reality in greater scale. Maybe both of those events are written before - that's why that choice (free will) is not so Free, but still we can take path with more love. Some say that Source is investigating itself - so Source need jet to discover it's full potential. And we like fractals are doing this investigation in several density levels. Why I am thinking about this? Because here is around us also other highly developed souls, who are traying to understand this convoluted universe and they're explanations seems to be more explanatory, then those ones from Non-Duality circles. I appreciate your help and I would love to hear your opinion on this!

[@nat998]

Just a curious question, where did you hear all these ideas about parallel shifting, and higher dimensional levels, the oversoul evolutionary blueprint , as well as the idea of highly evolved beings incarnating on earth so as to ascend to the "next level" of density consciousness? 😀 The reason I ask is because it's sounds like something the channeled entity "Bashar" would say, or even the "Ra Material" which is also channeled - goes a bit into the seven density levels of consciousness. I used to devour books on the nature of the "soul". I read Michael Newton, Dolores Cannon, Castanada, Robert Monroe, some David Wilcock, Graham Hancock... Reality TRANSURFING... Tom Campbell... What is the point of my existence right? There has to be a purpose right? It's all very fascinating, but ultimately it's all very conceptual, unless you can verify it for yourself through direct experience 🙂

[@davidssuharevskis3]

@@nat998 Yes, you are right- it is conceptual. And at the end of the day of course the most important is just THIS moment what we are experiencing. But has you are saying it is very fascinating to go this path and investigate all those things. It's coming from the same sources what you are mentioning. And looks like those sources are getting more and more as we are ascending. Has Dolores said in one interview, when she started past life regressions she was one of the only ones who was talking about something like this. Now people are channeling all kind of beings on every corner 😀

[@nat998]

@@davidssuharevskis3 Dolores is amazing ❤️ and yes it's just about my most favourite subject so I totally get where you're coming from... So interesting /wondrous/exciting. I literally could spend hours researching it. Most fun you can have with your clothes on lol

[@davidssuharevskis3]

@@nat998 That's right brother it's just amazing. Plus in my case it works out like spiritual practice. I can see clear correlation between this and my consciousness expansion.

[@justgivemeanumber8215]

You are Reality -- the Reality has no outside factors that influence it -- it is itself fully causative, while not caused -- therefore you are fully causative -- therefore you have free will.

[@richardallan2767]

From what i can tell at the moment, we have Will, but it isn't free. It is trapped within conditioned thought and behaviour. "Choice" is usually one of those conditioned thoughts or it's opposite, or a few options from a very blinkered view of the variables and paths cognitively assessed. I certainly do and did things on autopilot, while it really looked like there was some sort of choice or consideration going on. Breaking the identification with those patterns (pulls and pushes in mind) comes from centering in and as the self. Also just focusing on something difficult to focus on grows Will. But as far as making choices, it does seem that being unconditioned self brings more choices, which appear as thought, as image and as feeling. And it seems, at the moment, less pull towards the conditioned self patterns, and more natural ability to do... words, limited... something else.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Those are great observations. The nature of will becomers very interesting when one starts seeing the flow of reality very closely. What is wil? Does one decide to exert will, or is the urge a result of conditions then is noticed? What is it acting upon? How does it function etc?

[@richardallan2767]

@@SimplyAlwaysAwake No idea Lulz. But looking into it. It seems that all thought/emotion/perspective, is in a way a movement to action in and of itself that we can choose to join or not. A thought arises, it carries within it assumptions, backstory, feelings, predispositions, and trajectory (associated reactions, consequences and propensity towards certain actions). “Will”, for me, at the moment, is asking “What am I” and the answer is pretty much always, “not that (thought)” and that at least allows me not to be embroiled in that, unless it’s something like “time to eat” which is still pretty useful sometimes (I actually find those bodily pulls less pervasive, or at least less subtle, than the pull to think about the mind maintaining identity and its limits). Will is also, perhaps, choosing and creating newer, truer, options of how to be, think, act. In short there seems to be Will to center in Self, Will to overcome conditioning/not be drawn into stuff (those 2 pretty much the same thing, but isn't everything) Will to rationally and non rationally determine best options, and Will to create novel options, at least within being, and to maintain them. Experimentation continues.

[@lucasdesiqueira6122]

Can you answer me in the last video please? I have some relative serious questions, nice video again btw

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Didn't see them when I just looked. You can repost, I may be able to answer

[@katye7727]

"Intimacy is infinite"...love the reality this points to...and so grateful for this pointing dear One 🙏💞🥰🥳❌⭕

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

You are so welcome

[@matthiasenglert4259]

Thanks Angelo! Is there a difference between free will and intent? I am asking as on the one hand, the experience is as you describe it. Willing something is an afterthought to a spontaneous arising. On the other hand there seems to be also "intent" (like a potential held) that can be nurtured? and results after a while in a specific happening? Or is that just attention lingering on the happening? Guess my question is, if there is some wiggle room for agendas of meaning.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

interesting question... where does intent arise? So consider the things you are interested in... did you intend to become interested in them or was it just sort of already there? Then cultivating intent may just be a closer and more authentic noticing what is already happening eh?

[@TPot1222]

Can I control whether this body-mind apparatus surrenders rather than seeks? I sense no

[@dougnonduality]

Please, correct me if I'm wrong in everything I'm going to say below... I had no control when I wanted to ask these questions. I had no control of the questions I wrote even though I thought of every word I used in the question. Even the decision to have control is also not in my control. And the decision to don't have control is also not in my control. But my main question is: Even an Awakened person also has no control of what the body/mind of this person decides to do? You have no control over what you think, feel, do or say? If so, then does that mean you have no control of what you're going to answer me even if you're thinking about every word you're going to use in the answer ? So, you have no control over wanting or not wanting to answer my questions ? 🤔

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

well yes sort of BUT this is the problem of talking about this before it is realized, it's hard tgo talk about. For instance many of your statements are YOU have no control, YOU can't decide etc. That is not the experience of nonduality. Its the realization that there is no one apart from anything. So then there is no one for whome you can say "X has no control." Does that make more sense. The whole language of choice and control kinda goes out the window

[@dougnonduality]

@@SimplyAlwaysAwake Yeah, I guess I got a little carried away 😂 I'll think it over, reflect more... watch the video again and again. Thank you so much. I really appreciated your reply. You're really kind.

[@AlexVerbruggen]

Can you control your shirt selection for a green screen recording? Or did your free will try to mess with my mind on purpose? 😉

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

😂 I need to buy more green logo shirts... it makes editing more fun

[@parthopdas]

makes sense. basically in earth's weather system, is each hurricane is an individual? does it have a fixed boundary? is it choosing to go northwards to spare (or level) a town? same with each instance of storm, cloud, rain etc. every phenomenon is intimately connected in an inherently 'chaos theoretic' system. ps: orignal analogy from TNH it rains does not mean there has to be a rain-er.

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

Good analogy

[@AbscentOrange]

This is complex, though, and you can understand why this is a hot topic?? I’d simply ask, who or what made the decision to make this video?

[@Paivren]

I don't get how this philosophy is compatible with everyday life. My life clearly is different when I go to work and make a living or when I sit at home all day. Of course there are choices. Different options I can pick from.

[@indef93]

This is not a concept like a philosophy. Rather these are direct observations of experiencing non-duality. Essentially, thoughts describing a state of experience without the confines of thought identification. 😊

[@theflarpus]

😁

[@N2MTness]

This video made me trip balls

[@SimplyAlwaysAwake]

only thing better than psychedelics for tripping balls is unfiltered reality ;)

[@tutorial9322]

This video kinda saved me from becoming completely mad🫠