do we have free will?

Yes -- we humans have free will.  Free will is one of the gifts and responsibilities life affords our species. 

Unlike our animal predecessors, we humans are not ruled by instinctual drives of sex and aggression.  Our deepest drive is to evolve consciousness.  Nor are we ruled by familial or societal pressure to conform to its roles and rules.  We humans have the innate capacity and responsibility to choose beyond instinct and culture.  Our purpose is to make choices that serve the evolution of consciousness.  Our purpose is to choose God and truth.

However only a rare few actually rise to the occasion and responsibility of free will, based in autonomous and truthful living.  Most people simply and blindly follow the roles established by the family and society.  Most get married, have children, and follow the traditions of the culture and its religions.  

These conforming people often deny the reality of free will, even saying it doesn’t exist – because for them, is actually doesn’t.  Those who fail to differentiate from the family and culture remain wounded children under their adult and culturally sanctioned pose --  often the pose of parent.  These seeming adults are really wounded children underneath the role.  They do not have free will in the true sense.  They are destined to play the role society gives them – but also the destructive role their denied wounds dictate.  These unenlightened can not choose freely or wisely.
 

When we remain wounded children, there is no free will.  In a sense, we are doomed to replicate the patterns and pathology we were born into.  Sadly these patterns are often destructive -- deadening of creativity, vitality and ethical living.  The unresolved seem fated to inflict wounds on themselves, others and our planet home – and most sadly on their own children.  Being driven by unconscious motives, there is no true choice or free will, but a failure of choice having avoided the most important choice of all -- to heal childhood wounds and evolve into conscious living.

 
To embrace free will and to choose wisely, we must heal our history and differentiate from our parents and culture.  We must grief the damage done and live out of our true self.  Only then can we have free will – the capacity to choose beyond our damaging history and out of our true self.
 

In fact, the goal of free will is to become co-creative with God.  Ultimately, we must make choices that evolve consciousness and even stretch our definitions of truth and of God.  It is through those of us who have free will that God knows himself.

As we evolve, one of the hardest choices we make is to continue -- to persevere growing and evolving.  We must not settle in the comforts of newfound consciousness for long.  There is always more work to do.  We must press on to the next level of discovery and wisdom, enduring the anxiety of stretching even further the realm of truth and of God.

 
We all make choices – every day, every moment.  Choose wisely.  Don’t shirk the responsibility that life and God has given you.  So much depends on the choices we make – the survival of our species most poignantly.