Choice is an illusion? LO4423

John Paul Fullerton (jpf6745@acs.tamu.edu)
Sat, 23 Dec 1995 14:40:49 +0000

Replying to LO4393 --

> Could you
> will yourself into a new understanding just as an act of will? No. Could
> I? No. Since choice is consistent with understanding (that is we choose
> to do that which is consistent with our sense of the order of the
> situation in which we find ourselves at any time), and since we cannot
> will ourselves to understand anything other than the way we do right now
> (or in the past or sometime in the future), don't you see that choosing,
> in the sense of free choice, is not what's going on here?

When I saw this statement, it reminded me of "acts of willing" that
I've done. I'm not particularly "expert" at this - in my opinion -
yet sometimes we're confronted by conflicting information, indicating
error, and other times we're confronted by others' behavior that we
can't totally agree with. In the first case, if the situation is of
sufficient concern, there might be a strong temptation to fault
individuals who are implicated in the conflict. In the second,
assuming actual knowledge of behavior that is not acceptable, there's
the temptation to go beyond that awareness and begin to separate from
the person. In both of these cases, there's a strong force that we
can learn to observe - however that may be. If the force is left
alone, it performs its task in our minds. If it is confronted with
another thought that we hold to more dearly, it can be replaced with
the new thought. There's a very real sense of violence in the
activity, though not an act or thought of violence toward a person.
It's the violent encounter with a thought in our minds that is not
permitted to remain. I didn't learn this by theorizing, and I may be
wrong. But I had a direction I wanted to go, and I probably was
wrong, there, and I became aware of things I did that I considered could
disqualify me. That's when I noticed that some thoughts pull on us
much more than I ever before was aware of.

Myself as a human being and "just a person" need more than a
convenient thought to replace my thinking. I believe in Jesus Christ,
and holding to him in my mind as the way, the truth, and the life
gives me an opportunity to triumph through him, my new thought.

The main point in direct relevance to the question can a person will
themself into a new understanding is that we have more than one
understanding if we count what is as near as "one thought away". It's
possible that those "near thoughts" shouldn't be counted as our
understanding, per se. In any case, within one thought, that thought
could be my understanding or ruling thought process.

--
Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
jpf6745@acs.tamu.edu