Last night before bed I watched a program on youtube about an interdisciplinary consortium's look at the question of free will.
(For some reason this forum won't let me post links - it says I need 15 post or more but I have that so I'll have to contact admin but until I can add these links if you want to watch the video or read the article you can search the title)
Youtube Video: Closer to the Truth: Big Questions in Free Will
The most interesting thing I found on this program was a study where they had participants read an article and after they read the article they were given a math test where they could cheat the test if they wanted to.
Some participants were given an article about neuroscience finding that free will is an illusion and that there is no free will, and another group of participants were not.
The participants who read that there was no such thing as free will were actually more inclined to cheat than those that were't indoctrinated in this idea that free will is an illusion.
So regardless if free will is true or false, our belief in it or not in it has an impact on our behavior.
So far these experiments have been done by two separate researchers and here is a brief article on those studies.
Article: Destined to Cheat: New Research Finds Free Will Can Keep Us Honest published by the Association for Psychological Science
From a sociological point of view man's belief in the idea of having free will is overall beneficial to society as a whole.
Now another point that was brought up in that video from one researcher. I think he was a sociologist who was studying self control felt that we did have free will however when we assert our will it weakens us, it's a energy draining endeavor. And they conducted experiments to show how the decision making process causes muscle weakness within the subject.
As I meditate more and more on this subject I definitely feel caught in a feedback loop. From my own personal experience I would assert that I do have a will because I've used this tool called will power many many times in my life and I've gotten results. As far as I'm concerned there is definitely something in that.
For people who don't think they have free will or have any control of their life's journey and destination I wonder what their life experience is like in comparison to a person who not only believes they have free will but asserts it as well.
Our beliefs systems definitely impact our direct life experiences of this I have no doubt. I think this shows how our experience of reality is actually a reflection of consciousness in all it's infinite forms but inherently it has no existence.
I was very resistant to this idea at first because how can it not exist if I'm having an experience of it. If I'm experiencing it it must exists. But really if it's just a reflection of that which my conscious awareness wishes to see and experience based my thought patterns i.e. beliefs about reality then what's the actual reality.
When I get to this point where both everything exists and yet simultaneously nothing exists I cannot help by smile, laugh and rejoice at the shear absurdity of it all!
