Introspective Awareness

To be introspectively aware means to examine carefully ones motivations without seeking a desired result. Result always presupposes purpose or goal. To understand fully the workings of your own mind you must observe as an entity that is removed from the one who is seeking a result.  It requires total attention to minds movement from the external to the internal.  This attention would be free of all attachment to the self that is motivated by any emotional disturbance.  A person must be completely in the moment just quietly observing ones consciousness as it creates emotions and opinions about the moment. One watches as the mind moves through the highs and lows of the challenges it faces.  All this is done without the least bit of judgement or concern.  We observe as the mind grabs hold of and lets go of all that complicates a given situation.

Removing the self from the activity of self,  a person finds clarity and a depth of understanding.  One may realize and understand the sickness of ones own duality and how that it controls the physical and mental health of all of us.  It may be possible to understand that there can be action without motivation. And that such action will always be to the benefit of the "other".  A persons selfish and acquisitive mind ceases to be the motivation for ones existence. Life is simply lived for the joy and peace that is the actual reality of the moment regardless of ones perceived circumstance.

Then when all around you seem to be lost in the confusion of emotional responsiveness one will be totally aware of a movement that is not seeking and therefore without the motivation of the duality of the one who seeks and what is sought.  To be introspectively aware brings to one a sense of psychological maturity that transcends the minds tendency to be reactionary and self serving. It is the flowering of an intelligence that is whole and complete within its self.

The Illusion of Free Will

It is important to first understand what we mean by the phrase "Free Will".  In the common textural meaning free will is a persons ability to act without constraint(s). A kind of self determinism. But this begs the question, is a person ever free of the influences of his or her inherent conditioned existence? We are all a product of our past experiences and those experiences both the physical and the psychological are the basis for our actions. So our actions are largely predictable within the framework of what we know, believe and understand. We cannot simply throw off what essentially encumbers our every action and reaction. Individual discretion to a large degree is determined by the past.

Is it possible to understand our own inability to act without reference to our conditioned mind set and to proceed in an entirely different direction free of an appetite or a repetitious indulgence?  Will is actually desire cloaked in the human minds inescapable confusion of having to choose.  And choice exist only when the mind is confused.  When the mind that desires is attentive then it may be possible to understand that choosing or choice derives its duality from motivation. One may then realize that there is actually no choice. There is only opinion which arises out of one's conditioning.

Is there action without choice or will without will? Action without motivation is a by product of a mind that is choicelessly aware.  Awareness without a movement, of just being in that moment absent an opinion or an emotion. It is the negation of the known for something new and without definition. An action born out of a void but wholly within the realm of logical inference. The factual becomes the anti-reactionary which is free of emotional conditioned motivation which is the basis for all opinion. So it is not possible to exercise "free will" because it exist only as a subset of minds clinging to choices that are merely the result of opinion.  To be choicelessly aware is to be factual. Which is absent the emotional immaturity of the trappings of the minds limited ability to understand. Not choosing allows one to enter a moment of non-movement that brings about something that may be outside one's conditioned response.