The Most Radical Exercise of Free Will

This led me to a question that has fundamentally changed my understanding of freedom.

What if surrendering control is the most radical exercise of free will?

We often define freedom as the ability to do what we want.

To choose our circumstances.

To determine our future.

To exercise influence over our surroundings.

But how much of this freedom do we actually possess?

We do not choose the circumstances of our birth.

We do not choose our genetic inheritance.

We do not choose most of the thoughts that spontaneously enter our minds.

We do not independently determine the desires, fears, memories, and biological impulses that shape our decisions.

Even our choices are constrained by what is available to us.

Life presents us with a hand of cards we did not choose.

We can decide how to play them, but we did not create the deck.

And perhaps our freedom is more limited than we are willing to admit.

Within The Godward Way, I have begun exploring a different understanding of will.

Perhaps the deepest exercise of will is not the ability to choose every circumstance, but the ability to choose our ultimate direction in relation to whatever circumstances arise.

I may not choose the fear that appears in my consciousness.

I may not choose the desire for recognition.

I may not choose the anger, grief, longing, or uncertainty that visits me.

But I can choose where I direct them.

Toward myself, in the pursuit of personal power?

Toward the world, in an attempt to possess and control it?

Or toward the Father, whom I understand to be the source of my existence?

In this framework, freedom is not simply having more choices.

It is the freedom to refuse to make control the ultimate purpose of those choices.

Consider the paradox.

A person who is desperate to control everything may appear powerful, yet remain deeply controlled by fear.

Every unexpected event becomes a threat.

Every uncertain outcome demands intervention.

Every loss of influence produces anxiety.

The more that person attempts to control, the more their peace depends upon controlling.

But someone who willingly releases the demand for absolute control may discover a different freedom.

Not the freedom to make anything happen.

The freedom to remain directed toward what matters even when circumstances do not obey.

I cannot choose everything that happens to me. But I can choose what I offer to the Father.

This is the radical surrender I am beginning to understand.

Not the destruction of human will.

Its reorientation.

Not the surrender of responsibility, judgment, or action.

The surrender of the belief that my security must come from possessing power over every outcome.

And not an attempt to replace my will with a feeling that I must obey without question.

Spiritual conviction still requires discernment. The intensity of an experience does not establish that a particular impulse is a command from God.

Rather, surrender begins when I stop treating my own need for certainty and control as the final authority.