Consciousness and Free Will

If anything was a symbol for me of January this year, it was fire. Fire is symbol of the active principal. This January I just had to do it. This is the first day this year where I could sit just sit down and let go without the niggling feeling of how am I going to do it. Time and again I came up against - “It's impossible” . I just had to find another way of doing, as there just wasn't the time worry about the fact that I haven't done it before.. Even though others said it was not possible. It had to be done and delivered on a certain time.

It is incredible what can be achieved when people work together for a common goal. Each using their diverse abilities to make it possible. Never have I seen so clearly, how important each member of a team is, no matter how humble their contributions may seem.

What I love about working in the film industry in South Africa, are the people. It is wonderful to work with individuals who take pride in what they contribute to the creation of a project. It seems to me that each individual has a quiet confidence of their particular ability. A confidence that comes from the experience of being stretched beyond your perceived limitations, and pulling it off, despite severe doubts of your abilities to do so, but knowing that if you don't you will let the whole team down.

I see evolution in terms of consciousness. Whether you at evolution of the universe, the earth, humanity or the individual person, it seems to me that it follows a particular course. Up to the point of physical, mental and psychological maturity, humans all over the world, across cultures, develop in certain areas of what constitute the human being, at very specific chronological stages.

After that we have a free will to consciously evolve ourselves. I call this self-evolution. For me the most important contribution that we as individuals can make to the well-being of the whole, is to evolve ourselves. To raise our level of consciousness. That is for me the primary direction of our present development as a specie. In achieving the highest of what we are capable of, we uplift the whole, and we fulfill our purpose. That which has no purpose will die out. .

Consciousness is not something you don't have one day, and suddenly have another day. Consciousness is an evolutionary process. There are levels of consciousness. Consciousness is an awareness. Consciousness is always about something. Consciousness is about bringing something into awareness, whether through thoughts, dreams, memories, feelings, or sensory impressions such as visual images, tastes, smells or sounds. So you can say that the more you are aware of what influences your thinking, and subsequently, your actions, the more conscious you are. The less aware you are, the less free will you have. When you are aware that something influences you, then you can use your will to decide what you want to do about it.

To develop a high level of consciousness requires an attentiveness. Attention makes you aware of what you have been accepting unconsciously. You are right in saying that it is virtually impossible to consciously know all of what influences our thinking. Scientists are beginning to realize that we receive information, not only through our sensory perception, but there are also items entering our consciousness that exceed the range of sensory perception; they can leap, it seems, across wide reaches of space and time.

Although endless possibilities are open to us, both as humanity and individuals, we cannot know everything, be everything, and do everything in the physical time-dimension. I think all of our brains have an amazing capacity to learn, however, we do not all have the same desire to learn certain things. In general for example the male mind is better in abstract logic than the female mind. Why is this? Is it because the male brain is better than the female brain in that area? I don't think so. From what I have observed, it has everything to do with desire. “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Learning requires a need for directed attention. Attention goes where interest goes. Energy goes where attention goes. If I am not really interested in mathematical equations, or technical data, it will be very hard for me to concentrate in order to learn it. I see each human being as a window on the universe. As a specie our strength lies in our ability to co-operate with each other, to pass our insights on to others. It is through our ability to interact and co-operate that we evolve in consciousness, that we can make a leap in consciousness.

Rather than discrete things and independent events, there are but ripples upon ripples upon waves upon waves in this universe, propagating in a seamless sea. - Ervin Laszlo

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