What freedom means for each us us can differ greatly. It feels like everyone has a unique understanding of it. It is a central topic in human history. In nature, we can observe several grades of freedom. A plant has more freedom than a stone. An animal has more freedom than a plant. And a human has more freedom than an animal. It could also be said that a human has the most possibilities. Especially compared to a stone this becomes obvious. However, we find ourselves wondering, how different we are, and what more we can do on top of reacting like a stone, as the laws of nature require us to do. Is there freedom in our thinking, or are we just machines with two legs?
Psychoanalysis can show us that large parts of our mental activity is subconscious, we do neither notice nor decide to do it. At some point we become aware that we got lost in thought, although we wanted to do something entirely different. Probably that was one observation that made Siegmund Freud say: “The “I” is not master in its own house.” There are forces living subconsciously, who try and steer our thoughts. So we should be wondering how things stand with regard to the sovereignty and autonomy of thinking and our mental freedom.
The feeling of conscious will can appear as an illusion when observed in more detail. As long as I stay in my usual habits, accessing my experience, and not intervening the normal train of thought, my thoughts will flow automatically and without my attention. Looking back, I can convince myself that it was me who was active and thinking. We have the feeling the we wanted what we did, although we simply remained within the reactions that we learned. Such a behavior is something we are trained to do. It is how we get good grades in school, and how we can make a professional career. We learned that properly trained reactions are important, and that is why we want it. We then look for experiences that enable us to react in the expected manner to the tasks that we are likely to face. Reacting according to learned patterns is something a computer can do as well. The freedom of thought cannot be found this way.
We react to impacts from the outside with thoughts. Many thoughts we learned and that is why they pop up. Thoughts can come to us without waiting for an invite. But our responsibility does not begin with the appearance of thoughts. It begins with controlling our reaction to it. We have the ability to pause. We can hand over the control of our body and its actions to our thoughts, and we can also remain still and observe our thoughts instead. We can regulate, and we can choose thoughts that we repeat and allow to become actions.
This perspective aligns with many religious traditions. There we find an appreciation of self control. It is about the control of our actions and our thoughts as well. It matters what thoughts we repeat, and what thoughts eventually turn into actions. A thought should be considered an offer, that we should inspect, if we want to take our freedom. We must bring the thoughts in a relationship, in a connection with with our experience and with our feelings. Only the combined awareness of thinking and feeling can give us a good overview of the situation, so we can get an idea of what we really want to do. We can observe our thoughts and feelings as something outside of us. And the better we understand why they appear in the shape that we are confronted with, the better we become at not letting them take over control. Instead, we can come to a free decision based on an understanding of what we see and think.
That is our mission in todays world. Many people no longer accept religious guidelines for their individual behavior, and that is appropriate for the time. Humanity has gone one step further, and now every single one of us needs to find an individual connection to God, voluntarily and without the comfort of a few clear rules that just need to be followed. We are challenged by freedom to find our own way, be the architect of our own happiness. There are still options available, we are tempted by base motives to fall for promises of a paradise, where we are taken care of and no longer need to deal with all the struggles.