Do we have freewill? And, what does this question have to do with how we raise our youth? Many, especially in the West, assert that we have freewill, absolutely. Indeed, this is for what so many battles have been fought starting with the American Revolution. Others, especially in the East, would perhaps deny freewill, saying instead that our karma or fate conditions us. They say we are bound by iron necessity. My answer may surprise some of my readers: I say no, we don’t have freewill…yet. We are born with the potential to develop freewill. In the meantime, we have free choice, but free choice and freewill are not the same thing. This notion has a profound impact on how we raise our children, as I will explain below. The question is, what is a human being, and how do we become one? Wait a second, record scratch. What did he say? Aren’t we already human? Well, yes…and no. Keep reading. We’ll get to that.
To understand freewill requires us to clarify what freedom actually is. Is it the license to do whatever we want, like yell at a family member who annoys us, or hoard as much capital as we please, for example? Or, is it the freedom to do the good, beautiful, and true? Verily, especially in America, we think we are free because we have so much choice. Yes, choice is vital, and I argue that true freewill can only arise in a free-choice society like ours.
Yet, free choice means the choice between good and evil. It is possible to abuse free choice, and not all evil is actually illegal, nor should it be. Yet, legality and morality and not always synonymous. Many of us go on acting out of all manner of compulsions, like spending money on frivolous things, overeating, drink too much, saying hurtful things to others, wasting hours doomscrolling, etc. and call this freedom. Is it?
Freewill and Responsibility
I am not bashing America, here. I agree completely with the founding impulse of this nation, but this is not a post about legality but morality. Freedom is not as free as many people think, for free choice does not free us from the consequences of those choices. Moral deeds free us, while evil deeds bind us. Accumulating untold wealth despite the impact on others, overeating without considering the impact on our health, speaking freely without care for how it affects other people – these create more suffering for ourselves and others. Such unfree deeds are the result of the animal eclipsing the angel within us.
True freedom is attained over time through moral-spiritual growth. It requires the responsibility of goodness. We become free by commanding ourselves to do what we do out of love, which at times may run counter to our habitual, animal, or other conditioned natures. However, simply willing ourselves to “be good” is hard. Goodwill is easier if it goes hand in hand with discovering who we truly are. Freewill arises out of wisdom.
The Basis Freedom/Freewill
We encounter freedom when we discover ourselves to be more than the shell we live in. I am born into a human body. My parents give me a name. Over time, I develop a role in the world, a job, persona, etc. When I die, all of that goes away. Who I appear to be in the world and to my physical senses cannot be who I actually am. When I look in the mirror, I do not see my true self but a picture of who I am. It’s the same if we go to an art museum and look at a picture of a tree; we may recognize it as a tree, but it’s not the tree, just a semblance of it. All sensory reality is this way – a picture of an underlying eternal reality. If I only know myself to be the picture, I lose my true self.
It is true my body has needs like food, shelter, procreation, etc. In that I have these needs, I am not free. I must satisfy these needs, but if I make my entire life about that, I enslave my will to the animal in me.
Rather, I must discover who I am beyond the animal to truly free my will. I must come to know the angel within and give that one the upper hand.
Expanded Identity
For that, I must develop a spiritual consciousness and a sense of identity who transcend this temporal self. Then, that which binds me starts losing its grip. Suddenly, I can fast if I need to. Or, I no longer pursue money for its own sake, but for what it can do in the world. Or, I experience space between my knee-jerk reactions and my impulses to act. I begin commanding myself. The greatest misconception is that freewill is something we are born with. It is not. Freewill is something we grow into through effort and grace over time. It is our human destiny, but its attainment is not a given. We must work for it. In my own humble experience, however, I assert that for every ounce of our effort towards our true self, that being exerts a thousand pounds of the same towards us. We are not alone in this endeavor. We have help.
Freewill and Our Youth
What does this have to do with Teen Empowerment? Youth is naturally a time of growing free choice. They clamor for it, and we struggle to let out the reigns just the right amount so they stay safe. Our youth test boundaries and try new things, some of them evil – hopefully only mildly so. I remember driving around with my friends wearing a Bill Clinton mask, stopping and impersonating the then-president and talking to people at stoplights about all his sexual misdeeds. It was naughty but harmless and hardly uncharacteristic of teenage-hood. Our adolescents and teens sense that we will not be the boss of them for much longer, and they can’t wait to get the car keys.
That’s why demonstrating for them the difference between free choice and freewill is of paramount importance at this time in their life. Our culture does a horrible job of this because most adults haven’t even drawn this distinction for themselves. Being American doesn’t make us free, and social media gives our youth all the wrong messages, like, “Getting everything you want is happiness,” or “If you can just market yourself better and have more followers, you will become more lovable.” These messages continuously point our teenagers to outer causes of happiness, which inevitably lose their luster.
We need to direct our young to an inner kind of freedom. The kind that doesn’t depend on their face, body, outer achievements, etc. Even if they can’t yet understand it at their age – and nearly all of them will not be able to because life is a journey of continuous blossoming – the seeds will nevertheless be planted for later in their life. That’s what matters most right now.
A New Possibility
Traditionally, the spiritual education of youth has been transmitted by Christian confirmation, Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvot, indigenous rites of passage, and so on. Fewer and fewer families are opting for these traditional paths these days, however. That’s where our Live, Weekly Teen Empowerment Class comes in. Imagine a group of tightly knit, warm, and welcoming peers with a loving guide who keeps them focused on the good, beautiful, and true. We do visioning exercises, keep a goals journal, do book studies, and work through the challenging and juicy topics that plague them. We do meditative exercises exploring our biographies and all the people and factors that shape who we are becoming. It’s not group therapy, but it is a place to explore who we truly are in a – and this is the part that matters most – spiritual scientific way free from the distractions of mainstream life. Where spirit and science meet we find our true north in modern life. Such an approach we find to be a pearl of great price in a society as divided as ours. Visit us at the following link to signup or get more info: https://enkindleacademy.com/live-teen-empowerment-class.
The Destiny of Humanity
Ultimately, it is the birthright and destiny of every human being to attain true freewill. In his lectures on esoteric science, Rudolf Steiner explains we human beings are on the path to becoming the next hierarchy of angels. We will in time become called the “Spirits of Freedom” or “Spirits of Love.”1 In the meantime, we Americans kick and scream about the freedom to exercise our freewill, and I agree that we need a society that allows us, within ethical boundaries, to practice free choice. We do only learn by failing, and denying humans free choice is not appropriate for the modern age. Yet, we must not conflate free choice and freewill. The former is a necessary but not sufficient condition to develop the latter. If we would complete the great work of human becoming, we have to start by admitting that we are not yet free. We are becoming free. As a disclaimer, I say all the above as an imperfect human striving for freewill myself and recognizing regularly how short I come.
How to Connect
Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9, encouraging students to deepen their reverence for nature and adopt sustainable, regenerative attitudes towards her. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing and language arts, and empowerment groups for teens.
Our Creative Writing Class meets weekly. We are always accepting new students, and enrollment is growing rapidly. When we have enough students, we open up new sections. Visit us at the following link to signup or get more info: https://enkindleacademy.com/live-creative-writing-for-youth
Signup for a free sample lesson now.
References
- Steiner, R. (1909, April 18). The spiritual hierarchies: Lecture X (GA 110). Rudolf Steiner Archive. https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19090418p01.html
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.