Ego Consciousness, The Brain, Mind and Freewill

Mind is a human being’s agent of freewill, which manifests as the immaterial intentional power of create-manifest causality. Mind is a private instance of immaterial ego consciousness docked to a physical body/brain/central nervous system live organism.

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Abraham Lincoln: “I reckon a man is about as happy as he makes up his mind to be.”

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Wavy Gravy: “The world is sad, but I am happy.”

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There are lots of circumstances in my life (or yours or anyone else’s) to be unhappy about. There are also lots of circumstances in my life to be happy about. Life is not much more than choosing one thing instead of another. What we pay attention to is one of those choices. You know, “is the glass half empty or half full?” That is almost trivial if you leave it as a cliché. However, it becomes profound if you grok the freedom implied by that state condition of every human life, that the glass is simultaneously half empty and half full.

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I choose to be happy, not because the circumstances of my life are all good. With careful repeated empirical observations, I have determined that the circumstances of my life do not determine my state of inner happiness or unhappiness, unless I permit them to. I choose to be happy not because of the circumstances in my life, but despite them. It is not good circumstances that make me happy, and it is not bad circumstances that make me unhappy.

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I am not saying that I am immune to reacting and responding to external circumstances, for instance if a loved one dies, I am not happy. If human beings in Gaza and Ukraine suffer, I am not happy. If wild animals die because of wild fires associated with climate change burn out of control, I am not happy. However, that does not deny that happiness is a fundamental choice, grounded in the core of my being. Happiness is a fundamental choice as surely as if I choose eggs for breakfast, or not.

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I (and you and every other human being) have immaterial ego consciousness docked to a physical live organism, and that means we have the power over attention, intention, choice and action, which is freewill.

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There is a sense in which everything is equal to everything else, for instance I know I can’t control anything, and that literally makes everything equal to everything else. I may not even be alive the next instant, and it coherently follows naturally that nothing matters more than anything else. Unless it does. Who determines if anything matters more than anything else? The meaning of anything is not intrinsic to that thing, rather you are free to bestow meaning upon it (literally everything). It is necessarily true each of us has freewill to make that determination. How powerful is that! That is intrinsically maximum powerful. That is real power of real freewill. Freewill power is the source of all other power, say voting in a democratic election, choice of career, choice of life partner, choice of having children, etc. including all possible choices which can literally include any choices you actually do make.

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I have discovered, if nothing matters, the fact I control nothing, is one of the things that doesn’t matter! Therefore, I act as if what I do matters, even though I know it does not. Lo and behold, I have also discovered that when I make choices and act consistently to support the choices I have made, I commonly create-manifest the outcomes I have chosen. I chose and created-manifested a family, career, having enough, loving the ones I am with, happiness, and so much more. It is coherent to believe since every human being has a mind (ego docked to physical), that every human being has freewill, and that they can learn how to create-manifest chosen outcomes by making use of the ego consciousness powers of intention, attention, choice and action.

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There are two categories of freewill choices, 1) contextual choices and 2) choices for specific outcomes. Contextual choices are the really powerful ones.

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I make choices and take action to create-manifest specific outcomes (say have a family), but I have also chosen to be grounded in happiness (whatever else I am doing or not doing, whatever else is happening or not happening), and that is a contextual choice that gives me powerful leverage over creating specific desired outcomes. Having made the contextual choice, happiness as a ground for my state of being, the result is consistently that I am happy while I play, happy while I work, happy while I love, happy while I take action to create chosen outcomes (only some of which I will actually create-manifest).

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Contextual choices are meta-choices, which means they are choices about choices. Contextual choices are literally choices about who you are (not about specific outcomes). Examples of contextual choices include happiness, grounded, joyful, playful, serious, creative, healthy, fit, powerful, prosperous, successful, honest, kind, loving, generous, self-actualized, life-long learner, faith, etc.

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I have discovered that it is important to pay attention to what I pay attention to because I am sure to get more of it. Unfortunately, that means more of anything I pay attention to, for example, good, bad and ugly. In other words when I pay attention to what I don’t want (whatever I determine is bad) I get more, not less, of it! So, I have used my ego consciousness to train my physical brain, which is an excellent physical organic information processing unit and memory storage device, to consistently pay attention to only what I do want. That is not perfect, but it certainly is awesome, and the more you practice the better at it you become.

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The physical body/brain/central nervous system does what ego consciousness commands it to do within the inviolable limits of the set of laws of physics, and the fact the whole physical universe is one live organism, which I call GAIA (I extend James Lovelock’s term for planet Earth). The whole universe is a holon unity of wholeness, and all the parts must fit into the synchronous harmony of that wholeness, so your choices are somehow in relation to everyone else’s choices (like it or not). Notwithstanding the limits imposed by laws of physics and wholeness of the universe, ego consciousness drives your personal bus; ego consciousness is the driver of your personal life. Ego consciousness is boss of the physical body/brain/central nervous system. If ego consciousness bothers to learn laws of physics, that permits ego consciousness to command laws of physics but does not permit ego consciousness to violate laws of physics.

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Therefore, it follows naturally that the better I understand how laws of physics work, the better I can create-manifest my life to work the way I choose it to work. I know I can do that for three specific reasons: 1) all laws of physics are automatic, 2) laws of physics are knowable, 3) I have had lots of years of successful practice making intentional use of my ego consciousness attention, intention, choice and action powers of immaterial create-manifest causality.

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Since it is a fact that every human being has a mind, which is a private ego consciousness docked to a physical body/brain/central nervous system, I soundly logically infer that every human being has freewill to choose to be happy independent of external reality circumstances. Happiness is a contextual life orientation grounded in the core of your being, literally who you are, which you intentionally choose to be.

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In fact, be here now is not actually a choice, rather it is a necessity, you literally could not, not be here now. Where else could you be and when else could you be there other than here now? What Ram Dass really meant, was, as simple as stop the world by smelling the roses. Cultivate through some spiritual meditation practice, the consciousness method of contemplation, which means perception and experience without any separation between 1) the subject to consciousness, 2) consciousness itself, and 3) objects of consciousness. In contemplation, happiness is closer than your breath.

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Everyone is necessarily exactly who they are, they could not, not be exactly who they are. Everyone can be close to but not identical with who they choose to be. External reality circumstances will frequently intervene to block you from creating-manifesting chosen outcomes, nevertheless with practice you can learn mastery to create-manifest a great many intentional choices. In fact, it is not laws of physics, or what other people do or do not do, that typically block you from creating-manifesting chosen outcomes, rather it is how consistently you act to support your choices.

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Imagine?? Choose?? Act?? Realize?? ?– ???That’s life.

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No one gets out of life alive, so you know for sure, you only get one shot at this life. There are no do-overs of this life. Even if there are multiple lifetimes for one human identity, that does not mean the next one is a do-over, rather it will be exactly only and always itself.

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Al’s psychological recipe for a good life:

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1.????? Set your contextual choices.

2.????? Activate the imagination function of ego consciousness to visualize desired specific outcomes.

3.????? Make choices.

4.????? Act consistently to support your choices.

5.????? Create-manifest the life that you choose.

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Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry, be happy. Be happy now. When you worry your troubles double.”

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Sherlock Holmes character: “The game is on!”

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Ram Dass: “Be here now.”