The Perfection of Free Will - surrender to divine love

The will is the power which moves everything in the conscious world.

How you choose to move and interact with the world is determined by your will. While our limited sphere of influence moves according to our will, the entire reality moves according to God’s will.

God is omnipotent, his will is all-powerful. There is no limit on an all-powerful will. God’s will is always effective, whatever he desires becomes actual.

God’s will is the underlying structure of reality. The entire cosmos moves according to God’s will. Whatever happens must ultimately have his sanction. He’s the cause of all causes, the controlling force of all.

And it’s God’s will that we are free.

God doesn’t interfere with our choices. We have inner autonomy, our conscience is the judge of what is right.

This freedom of our will means we can move in harmony with God’s will or we can move against it. When we do something God doesn’t want, we make God’s will subservient to ours.

But this isn’t the natural state of reality, so when we act against God’s will, we no longer exist within the divine realm, we exist within the material world. The material world is the place where we are free to ignore God.

To exist within the material world means reality has become our object and moves according to our command, not God’s. God’s will is hidden, replaced by the mathematical laws of action-reaction (karma).

The instrument which is responsible for God being hidden is the same instrument which can illuminate him. A misuse of our free will is the reason we’re separated from God, so free will is the only instrument that can re-connect us.

The Super-subject

In relation to matter, we are the subject and matter is our object. But in relation to God, God is the subject and we are his object. Knowledge of God isn’t in our power to take, it depends on God’s power, God’s will.

The intellect only has the power to know God in a theoretical sense, as a detached acceptance of some factual proposition. Only the will has the power to know God in an experiential sense.

To know God we must submit our will to his. You can’t know God without also knowing he is omnipotent and reality moves according to his will.

That isn’t a theoretical truth we can claim to believe and expect our lived experience won’t confirm it. Just as we can’t believe gravity causes us to fall and then jump from a cliff expecting to fly.

To be under the illusion that reality moves independently of God is to exist in the material world, a world where our will is the causal power and matter is our object. To submit to God’s will is to exist in the divine world, the world where God resides and his existence isn’t hidden.

Surrender to God’s will

To our ears, submission to God sounds like oppression. But the highest expression of surrender to God is love. If we freely submit to the will of another, we are trying to please them by fulfilling their desires. Our will becomes subservient to theirs. It’s an unselfish act, a giving of our own self to the object of our love.

In proportion to the depth of our sincerity in wanting to please God, we’ll gain knowledge of him. As the purity of our desire increases, our knowledge increases. And we can’t cheat or lie, sincerity can’t be faked. We’ll get what we really want because God has granted that power to us. It’s only when we sincerely want God that we will get him.

The catalyst for success is sincerity, and sincerity is internal, a state of our inner self. Sincerity isn’t dependent on the outer form of our actions but our motivation, the reason behind our actions. A child may offer their parents a mud pie, something that is outwardly useless, but the parent accepts the love which motivated the offering. It’s the love that pleases the parent, not the item.

Many people say they want God, but really they want some other benefit God can give them. They may want money, followers and admirers; a community of like-minded people; a salve for a guilty conscience; or comfort in times of hardship. We get whatever it is we really want.

Enforcing God’s will

Many religious people think they know God’s will and it’s their duty to enforce it on others. They say it’s God’s will we should act in a certain way and if we don’t comply God will punish us.

But that is their way, not God’s. If God wanted someone to act in a certain way, it would happen. Because God is omnipotent and his will is always effective.

God isn’t incapable of enforcing his will. For God’s will to be effective, no extra effort is required on his part. Just as we don’t need to do anything more than exert our will for our body to move and follow our commands.

God doesn’t need a self-appointed police force to impose his will on others. Someone appointing themselves as the arbiter and enforcer of God’s will has misunderstood what it means for us to have free will.

God’s will is that we are free to choose in accord with our conscience. That is what free will consists of. And if we are our own inner judge, then what is right for me may not be right for you.

The perfection of freedom

We each have different goals. Our spiritual goals are what we decide is the ultimate fulfilment of our existence. The path we follow depends on our chosen destination, as well as our starting point, abilities and resources.

To be authentic, the path must be an expression of our faith. Faith can’t be purchased second-hand, it’s not something external to ourselves but the expression of our inner nature. Faith is an act of will, a movement of the essence of who we are.

Faith expresses our highest ideals, our values, and what we consider sacred. Faith is how we choose to live. The intellect has it’s limited contribution to make in that decision, but it’s the will that must move and act.

The will takes us beyond the intellectual theory to immerse ourselves in the reality of those ideals.

It’s only when our highest ideals align with the true nature of reality that we achieve the perfect expression of our free will. The true nature of reality is that God’s will is the cause of all movement. If our will is in dissonance with God’s, we’ve made a mistake, our actions are tainted with ignorance.

Anything less than complete surrender to an all-good God falls short of perfection. And complete surrender to God is motivated by love. Love of God is the consummation of our existence, the state of being in which we find our complete fulfilment and repose.