Why do I feel as if my thoughts are planned? As if every single thought has been determined by God or someone else but not me? Could this be depersonalization and has anyone else dealt with this thought?

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Free will is misunderstood. It is something you need to work on, not something that just happens to you. If you’re very used to your own thoughts and the rules through which they arise, then it will be quite easy to predict them.

People think free will is about control, but it’s not. More control over yourself means more predictability over your actions. Only part of free will is about control. The other part is building the ability to let go. What use is control if you can’t enjoy it?

Determinism is a fantasy conjured up by materialists who would like nothing more than to have ultimate control over their existence. The dream is that they can learn enough about the world and about themselves so they never have to bother with this letting go business.

Determinism is, sadly, a very attractive concept culturally, it affects all of our social paradigms. It’s not just the result of materialists dreaming of a controllable world, it’s also the product of religionists dreaming of a world completely owned and controlled by God. The delusion is the same, only the imagined agency is different.

The reality is, we have the ability to conceive of and make meaning of the world we live in, and that meaning which we create has more power than both God and our dreams. For God loves us too much to interfere with our dreamed reality, and our conscious minds have more agency on their own than our dreams do, unless we abdicate that agency.

This is how to conceive of free will, as the space between our perceptions and our dreams. You perceive immense obstacles, and dream of freedom from them. Agency is daring to chart a path between ultimate slavery and ultimate freedom. Because either by themselves is utterly boring and existentially bankrupt.

If even your thoughts are determined by God, what lies beyond your thought? Think hard on that, see if you can come up with any answers, then wonder if God created those answers for you too. Plenty of things are beyond thought, and in front of thought and all these things bear down on your will. Understanding them more and more leads to greater will, greater agency. If God is in charge there too, then God is in charge of making you more powerful. God is literally planning to make you more powerful.

How cool is that?