As someone who spent years in comparative religion before bailing out to actually deliver babies here in Birmingham, this hits hard. We’re raised to believe there’s a little CEO in our heads pulling the levers. But Buddhism’s been saying for millennia that the sense of a solid, deciding self is just a useful fiction. Anātman, or no-self, isn’t some watered-down wellness mantra (and I know how much I hate seeing it stripped of context and slapped on “manifest your best life” merch). It’s a direct observation of how consciousness actually works. What we call “will” is really just a cascade of conditioned responses, memories, and environmental cues getting packaged up by the brain after the fact.

It’s exactly why Carl Jung kept warning us about confusing the ego with the whole psyche. We keep mistaking the narrator for the author. I see it every shift at the hospital. Labor isn’t something you “decide” through sheer force of will. You work with the body’s rhythms, you surrender to what’s already happening, and you guide rather than control. It’s why I’ve always hated how people read the Chariot in tarot. We’re told it’s about domination, steering your destiny with an iron grip. But look at the card. Two sphinxes, opposing forces, a figure sitting relatively passive while the path unfolds. It’s not about a heroic self making choices. It’s about recognizing that you’re the vessel, not the pilot.

I’m not saying free will is dead. I’m saying our model of it is completely wrong. If we’re just narrating decisions our nervous system already made, maybe the real spiritual work isn’t about “making better choices.” Maybe it’s about quieting the noise so we can actually see what’s moving through us. I’d love to hear if anyone else has felt this shift when they started tracking their own decision patterns. Does the illusion crack for you too, or does it just feel like more determinism creeping in?