There is an intrinsic, built-in duality in every attribute nature has provided you. With your mind, you can either think and analyse so deeply that you reject any other mode of knowing. Or you can become completely thoughtless. With your intense thoughts you can either become a ground-breaking scientist, or with the absolute lack of them you become a consummate Yogi in entasy (samadhi). With your sexuality you can either create a child, or move towards Yogic heights. When life force flows downward in the sexual act, when opposing life forces meet, you create a child. When life forces move upward during the same sexual act, you make Yogic progress. There are two paths always, with only two causal intents, and only two repercussions. Hence, it is not a matter of whether the ‘mind’ or ‘sex’ is bad or good per se, but what response you bring to them, how you use them. What matters is whether you chose for or against Yogic growth, for or against your specie evolution.
In fact, there is a duality built into every choice you have, every action you perform. At the surface, it might seem that you are making one choice from a multitude of options, but in reality, you are simply saying yes or no, zero or one, up or down. Free will is essentially a binary choice system then, a matter of choosing for or against Yogic evolution. You either fall deeper into the self-propagating loop of your samskaric psyche-mind or you climb out of it inch by inch, choice by choice. You rise higher on the Yogic path, towards freedom from suffering. Towards true happiness.
Every moment, with every thought, you either evolve or devolve.
You either progress towards becoming post-human or you regress. Free will is as simple as that.
No action is bad or good in itself. Morality of that kind is utterly fake, good only for managing societies well. You must not categorically avoid any experience in life; that would be foolish. What matters is whether you use a situation to your Yogic advantage or not. In fact, avoiding an experience, in the name of morality, because the world says so, may not be a gain, but a Yogic loss. It seems counter-intuitive, but it may be a misuse of your free will. A loss because you will have probably missed a chapter of your own tailor -made course in Yogic evolution, by skipping out of a class. Remember how we talked about our samskaras being subtle information which holographically project as experiences in life? Remember how the potential energy of our samskaras necessarily converts to the kinetic energy of experiences? So if you avoid any experience that faces you, you are not doing yourself any good. It was due, it is just your samskaras taking life. Avoiding it would be a double whammy because first, you are misusing your free-will and second, those samskaras are still inside you, waiting for resolution. That experience, or a similar one will arise again to exhaust them, no matter how much you run away from it.
So avoiding ‘bad’ situations in life is not a good strategy at all. It has nothing to do with morality. Embrace it and learn what it has come to teach. Resolve the samskara that has come up, calling out for resolution.
But what if you know the experience will be unpleasant? What if you have been told and taught to never indulge in something? In Yogic reality what matters is how you deal with an experience, what response you bring to it. It is not a matter of avoiding a situation but of thinking, “What is my motivation for doing this? What response will strengthen my identity? Am I doing this thing because the world tells me it is the right thing to do? Am I doing it to become more acceptable? Am I doing this because I fear something? Because I fear loss, nonacceptance and pain?”. If the response is yes, even a seemingly ‘moral’ action is actually leading to yogic devolution. It is the misuse of your free will.
Let us say your culture has taught you that ‘drinking’ is morally wrong. So you do not drink, you avoid all situations and every chance for it. Are you truly using your free will though, and rightly? Let us dissect the following hypothetical situation, with brutal honesty. (People usually won’t talk about their true feelings and motivations)
Q. Why don’t you drink alcohol?
A. I am afraid of doing it.
Q. Why?
A. I will have done a wrong thing.
Q. What is wrong about it?
A. My culture says so. It is unacceptable in my family. Good people do not drink.
Q. So you want to be a good person?
A.Yes, I want to be known as a good person. I want everyone to accept, like and praise me. Only then will I be able to like me.
Don’t you see the motivation for this choice of yours? It comes from the fear of nonacceptance and also the desire to strengthen and protect your identity. Frankly, that is not moral. Not in the Yogic sense, in the least. In the yogic context, the true context of your life, you have chosen to devolve. You have given into your fears and oiled up your identity.
Irrespective of whether drinking is right or wrong, and that is hardly the topic of debate here, lets assume another such hypothetical conversation.
You have chosen to not drink alcohol again, but this time your motivations are entirely different.
Q. What do you fear about drinking?
A. Nothing, I do not fear it. I have tried it, but I would rather not do it.
Q. Why? All your friends do.
A. So it is all right if they do, I have no fear of being an odd one.
Q. Oh, so people, your culture must think you are a good person.
A. I do not care if anybody mistakenly thinks of me as ‘good’ or ‘moral’ because I do not drink. I don’t ‘not drink’ because of that.
Q. So why do you not drink then?
A. Because I know of other ways to feel better, have better experiences. I don’t feel the need to.
The same situation, but a contradictory motivation, no? You do not drink to protect your identity or out of fear, but because you simply do not desire to. You have other desires which give you similar or better experiences. That is a choice toward Yogic evolution.
Thus for any choice, irrespective of the situation and despite pre-conceived notions of right and wrong, you must examine deeper. You must ask, “What fears do I have about this situation? What desires? Is my desire motivated by a fear or not? What response will kill my fears of the situation? What response will not give my identity further strength?” The response which emerges will lead to Yogic evolution.
That choice will be the true use of your free will.