There is a built-in flow, or logic, to every idea, every event in life, and every person.

There is, if you like, a beginning, a middle, and an end to everything and everyone – and the process of moving from the beginning, through the middle, to the end is conditioned by the beginning.

In other words, the place where you were born, the time in which you were born, the parents to whom you were born and the extended family, society, and culture into which you were born all have a direct and lasting effect on the way you live your life and the decisions you make.

If you are born a Hindu in a poor rural village in India, the circumstances of your life and the types of choices that confront you in that society will condition your outlook on life and, therefore, the decisions you make about your life.

If you are born to a wealthy Baptist family in a bustling city in Australia, your decisions will be similarly conditioned and, at least on the surface, your life will be different to that of your Hindu peer.

Your beginnings will take you down a life path that follows the logic of where you started out – either because of or in spite of where and how you started.

So will everyone else’s.

Which means that, in fact, we don’t really make decisions. The decisions are already contained in our beginnings. When there seem to be a number of options, our beginnings - the flow of mindset and attitude (conditioning) that is built in to us - will leave us with only one door to walk through. We don’t actually have lots of options. We only ever have one. And it is the one we will think we have consciously chosen. And it will always be the right one for us, at that time.

Even the decisions that get us into what seem to be difficult or unpleasant or downright agonising situations are the right ones – because they teach us something about why we are alive at all.

They teach us about the nature of being. They show us that we are something more than molecules and saliva and blood cells and eyebrows and ear wax. They prove to us that we are, in essence, spirit, or soul.

That our beginnings are not, in fact, our human births with all the conditions that come with that but a living matrix of unconditional love that uses our physical form, even the ear wax, to manifest itself.

So, the conditional and conditioned existence that we lead at the physical level is the logic of our soul self expressing itself.

And that means that our lives have a built-in purpose of which we are made to be progressively more aware through the conditions in which we find ourselves and that mould our decisions.

In other words, what we are and what we’re doing right now is what we’re supposed to be – and be doing – whether it is comfortable and pleasant or not.

So the only freedom of choice or free will we have is the only freedom of choice or free will we need – and that is to choose to understand the logic of our particular life so that we may live it fully, with gladness, and, consequently, to the benefit of everyone on the planet.

My book "What If?" provides some solutions to the questions we ask...