Why does one thought appear instead of another at a certain time in a particular way? Most people don't think thoughts. Most people have thoughts think them. Thoughts appear to arise unconsciously, spontaneously, and are identified and acted on without you realising that they don't have to be. When you become aware of your thoughts and learn to think consciously, you also learn not to have to think. Not having to think is very useful. The need to act on thoughts changes when there is no longer anything compelling you to do so. If you no longer have to act on thoughts, you can let them pass by while observing them. You have more free will to choose in any given moment when you have the freedom not to do so, simply by observing what takes place without defining, deciding or judging. We intuitively move towards that which we prefer and intuitively move away from that which we do not. The question is why do we prefer this and not that? According to how free we feel in any given moment, we act on that preference if we can. If we recognise we want to move towards something, is that free will or is that merely recognising something that is already pre-determined within us? Does it matter? Life is a series of choices and each of those choices leads to the next and the next, and some of those choices come to seemingly dead ends. If one learns not to be attached to the outcome of those choices and makes them with the intention of moving in the direction that feels most relevant at the time, then if things reach a point where they can’t go any further, if there’s no insistence on a particular outcome, it allows for another choice to be made in a positive way. This then becomes the guiding principle for what gets chosen, so it no longer becomes a question of having to choose everything intentionally but simply moving towards that which appears to represent what you prefer in a way that you prefer it. And in doing it like that, life will organise itself in a way for you to actually move in your chosen direction more easily. Is that free will? Could you have made a different choice, experienced different things? Yes, but would you if you were truly following your passion? So perhaps the point is, as long as you're being true to yourself and know who you are, act according to your truth without insisting on an outcome, without having to always know where you’re going, you find yourself going exactly where you need to go. Even if things don’t look the way you think they should, it doesn’t mean you won’t get there just because you did not yet achieve what you thought you would end up achieving. By accepting what takes place as being what needs to in order to go where you want to go, without insisting it has to look a particular way, you can end up somewhere far more real than you ever imagined simply because you did not hold tightly to what the circumstances had to look like for you to be convinced that you were the recipient of the results of your choice. You made a choice to set the ball in motion and took a more enlightened view not to insist that it must result in a particular outcome, knowing you can only imagine so much from where you are, knowing that if you insist that how you see things now is the only way they can be seen, you are limiting what could occur because there are things you simply cannot imagine yet. It sounds a lot like free will and yet perhaps our real job is not to get ourselves in the way so that we flow with the experience life brings rather than fighting against it. Trouble is people still get lost. They hold onto paths that don't really serve them and then wonder why they end up suffering. This is not a lack of free will choice though, it is simply a misunderstanding of how to act in a free way.