There's no such thing as free will.

Everyone must play their part in the Universe. That's the thing with happiness and following(key word) your highest excitement. Universe wants you to do certain things. It lures you with happiness. If you do not follow your excitements you won't be happy and will feel empty.

How is that free will?

free will exists, as choices
consciously made, if you do
without reason it is
forfited to slavery

As Bashar would say: "Not this or that, but this and that." We are both predetermined and absolutely free.

This question is brought up in Thorwald Dethlefsen's classic, The Challenge of Fate. "Determinism and free will are two poles which condition one another and belong together and are not mutually exclusive as is widely believed. As with every polarity our understanding finds it difficult, if not impossible to grasp how these two poles can exist simultaneously. Yet one cannot live without the other and vice versa. They depend on each other like light and darkness, breathing in and breathing out. Therefore the way to freedom is through the accomplishment of the law of fate.

The paradoxical truth is, only by submitting to law can one be free. Yet the majority try to achieve freedom through arbitrary willfulness, not realizing that this way leads to loss of freedom. Suffering is merely the friction that arises between the human being and the laws of this world. To fulfill the law means to no longer experience friction...Thus Crowley writes: 'Each human being should be like a star and follow his own path.' A star is free so long as it follows its own trajectory. The loss of freedom only begins with departure from the path."

Back to Bashar, he emphasizes that in surrendering, we are firmly in control. Same idea.

"You are completely in control by flowing along the lines of least resistance. Thus, it does not feel like you have to steer. The only time it feels like you have to do the steering is when you fight your own ecstasy. Giving in to your own ecstasy, surrendering, quote/unquote, to the universal flow of things allows you to know that you are squarely in control. Because then it is effortless to create the reality you prefer, because you are drawing everything in parallel lines, and not going against the flow."

I believe these are the same thing. We like to say hot and cold are opposites. The boiling point of water is 212 degrees, we can say yes that is hot. The freezing point of water is 32 degrees and we can say that is cold. Now compare the boiling point of water to the temperature of the sun, 212 degrees is freezing cold compared to the sun! The same for the freezing point of water, compared to the vacuum of outer space 32 degrees is boiling hot!

They are not opposites but varying degrees of the same thing.

So if we look at free will we see this operates from a level of consciousness mostly in beta awareness. But the other part of the spectrum you have everything is determined. This is not the same level, this is an unaware level, the same as karma.

To see this level is to see not the self but humanity as one so something that seems random could be something affected from our choices or others choices like humanity is a giant machine, we turn a gear, and all other gears are affected, others turn gears and all other gears are affected.

So from this view we need to think of our consciousness as part of the fabric of all consciousness thus all in various ways affecting each other and without this awareness it seems as if we are tossed around wandering here and there and thinking everything is luck or predestined. The kicker here is maybe this is more than that, maybe it's also through all time, now that is a complex brain!

we do not have control even on what happens within us. For example, in one's mind around 60000-80000 (https://www.successconsciousness.com) thoughts are unconsciously created daily, and whatever action one performs (in thinking, speaking and acting) consciously or unconsciously is also recorded so that memory is made possible. Such great activities of creation and recording are automatically done just like blood automatically flows from a cut whether it is caused by a blade by choice or by chance. Mind does that creation of thoughts, and our intellect chooses from them what is beneficial and wasteful.

Everything that happens is a process which has a beginning and end with many factors and forces acting in between. Hence our part is too little to measure, and I am just an instrument. This concept is contained in the Sanskrit word nimith (meaning 'I just happened to be an instrument through which something happened). This attitude would help us not to feel elated over the pleasant and not to grieve over the unpleasant.

I believe it depends if you consider yourself as being the core being (the inner being) or the physical being... by default I conceive my inner-being as separate if I use my mind to decide this.

If I try to feel an answer to this question, I feel that I am totally free even if my life doesn't show it always.

If there is a destiny... it might have been chosen by us as a way of experiencing lights and shadows. This would still be a free will choice.

I think the work indeed is "to reverse the evidence of our physical senses " as Charles Haannel mentions and to not completely loose oneself in the physical illusion (even if this seems to be the actual reality).