A hypothetical mother had a negative parent and was forced to learn an instrument she hated during childhood. She has her own child and decides to be positive parent and she decides not to enforce an activity like the musical instrument she herself hated learning. She decides this because she had a negative thought loop stuck in her head for years about these things and she felt like this negative thought loop influenced her actions. She felt her free will was compromised but meditation is the key, it shows her she is not her emotions and learns to apply positive thinking to change negative thoughts and escape compulsive behavior. She will never reprimand herself in her mind or ever let this negativity influence her because she is now free of influence. She meditated away her lack of free will right? Because she decided to need meditation of her own free will and not the influence of everything in the world except herself? There was no free will in any of this. The choices the mother's parents made came from the choices their parents made - they had their reasons for being critical and forcing that instrument on their child. Those parents had their reasons which are also completely out of their control, decisions going back into their parents, and their parents etc back to the very first atom. Free will only exists in the infinite reactions of the infinite. One drop in the ocean does not determine the course of the tides. The mother's child is no more able to decide than any one individual in the chain. Everything is simply a reaction of everything else, since atom 1.    If there is free will then it is the free will of the universal consciousness. It is impossible for the individual to do any more than go with this flow, our impulses are simply that. And no we cannot meditate into the infinite, take a piece of this infinite out of the experience of the infinite and retain it in waking life. We can never truly make an individual decision as members of the human race.