The question of free will is are we driven by our personal thoughts, feelings and desires or rather by the fundamental laws of nature. Whether we govern ourselves, or nature pulls the strings, can prove to be an exercise in chasing one’s own tail, for the concept of free will relies upon a key misguided assumption.
The primary premise of free will is the basic egoic misconception that the individual and their drives are something separate from, but dependent upon, an unfeeling natural world which may or may not be impassionately exercising its prerogative over us. When viewed properly one observes that everything, including a person and their will, is the very nature they suspect controls them, and when there is only one party there can be no master, and no slave. Therefore when one acknowledges themselves to be the universe, and that they came out of it, rather than into it, it becomes apparent that the physical and psychological realms are nothing more than fabricated conceptions of the same universal indivisible energy.
We can’t be controlled by an external force when we see ourselves to be that force. So whether or not one determines themselves free depends on if they choose to imagine themselves a discrete individual, or see themselves as the continuous universe.