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The secret of
freedom is courage.
The moment we become even
remotely aware of our enslaved state in this world, we long for
liberation and freedom.
...and most importantly
free from fear...
The reality is that this problem has perpetuated itself throughout history, and since the dawn of time.
Every man and every woman in every culture has searched for freedom.
When you ask most people what they would define as freedom they will most likely answer something along the lines of:
Have you ever stopped to think about this interpretation of freedom? If everyone really did whatever they wanted this would not truly be freedom - this would be chaos and anarchy.
Why...? Because everyone
has a different idea of what they want in life, and while one thing
might benefit another person, it might impair or completely destroy
the life of another.
Religions have tried to use morality systems as life guidelines but as we have seen, this hasn't been very effective. To be free to do 'what is right' we have to first be able to cultivate the maturity and wisdom to be aware of the consequences of our actions.
To be free we must become responsible human beings - but yet most of us just want irresponsibility. People continue to talk about freedom, but we don't want freedom, what we want is to be licentious...
Unless your freedom can
help you go higher than you were before - to grow in spirit,
compassion, gratitude, unity and forgiveness - then your freedom is
most likely another form of enslavement to your stimulation and
pleasure seeking, fear driven, emotionally reactive, lower self.
But this is only one kind of enslavement! In reality, there are three types of freedom:
On one hand, our physical enslavement is that which relates to our external bodies.
We might be in chains or
behind bars, we might be held captive and tortured as prisoners of
war. We might be in a country that holds our race or gender as
inferior like ancient China where women were seen as property and
you had all the legal right to kill them if you wanted.
At a young age, for instance, we were taught cultural ideologies of a political, social and religious nature, and throughout our lives we adopted them as the "absolute truths" in our versions of reality.
We also developed beliefs about ourselves, sometimes delusionally grand, and other times grossly warped such as the convictions that we are lazy, ugly, unintelligent or unworthy.
In doing so we lost our
Self-Love and our authenticity.
But true freedom, spiritual freedom, is to be free in thought and free in soul...
Only then can we be authentically true to ourselves.
We like to blame our
governments, our religions, our parents, our teachers and our
societies, but the truth is that we limit our own freedom by not
being aware and responsible for our thoughts, feelings, decisions
and behaviors.
Freedom + Awareness
We need to be aware that we aren't, in fact, free, before we can pursue freedom.
The first
and last step towards personal freedom is
complete awareness.
...he was attempting to liberate himself from the enslavement to his beliefs.
He was stating that, while there was a God that lived, man could never be free, as that would merely turn us into puppets.
But Nietzsche's words were misinterpret by many (as is usually the case), and in doing so, those that rebelled against 'God' enslaved themselves even more, becoming reactionary.
Just like every other 'revolutionary' who is against something, they are never really free.
These people are enslaved to their own thoughts about what they are fighting for or against and their own emotional reactions to it.
Only through awareness can
we be totally free, and only though awareness can we choose to
remove ourselves from the games of duality, finding our innate
wholeness.
If your government is
sick with ideologies and out of frustration you choose to react,
rebel and become ideologically sick also, this only leads to chaos.
Interestingly the origin of the word:
...which is Persian for 'a walled, enclosed, garden' reveals the true nature of the idea of paradise:
The same is true of the story of 'Adam and Eve,' who, once eating from the Tree of Knowledge, became free from the confines of 'Paradise', with God releasing them and their potential.
However, without developing our awareness, we've again created our prisons in the form of,
Our perception of freedom is always external:
We ask God to help us because we don't want to take responsibility for our own lives and we don't have the courage to experience our own divinity.
And
when God doesn't help us, when the world doesn't turn out the way we
want, we blame others.
Very quickly we throw our happiness into the other person's hands thinking they'll fulfill everything we desire out of life - but in doing so we have enslaved ourselves to them.
How...?
For example,
This is the nature of every encounter with other people.
Someone cuts us off on the road, we blame them as 'idiots' and become angry instead of taking responsibility for our patience, tolerance and expectations of others.
The truth is that we never made a deal with them that they shouldn't behave the way they do - we only project our ideals of responsibility onto them so they don't make our lives more difficult.
We never stop to think that the key to freedom is
changing something inside of us, rather than something on the
outside.
This is,
Freedom from past thoughts and future
expectations is true freedom. Free to be, to exist, to experience
joy, God, innocence, consciousness, is true freedom and is entirely,
internally of the present moment.
You can only change yourself and embody the message you wish to share.
To be aware is to be responsible and to be responsible is having the freedom to respond...
For example, we try to ignore or destroy parts of our inner being, of our shadow selves, so that we can pretend to be calm and collected.
A priest must control his
sexual desires so that he can continue to be inauthentic and appear
celibate or saintly even though his thoughts are 'perverse' to his
standards. However, in the end this only creates neuroticism,
self-denial and self-hate - something the desire to control and
repress causes in everyone.
We are so habituated to
avoiding taking risks because
of our fear of the uncertain and unknown. It is only through
self-love, of feeling comfortable in ourselves, that we can resist
depending on external excuses to be more responsible.
Our individual ideas of 'freedom' can become other people's binding problems. We can only choose to be aware of our authenticity, reflecting and responding to it in ways that will not interfere with other people's authenticity.
If you are truly
responding authentically, you realize that to respect another's
freedom is to respect your own.
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