Freedom
Some of us feel they have little freedom, they feel they miss the courage to stand for their desires and follow them despite the ruin it may bring. They are the ones that sell themselves out to stay connected to a partner, a friend, a boss, family or any group. They avoid conflict and choose to move away from themselves for the benefit of safety. They don’t complain or stir the pot, but they often feel like they are missing out, on themselves, or something out there, in the world they perceive as separate from themselves. Their behavior often results in a flat emotional life, where they have denied themselves anything for their own benefit and lose touch with what they want, their passion and their bodies. They lose touch with themselves. Often they don’t know that what they lose touch with is just beneath the surface and can be easily accessed.
Sometimes they see others, rebels, passionate ones, confronting people, even train wrecks and are jealous, or think that that means freedom. They envy what is on the other side and it will manifest as dislike, irritation, anger or the opposite, admiration, love, desire. However, both are on one end of the scale. Where the first group is unable to voice and follow their desire, the other group is unable to let go of them to benefit the group, the unit, the partner they live with or family. They are stuck in having no choice but to follow whatever they feel they want in their lives, sometimes to their detriment. Their lives are often filled with emotions, some of which seem bigger then them, and they often ignore their chains to their desires by saying they are truly free, rebels, wanderers that go against the grain. They relish the fact that they fall outside the norm and are hard to love.
No matter which group you tend to belong in, and some of us have visited both ends of the spectrum, somewhere along the way we all have learned that we are not supposed to have certain desires. That our thoughts or feelings and desires hurt others and we either had to relinquish ourselves, or the group. Why we fall the way we do probably depends on nature and the examples that we have had in our environment as well as experiences we have had in previous groups. One can find out where a pattern comes from by researching past role models and experiences, which can be helpful for those who are stuck with the question why. However, researching the why is usually just part of the journey, it won’t give you freedom from either group, since it doesn’t take away the habit, the past or our learned behavior.
A desire can feel very much like an expression of who we are, just like thoughts do and feelings. Whether you feel you don’t stand for them and have lost yourself, or you feel you are unable to relinquish them, in both sentiments lays a crucial misconception about our experience. These thoughts, feelings and desires are in no way, shape or form personal. They seem to be, and we in return are very attached to them, but there is no original thought, feeling, desire or problem in the world. They all have appeared elsewhere long before we where born and will do so long after our bodies have perished. They merely appear to us, much like this text appears to you right now. The white page behind it contains the words, they appear on it. You are the white background on which our thoughts, our desires and our feelings appear. Without the white background, these words would be hard to read. The words need the white background to be seen, but the white background does not need the words, it exists, on its own.
Freedom from desire, though or feeling does not mean giving them up, nor does it mean following them, even if these actions smell like freedom. Both represent chains or attachment. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with those things if you don’t mind being chained to something. But for those who feel limited by their behavior, this is a key element. For those who sense that something is amiss, that there is a different way, there is. True rebels move away from any chain they can see. They find a way out of the prison they are keeping in tact for themselves. They start an inner revolution against this one sided coin that appears as personal to them. Revolution means to have the ability to find both sides of the coin desires represent. It means being able to be happy with the fulfillment of it or without it. It means being able to see the truth of a thought and the untruth of it. It means feeling one way as well as the opposite way. This place resides in all of us, and some call it home. It means you are fine with going on vacation or staying at home, that you are at peace whether you follow a feeling of being in love or whether you don’t. It means you can see that any thought you have about yourself or anything that you think is separate from you is both true and not true.
This is what freedom means, to rise above man and mind. We must fight for it; we must find the passion inside ourselves to start a revolution, to rebel against our own polarized positions. To find the real truth hidden underneath all that life offers us. However, this task is only for the very few, for those brave enough to step away from their sense of self and go beyond, to find their true home where there is nothing missing from any moment. It cannot be faked, it cannot be forced, and it requires a true dedication to the mission and has to be experienced personally. Isn’t that a beautiful paradox?
