freedom

Freedom is a feeling, a psychological feeling, of spaciousness, of infinite possibilities. And to feel freedom, one needs the courage to be able to feel that space. Because of all those infinite possibilities, we can only hope to know what a few of them may bring us. And even that knowledge is prone to error. But of the whole space of possibility, unbounded, unlimited? There are vast tracts there that have never been charted. So just to sit in that space of possibility requires a courage, a trust in existence.

And so, ordinarily, we surrender the feeling of freedom in exchange for a feeling of security, of the known. But that security is not a real security. The mind feels comfortable with what it has seen before. With that it can predict, or try to predict, the future course of events. And with that comes the sense of security. But the future is not known and the mind that believes that it can foretell the future, is deluding us. For the sake of a false sense of security, we have surrendered freedom. And that is a heavy price to pay.

And there is another reason we are happy to give up freedom; or believe that we are happy to do so. And that is, we like to feel that we belong in a group, a group of people. It may be a family; it may be a nation state; an organised religion; a fan club of a football team or a pop group. Why do we feel this need to belong to a group? That is, of course, compensating for a feeling of incompleteness within ourself. Whilst we do not feel whole within, we are forever attaching ourselves to outward things, be they material or in the form of relationships in these groups of people. All of this gives us an identity and that identity is a substitute for the feeling of completeness within oneself.

But to belong to a group, we have to live by the expectations, by the laws, written or unwritten, of that group. And those expectations, those rules of behaviour, are a constraint upon us. And again, we have given away our freedom in exchange for this feeling of belonging.

There is another way to be though, a way of complete freedom. And paradoxically, in the space of complete freedom, the sense of belonging becomes much vaster and more total than any little sports club membership can offer, or even a nation state or religion.

Find that space within yourself where you are whole and you will find that your need to complete yourself with outward things will drop away. And that dropping away is also the dissolving of the gilded cage which you had built for yourself, out of your need to belong, your need to conform, your need to be accepted. All of this can melt away, leaving you in the infinite space of existence and belonging to existence more completely and more directly than any other belonging you have felt hitherto. And it is no constraint. It is the total freedom of infinite possibility. The whole of life is a playground where you can roam at will, playing by whatever rules you feel, in the moment, to play by. Or to play by no rules at all. Life is full of possibility. And if you have a little courage, you can live in total freedom and enjoy as many of those possibilities as you choose.