Absolutely everyone, in different phases of their lives, in different moments of perception, has experienced both the feeling of impenetrable limitations and the feeling of having a wider range of options.
According to the dictionary ‘freedom’ is the ability of a person to exercise his/her own will. But let’s think: is our own will something independent and unlimited? Or is it driven and guided by the circumstances and one’s personal past (although these are not really different things)?
What can we say about the circumstances? … Are they restrictive by themselves or is it rather our attitude towards them that blocks us? Anyway, the very desire to change these circumstances is sufficient indication of our dependence.
Whatever the circumstances, our desire for liberation is usually a form of resistance against them and any resistance leads to increased external sensitivity and exacerbates the feeling of being limited. However it does not lead to liberation.
What can we say regarding one’s personal past? … Isn’t it so that the will exercised yesterday largely brings us to the type of its manifestation today? As Krishnamurti says, our actions are determined by our ideas, which in turn are determined by our life experiences.
The relative and superficial freedom in this world has helped us to only create our world exactly as it is now. Yet, towards its current state, our will is manifested in the form of reactions. And the reactions are something secondary and driven, which means that there is no creativity in them at all.
For us, freedom is the right to choose or the so called free will which, it is said, is the greatest gift received by man. A symbol of free will in the Old Testament, for example, is Eve. Adam who received it, however, benefited from all the qualities of his creator (which is expressed by the fact that God created the animals and sent them to Adam to give them names).
What then would the free will mean for such wholeness? Since Eve was created from his rib, she is a personification of the possibility for a will isolated from the whole. And, as mentioned, the snake was able to speak only with her. And that Adam, who chose exactly to be separated, as a result was forced to close in himself each decision, and that decision subsequently was driving him until its charge was exhausted.
What does now the need to choose suggest? Isn’t it our desire to identify ourselves – to be something more tangible, more established, more significant…? But all these affirmations, are they not the opposite of independence and unlimitedness? In this sense, each choice makes us increasingly unfree.
We cannot deny the predestination to which we have subjected ourselves, the destiny evoked by our own past and its non-compliance with the laws of nature.
Long ago Eastern religions, and more recently modern physics show us that there is not a single particle in the universe that has its own separate existence, and everything is the result of the interaction of all.
In such a case, is there freedom at all?
Of course there is, but only for the All comprising all the possibilities, and not for the individual manifested opportunity seeking to gain ground for itself, thus becoming fixed and immobile, i.e. unreceptive and lifeless.
Which is the way back? There is nothing concrete (the word “concrete” in Latin means “hard”), which we need to do so as to overcome our personal limitations or to liberate ourselves from them but to immediately become aware of these limitations. By seeing our borders, we actually see the laws by which nature operates.
The basis of all dependencies is our desire to be more significant and prominent amid everything else. We can call it also a desire for personal freedom. This freedom is our greatest limitation. And because this freedom is evoked by our desire to be significant, then its managing impacts are geared towards this desire.
Becoming deprived of the self-centered impulse for personal freedom and significance takes away the fulcrum of all dependencies and they lose the ability to control us. When the wall which we erect inside us to resist and to meet all the challenges disappears, then it is not possible any more for something to hit us or to exert pressure. The streams of life flow naturally, both in general and for the individuality which we represent.
There are no opposites, there is no confrontation, no dependence.
As said before, all the opportunities are present only in the wholeness, and deprivation of the desire of the individual to be important leads to relaxation and receptivity, that is – openness to all. And freedom has always been there. In fact, as it regards the human being, the very openness is freedom. When the human being thus becomes receptive to something more universal and absolute, this can be even more rightfully denoted as Freedom.
It’s not personal. It is the Freedom itself.
