Freedom Friday #1
What is freedom?
'Freedom is the ultimate experience of life.
There is nothing higher than that.'
Freedom is our birthright. It is our natural state, and, as Osho said, 'the ultimate experience of life.' But what is this freedom that we speak about?
It is simply the realisation that there is truly nothing to do, and nothing we must do. Yes, of course there are things in life that require our actions - feeding ourselves, washing etc. - but these kinds of things can be done in freedom. One is truly free when the things that one does are natural; the same actions can be easily performed in an unnatural way, but if that is the case, then freedom is absent. Let me give an example:
Take a bird, one that flies freely in the sky. If one was to capture that bird and lock it in a cage, one the size of a house, then would that bird be considered free, or in captivity? Technically, the bird hasn't been deprived of its right to fly around, but there is something fundamentally different about the nature of its current situation.
In the sky, before being captured and locked away in a cage, the bird is able to fly in each and every direction it desires; there is no limitation to its flying. Of course, some areas and regions are naturally unsafe or unpleasant for the bird to fly in, but for the most part, the bird is free - naturally free. Now, as the bird gets captured and thrown into a cage, the cage acts as a barrier, a limitation of its ability to fly. The bird can still perform the very act of flying without a bother, but it is suppressed.
This very same thing is happening, and always has been happening, in the world around us, but instead of birds being locked away in cages, (it still happens, don't get me wrong, but for the sake of this discussion, I use this concept solely as a metaphor) it is us humans that are being imprisoned in our minds, while our thoughts and beliefs act as a cage, a barrier, a limitation to our infinite potential.
This is what people call being 'closed-minded'. The paradox of this 'closed' and 'open' mind thing is that if one claims to be 'open-minded' and sees 'closed-minded-ness' as a bad thing, then isn't that person simply 'closed' himself, limiting his view of the world to the one considered 'open'?
In my view, the way to go about this is to first acknowledge freedom for what it is - the natural state of all life everywhere - and then examine your current position; whether you are in fact free or not.
As G.I. Gurdjieff said: If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realise that you are in prison.
Ignorance can be blissful, don't get me wrong, but without the ability to see the full picture, to see the potential dwelling right outside of the prison we find ourselves in, we are operating on but a mere fraction of our aptitude, and this limitation doesn't leave much room for us to grow. Yes, we may be happy and alive, but evolution, ascension, and progression - learning and constantly changing - has more importance to life than mere happiness and bliss.
What I have touched on here is freedom from the mind. There is also of course physical freedom, physical captivity, and physical limitations which restrain us from certain actions, but in most cases, these are all simply external projections of our internal struggles and limitations; if you believe that you are incapable of doing this or that, going somewhere, changing your current situation, you most likely will not be capable of accomplishing any of these things, all for the simple reason that what we think and believe to be true manifests itself into reality.
In next week's post, I will continue where I left off, exploring the ties between mental enslavement and physical enslavement, and will be giving examples of how our limiting beliefs limit us externally.
Something to think on:
By simply changing your beliefs and view of the world, the world around you will change.
Sources -
Image 1 - Osho
Image 2 - Bird in a cage
Image 3 - Freedom from the mind