Freedom - A Voluntary Walk Into The Unknown

Freedom is a wish that is granted only to the capable. There are some who have been granted this freedom as a novelty item and they have suffered its wrath. It is not a question of abuse, you see it is like holding fire, if you don’t cover your hands with something to protect you from the fire, the fire will burn you to ashes. You must have the tools to direct the fire, but if you stumble across courage, you will willingly burn yourself to ashes.

Freedom is a jungle that is without a pattern, it is pathless, it has no guide, it has no teaching, no way, and I want you to ask yourself this question, if you are left in a jungle, do you have the tools and the capabilities to keep yourself alive? Freedom is not a comfortable sofa that you sit on whilst you relax unto eternity, it is a treacherous, dark and trench jungle with unseen valleys, caves consisting of the most malevolent creatures of every kind. The question is not whether you want freedom or not, the question is, can you handle it?

There are chains that bind you as of this moment, these chains not only bind you but they also protect you from the wrath, that is freedom. The surging volcano within you will turn everything to ashes if it is unleashed, to make sure that it is not, these chains limit you. The world outside your prison is not of comfort, but of survival, of rebellion, it is a world of fire. Can you ride the fire that surges within you?

You might talk about being free, about being liberal and having an open mind but the ones who say this are themselves struggling because it is not something that you can just be, it is something that is an existential consequence, it is an existential currency that one earns by doing exactly what he wants to do despite the friction life might give him. There is no compromise, no bargaining with life, the only solution is to be as authentic as you possibly can. I don’t want you to consider social or political freedom right now, we are talking about your being, if you are internally free, then the external chains do not matter. Let me say this again if you are internally free, it doesn’t matter how you are tied up. For centuries it is believed that the mind is a creator but that is not true, the ignorant believed it for the lack of insight, the mind is not a creator, it is a mirror. The demons that you think you create do not exist. A mirror can reflect what is in front of it, freedom is deciding what is in front of your mirror.

The infamous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had an interesting event in his life that might help you understand freedom. Everyone knows him to be against Catholicism and traditional Christianity, but one might ask why he went through the discipline and effort of knowing all about it if he was so strongly against it. This is the best example of examining your chains before being free from them. The discipline that he went through created a fire within him that gave him the perception of going beyond itself. He burnt his chains by disciplining his life in prison, when he looked at his prison, he didn’t aim to get out of it because that makes one deluded, it makes one frantic and less observant. He made his prison a part of him, he was like a raw mango on a branch that was ripening and as soon as it ripened, the branch itself dropped it. The fire within you will burn your chains whether you like it or not, but it must happen without you wanting it to happen.

Ask yourself this question, “Do I want to be free or do I want to rebel for freedom so that the prison I am in right now feels liveable?” Fighting for some sort of freedom gives your monotonous life meaning, doesn’t it? If you are granted the freedom you desire, you will go insane because you cannot handle it, this surface rebellion cannot handle the energy that actual freedom resonates with. To be outwardly free is a gimmick, to be inwardly free has always been the crust of who you are. When we talk about the individual who wants to be free from suffering, you see, it is not that easy, you can’t just run away from it or request it from anyone, no one is keeping you in prison but yourself. I have always wondered that if there is a part of us that wants to be free, there must be another part that is fearful of freedom. And for the majority of us, the latter takes over the former. This very conflict between the two parts drains you out, it takes away the most vital energy from you, and this journey from untruth to truth is full of suffering, which most decide not to undertake. They decorate their prisons with gold, art, music and call it freedom.

The more you dive into the depths of your being you will see that the ocean we have created for ourselves is so vast and so deep, the chains keep pulling you down and you keep wanting to gasp for that air above. It is ironic, but do you know the first rule to keep afloat and survive the salty waters of the seas? Let go of the struggle. Try it in a swimming pool, instead of struggling, gasping and moving here and there just leave yourself loose, let the body be, let your mind be, see the separation between you, your body and your mind and suddenly you will find yourself floating on the surface. The chains will keep dragging you down until you try to be free, the prison will keep you a prisoner as long as you demand freedom. When there is no question of freedom, freedom appears. Once the fire within you burns, it burns your desire to be free. The paradox of life is this moment when the fire consumes you, it will lead you to understand that there was no prison, there was no prisoner, there were no chains and there was no need to be free.