hi friends,
these days i find myself reflecting a lot on freedom. in this article i will share with you some thought flow regarding the path to freedom as a human on this earth.
what is freedom? what is freedom for me? what is freedom on this planet?
what is freedom in a world that seems to be, every day increasingly, trying to censure the voices of resistance and make them invisible?
living in a city, everyday i see a numbed world made of people enslaved to low-waged jobs that barely allow them to survive. what happened?
i wish we would hear the voices of Indigenous tribes, for they are calling for humanity to remember our connection to the land. yet their voice remains silence, heard by just but a few.
i also wish we would hear the voices of people trapped in human trafficking and slavery. the voices of the Congolese, the Sudanese and the Palestinians. of the Tibetans. we need to hear these voices and those of countless other people and tribes that are being silently wiped out of the existence by the violence of colonist imperialism.
why do we need these voices? they wake us up. humanity needs their voices. pain has always been the great alchemist of awakening – maybe by seeing their suffering, we would wake up.
i want us to hear the voices of the animals and the plants that are losing their habitat to climate change.
the question is not really why we aren’t listening – the real question is why are we not even given the chance to listen? these voices are silenced before they even reach out. censored and suppressed.
and so this is why i wonder about freedom. what real freedom is. are we free in a world where those voices that can wake us up are hidden and silenced? are we free in a world that manipulates information so that, as masses, we look at what they want us to look so that we think what they want us to think.
do you think you are free in this world? think again. no one is free until we are all free.
where life is not respected, there no freedom. where the freedom of ecosystems is not respected, there is no freedom on this planet. where the freedom of self-determination of peoples is not respected, no one is free.
once i realise this, i think to myself that maybe freedom is something that stems from within – real freedom as inner freedom.
real freedom is the freedom, at least in the very depth of my being, to be who i want to be. the freedom to feel and think what i want to feel and think, and not what i am made to think and feel. this is tricky, when so much of what i think and therefore feel has been shaped by the culture around me. yet still, if the world is oppressed, i can at least start by freeing my mind.
freeing my mind means looking beyond the norms of thought i was taught to believe. as i go through my day, i observe my thoughts and question them. was i taught to mistrust those who look differently, dress up differently, talk differently or eat differently? is this the kind of person i want to be now?
freedom of mind, for me, is allowing myself to open up and embrace without judging. freeing my mind makes me a more inclusive, compassionate human. being open-minded makes people feel safe around me and i can get to know them better – this enriches me as a person as i learn and grow through the experience of others. experiences i would never know of if i were to stay in the little world i was taught to stay in by the culture around me.
these days, i feel free when i raise a voice for the voiceless. as much as i can vent on being innerly free, i suffer with those who suffer in oppression, and i realise that no one is free until we are all free.
as i have said before, real awakening can only be collective. a liberated soul in an oppressed world is a soul made “to work” – for there’s work to be done to help humanity awaken and find peace.
a liberated soul in an oppressed world does not sit in the mountain of peace admiring the skies – she will go down to the grounds and get her hands dirty showing her light in places where consciousness is dark.
a spiritual awakening does not come to make us comfortably meditate our lives away, especially in times like these. consciousness is made aware in order to serve a bigger purpose.
the most atrocious things are happening to P4lest!inians in G4za and in the West Bank, day and night. i am aware that speaking about this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but, again, i believe that what’s uncomfortable can help us wake up. some people are brainwashed by the imperialist agenda, while some others just feel this is too much for them to cope.
i can understand the ignorance and the hopelessness, but i have learned that we don’t stand still when there’s a gen0cide happening.
sadly, the culture of individualism has shaped us so deeply that we don’t think what’s happening to others is our problem. but believe, it is. when things like this are being allowed to happen, then no one is safe.
as i wrote in my article on collective awakening, i believe that we need to let ourselves be touched by the pain of what is happening. this pains wakes me up and gives me strength to resist. i am calling to this: the resistance of the heart.
pain breaks my heart wide open and makes it softer and stronger. with a heart that feels, i can feel myself and feel the other. this makes me a complete human. we are one humankind and we are all connected. when i lose the connection to myself, i lose the connection to the other, and when i lose the other, i also lose myself. we don’t exist in isolation, we are intertwined.
once we can see and honour our interconnectedness, we are taking back an immense power that fuels us and guides us towards expansion and evolution.
real awakening can only be collective. i will not stop repeating this again and again.
we heal through our relationships and we grow through our relationships. we need each other. and we need each other complete – with an open heart.
i believe that we all have a moral duty to speak up for the oppressed and to do everything in our power to protect the vulnerable – especially when we call ourselves “spiritual” and are committed to personal growth.
side note: to believe that being oppressed is their karma and hence there’s nothing i can do to help them is lack of empathy and social responsibility. i can argue that our karma is to do anything, everything, in our power in order to help those in need and preserve valuable life. if we are looking away from those living in pain and desperation, we are maybe failing our moral duty as humans. there is no pride nor good karma in staying silent and indifferent in the face of blatant injustice.
the Earth is asking us to wake up from the individualist daydreaming. we need to strengthen our community care. we need each other.
if we uncomfortably open our heart to feel the pain on this planet, we will also hear Mother Earth whispering prayers. She prays for all of Her children.
this is the medicine: let Her prayer find you and make Her prayer more potent through you.
through our awakening, Mother Earth and Her Love become stronger. this makes a difference.
i am here to share with you that my intuition is telling me that community care and connection to the land are most important for all right now.
maybe this is how we become free again. we come together, we cry together, we heal together.
maybe we become free when we open our heart to others and let them touch it. this is how we take our power back.
find the way into your Heart, and let it guide you into your powerful freedom.
this is the resistance of the heart. this is the culture of the heart.
if you enjoyed this article, please share it with those who might resonate with it. i will keep writing about collective liberation and i thank you for taking time to read this. may it serve us all.
you can reach out to me through this page or leaving a comment. i’m happy to hear from you.
also, i have an ongoing art project that serves as a bridge for donations for those in extreme need. check it out: art for peace
with care
sara
purifying waves of love 
Sara,
I feel your suffering, helplessness, anger, your rebellion against the injustice that is happening. However, based on my awakening and insight, I dare you to ask – what if this world is perfect as it is? Is it possible to have an attitude without any judgment? Only gratitude no matter what?
What is outside of us is a mirror of what we wear inside. Awakening changes not only us, but everything outside, the entire world. However, the law of size applies here and life is only a short episode.
What does freedom mean to me? Freedom is the ability to make choices that do not create karma because they do not result from desire or judgment. When this choice becomes available, it is no longer needed. Freedom is then a concept that has no sense or meaning. It has meaning only in a state of captivity and this comes from the unconscious.
There is an extremely subtle difference between indifference and conscious inaction. Likewise, there is a subtle difference between acting by judgment and acting by choice. So inaction or action in this situation is a matter for everyone to recognize individually. Expectation is a form of judgment.
The most important thing we can do is be aware of what it means in practice to feel your own emotions without trusting your mind. In my opinion, everything happens inside us, not outside. Here is the solution.
LikeLike
dear Roman,
thank you for your enlightening response, i deeply cherish your words and find profound agreement with them. i believe we are all playing our divinely perfect role in this one planet we share, in the one collective energy we share. in my view, as a human form, there is the individual experience and then also the collective one. i cannot deny that i get to share a space-time with entities that, while interconnected, also have their own consciousness.
is it my desire to raise a voice for the vulnerable and tell the world to wake up (is this born from the judgement that there is something wrong with how things are?) or is this the organic action of the self in my manifested body? in the end, it might not matter. the raised voice is what needs to come through – for whatever reason also. maybe creation wouldn’t be as perfect without this raised voice. maybe the echoes of this voice travel far. karma does not worry my eternal self.
all bodhisattvas (or liberated masters), as for instance Jesus Christ, the Buddha and many other contemporary teachers and gurus, serve(d) a bigger purpose for humanity. it doesn’t make sense, to me, to do all the work needed to be innerly liberated on planet earth to then sit and watch human suffering while floating in enlightener nectar. i might as well float in nectar while handing some bread to the hungry. not because i think being hungry is wrong, but because i think if i have some bread, i’d like to share it. that is why after awakening come therapies, courses, books, retreat, teachings, techniques etc (each person has unique gifts).
spirituality has also been touched about that thing called individualism.
thank you so much again for this further exploration of the matter 🙂
with love, sara
LikeLike
Dear Sara,
I know what you mean. I asked myself the same questions. Almost 15 years ago I asked these and many other questions to Leonard Jacobson, who was my teacher until I experienced my awakening and began to follow the Way on my own. I will repeat his words here, which were and are the anchor of awakening for me – “If your mind is not quiet, you are not present” – this is the litmus test. When the mind is not quiet, you will do no good, no matter how good, noble and lofty the thought. Jesus said it simply – “No one is good but God alone.”.
I wrote many more sentences to you, but I leave them in my notebook. Everything I have written is, to a large extent, water for the mill of the mind. So let me get to the most important questions:
Sorry, but these are the questions I have to ask you. Can you stop yourself from acting and step into what you feel?
Why these questions? It’s about Love. Everyone can love goodness and compassion. But can you love, that is, ALLOW the opposite of who you are to be?
You probably won’t like me after these difficult questions, but I like you and that’s why I’m bothering you 😉
With love, Roman
LikeLike
hi Roman,
i saw this other comment now. thank you for your message. i like you offering these questions.
if i am not kind, i will forgive myself. i will offer compassion to my non-kind, non-compassionate self. it is also part of me. i have days where i am not always kind. perfection of the self is so beautiful imperfect.
if i cannot hand over bread when it’s needed, i’ll pray that God may take care of the hungry and that someone else might have more to offer. as you say: it’s about Love.
love knows mysterious ways to open our heart. i trust those ways and i follow. you talked about the Way on my own. i talk about the Way of the Heart.
why do you assume my actions arise from acting?
with love, sara
LikeLike
Sara,
Let me add something to the previous comment because I feel that I have not described enough what I want to convey.
Maybe 99,99% of people reading this thread will agree with you. However, there is another point of view. From this point everything looks like a theater. Everything is ready as it should be. You are the main actress, the star. Now when you pass by a hungry person begging for bread, you can move on. Don’t worry, he definitely won’t die anytime soon. If this were to happen, call a doctor and pay for him. However, when there is no such danger, you can pass by him and look inside yourself. What do you feel and what do you not want to feel? Technically speaking, an emotion is an entity that wants to exist, wants to be loved. Your job is to let him be. It’s easy to let be a nice emotions. But how can we cope with helplessness, guilt and fear? Emotions move the mind and it can unleash a real storm. It may be difficult to function normally. Can’t sleep. Crying comes spontaneously and gives relief.To survive this storm you have to hide in the cave of consciousness, like Elijah. The Bible describes just such a situation in his life, not a physical storm. When you persevere, that is, you do not believe in emotions, you do not rush into action, then the Lord will come in a gentle breeze.
This is the point of view I wanted to convey to you. You asked what freedom is? Freedom is the inner strength that allows everything that is to be. This is a state of consciousness. In this state you ‘take no actions and nothing is left undone’ – Lao Tzu. True Power is also expressed in non-action.This does not mean remaining still in the nectar of enlightenment. The point is that then everything we do remains in harmony with the will of God, the will of One Consciousness. We simply flow in it without performing any unnecessary actions that would disturb it.
Thanks for your post and the questions you asked. Writing an answer helps me a lot. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
Roman
LikeLike
thank Roman and thanks a lot for this alternative facet you brought onto the matter.
what you mention regarding not taking action but rather observing what happens inside, i talked a bit about this in my previous article “real awakening can only be collective” when i spoke about letting things touch us deeply as a tool to awakening. as much as i can take action, there’s just as much i can do in this world, right? many forms of suffering, i will just have to watch it. so i can choose to see it, take it in, accept it and allow it to crack my heart open. then, as you correctly say, everything will just be accepted as it is.
i just think right now a lot of people might be falling into deeper sleep at the sight of pain, you know what i mean? so my voice is being raised as a tool to awaken consciousness. it’s a bit like going “do you see the cracks in the system?”, “do you see how this does not work?”, kind of calling to become aware of the matrix, the collective “thought trap”.
once we are aware of the matrix enslaving our thoughts, then we will realise what you describe. the cracks have to be acknowledged first though, to even realise that there is another way.
eventually it doesn’t matter whether we take action or not, everything is just a natural expression of the self. i am conscious about the current state of things on planet earth and i think that if many of us are being called into action and into raising the voice is because this is also part of the beautiful, magical, rare theatre we are all part of. whether i spend my life sleeping or climbing mountains, it only superficially makes a different. yet, for human consciousness this plan of consciousness is very real, so to support one self and others into making it as pleasant is possible is, to me, a beautiful human purpose.
thank you so much for this enriching exchange 🙂 ❤ sara
LikeLike