True Freedom
I want to thank Michael for his comment on “Giving”, yesterdays post. Unfortunately I can’t take any credit for carrying the suitcase up the stairs and helping that old lady. Personally I did not want to do it, I had things to do, things to take care of. Thinking about the situation again I remember rolling my eyes when I turned around to help her. I did not want to get involved but also knew that my inner voice is very strong nowadays and that I had to do what it wanted me to do. To call Carsten Fleck “Ubuunto” is not right but the universe that acted through me always is. Thanks again Michael for your post and for helping me to understand who is doing what.
Today I want to talk about true freedom. I have been writing a lot about the ego/mind, what it does and how we can transcend it. But what if we do so? I have been talking about seeing the truth and that the truth will set us free. But what is freedom? Since most human beings at least in this country would consider themselves to be free already but they do not take their egos in consideration, I would call it much rather “true freedom”. As long as we are bound to ideas and beliefs, bound to our ego we will never be really free.
Let’s assume we accomplished it. Let’s assume we dropped all we ever believed in, we are blending back into the ocean we are one again with all. We see what we perceive as it would be the first time we encounter it. We do not know anything. We look at the world with fresh eyes. We are free, not bound to our ideas, not bound to our country, family, job, living situation, religion, sexual preference, skin color, sex or traditions. We are free, we can go wherever we want, do whatever we want. What will we do with our freedom?
Well that is not too hard, isn’t it? We know what we want. Advertising has told us what we want for many years. First of all we do not want to work, we do not even want to move. And it has to be warm and there has to be a beach and palm trees. We are lying in the sun on the beach and get a taint and do absolutely nothing all day long besides eat and drink Coca Cola. In the evening we go out and get super wasted because getting drunk is a lot of fun. And of course there lots of beautiful people of the opposite sex or of the same depending on our preference. We are getting laid all the time. We are having the best time, we are free and this is what we want.
My teacher once talked about true freedom and what he had to say blew me away. He said: “True freedom does not mean that you do what you want to do, true freedom means that you do what you must do.” What does that mean? To me all of us came to this dimension to express something. We all have something that really inspires us, something we love to do. Something we must do to flow in the river of life, something that brings us happiness.
In a perfect world, a world without illusions and egos we would naturally be drawn towards what makes us happy. It would be a very playful process. We play as children, keep on playing growing up and through that we find what brings us joy and makes us happy. And because we like it we get really good at it. We keep on playing and make a living with what we love to do. There is no resistance, it comes easy to us, and we are flowing with life.
Our world is different. We play for a little while as children. One day somebody, most likely one of our parents tells us that life is not about playing and having fun. Nobody can get with that anywhere. You have to have a profession, work hard be tough on yourself and others and make lots of money to avoid ending up living on the street. Work is called work because it is not fun. It is something we do not like to do but have to do to survive. And since we are children and we do not know better we believe what we are told. And we leave our toys, our joy behind to achieve something, to work hard and make sure that we will stay alive.
It also influences what profession we choose. Our natural inspiration might be to want to be an artist. “No way, artists make no money. I have to come up with something to pay the bills”. Or naturally you would like to be an attorney but your parents are artists. “I can not be an attorney, my parents would never understand that. I will be a painter”. Either case will create suffering will make somebody do things they do not like to do. There will be constant conflict. Their egos will control what they are doing but in their hearts it will never feel right.
Transcending the ego erases all these misperceptions and ideas. Now we are truly free. We can do what we must do, what we came here to do. There is no happiness on a beach in the sun with a Coke in your hand. That is just another illusion.
Doing what you came here to do is true happiness. You feel that you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. There is no conflict. You have fun, you play and you are happy.
"True Freedom". Williamsburg/New York 01-29-08 at 11:12 PM
Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com