Is freedom possible?

Everyone wants to be free. How painful it is to be dominated. It is unbearable when a tyrant is standing over you, stomping on your neck. But freedom from being controlled is just the first step in freedom. Real freedom includes freedom from ourselves – from our unknown biases, our confused, mishappen idea about what we wish for.
Is freedom even possible? We have to fight for it with every fiber of our being. To put an end to everything enjoined by nature and society. The ancient ways fall away and your mind is pliable and still. It is a new beginning under a cloudless, limitless sky.

Your life is so very important. But let me break some news to you: You are not everything. There are other worlds, smaller and larger, each operating according to its own nature and each with a mind of its own.
The larger worlds are historical and celestial, driving us towards a future of which we know nothing. They are astronomical, like stars. Like the speed of light and the law of gravity. Evolutionary forces, constructing our anatomy. Psychological forces, fixing our desires. Each is imposed upon us. Yet as strong as they are they are not the largest. There is something even bigger – the secret recipe of the soul. Because it is free – freedom to supercede all forces.
Is freedom possible? Armchair philosophers can debate this forever. But how would they know? In order to find out we have to give our very life. To put an end to mere thought. To discover if we are one of those in whom freedom can dwell.

We worked so hard for political and economic and social freedom. We had to go through so much, but, to be honest, we ended up the same as we were before. We still have to deal with enslavement from within, our very own desires, which multiply when the constraints are removed. Fulfilling a wish is a kind of inflamation, like a scratching an itch. We are still looking ahead with blank eyes.
Freedom from being controlled is just the first step in freedom. Freedom includes freedom from ourselves – our silly biases, our mishappen ideas about what we want. Freedom means not being dominated by desire. Desire for money, success, sensuality, security. It means not being lonely, addicted, obsessed.
Ask yourself: Do you really want to be free? Maybe you are better off the way you are already, bound up in a life that is not really very important, but which at least gives you pleasure. You may as well remain where you were. True, you won’t fulfill your promise. You won’t find true love. But you will have a modicum of happiness and fulfillment.

Conclusion

Is freedom even possible for we creatures of lesh and bone, commanded by the laws of nature, by the iron hand of cause and effect, We don’t know what to think or feel or do. We don’t know who we are. But we do have something else: Sight.
Freedom is in your eyes. All you have to do is look, through and through, until you find the motive force. That sight disarms the latent power, rendering it powerless.
If you have eyes to see, you can see freedom in another person, in the rigidity or suppleness of their face. For example, when you see an old person walking by with a walker, their back bent and their face wrinkled, the force of history asks you to judge that this is an old person. But in doing so you have fixed his place with leaded feet. But you can dissolve that burden if you look with the greatest goodwill. The back straightens and wrinkles fall away. No trace of age remains, neither old nor young. Only the living being remains. Now go back and clothe them with whatever garments you like.
The same goes for a pretty face. All of history seduces and pulls you in, until you pull yourself away with love and courage. That is freedom.
That is the secret. Just entering into the question is enough, if we give ourself the time for it and have enough faith. Cease to be driven by the great locomotive of history. All we need to do is begin, but with potency.
You have demonstrated that you are not an automaton, and that you are worthy of your infinite nature. The ancient ways fall away and your mind is pliable and still. It is a new beginning under a cloudless, limitless sky.