Disclaimer: This is an essay about the emotional state of freedom as a mindset, but I do not buy into the belief that we create our entire reality — we live in a world with other people, with politics, with wars, with disease. Externally, we are all restricted at some level by factors we have minimal (or no) control over. In the worst case scenario, people who are victims of crime/oppression/violence or who are actual slaves (yes, slavery is still a real problem in this modern world, in many tragic variations) have had their true freedom curtailed or destroyed. No amount of positive thinking will change those realities, and that is just as true if your own external restrictions are simple or even good things like your day job or being a parent. In the parlance: shit happens.
I am fortunate enough to be able to address this issue from a privileged place of relatively unencumbered external freedom. For me, at this point in time, exploring a state of freedom is explicitly about mindset.
What does the emotional state of freedom require?
Is rebellion necessary? Against whom? Against what?
Is it a freedom that is the opposite of rebellion, existing as-is?
The phrase “existing as-is” brings to mind the Beatles’ song, “Let it Be” and Ram Das’s “Be Here Now” mantra. There is something both rebellious and passive about that, very Buddhist in action. I wonder if “let it be” is what I need to do, or if it is what I need to stop doing.
The key, I have come to believe, is in the contrary belief that freedom itself is free.
I have lived so much of my life feeling trapped, even though it was my own internal beliefs putting me in the corner.
[no one puts baby in the corner]
An earlier therapist once described my adult life as that of a soldier living in a forest, unaware that the war he is fighting ended years ago. He is not free. There is nothing keeping him in the forest and fighting his war other than his belief it is still ongoing. His version of existing as-is involves being trapped in unreality. Even being told the war is over might not change his reality, because he cannot bring himself to believe it as true.
Yet, for me, freedom is free.
Being here now and existing as-is can be traps as surely as the bonds that first put me in the mental state of imprisonment. I was taught young, from birth likely, that my freedom had to be earned. Freedom, then, was not free.
I once explained to my therapist that failure is not punishment, but rather, merely a possible outcome of risk. Punishment, on the other hand, is being prohibited from taking risks. Punishment is being held back from advancing. Punishment is imprisonment.
Punishment is loss of freedom.
The general idea is that you have freedom you then loose based on actions you take. For me, the cart came before the horse, though: I have spent the majority of my life in a perpetual state of (psychological) purgatory, suffering first in order to work off my sins before I can earn freedom.
To be allowed to express myself truthfully I had to first meet standards and requirements set by others, most of which were conveniently unattainable. In the cases where the goal was something I could, in fact, accomplish (e.g. a college degree), then it was always changed and qualified to move further from my grasp just as I thought I had finally, finally succeeded (wrong major, wrong internships, wrong thesis topic, wrong, wrong, wrong!).
The definition of success I learned young was never quite about fitting in or making my life adhere to social/cultural expectations of who/what I should be, although that was relevant. It was, instead, about putting my own desires and dreams aside in order to fulfill randomly chosen expectations of a person I needed approval from — first, those set by my mother, then later by my memory of her. Sometimes it was my husband or my employer, but first and foremost it was always Mother.
There is a certain embarrassment to being held hostage by a ghost, but the emotions are no less real for it.
Those shifting standards of success I strived for in order to earn my freedom guaranteed that my own personal goals, desires, and dreams were always disparaged and dismissed.
I once wrote in my journal: “Why are all my desires drenched with shame?”
Because desire was anchored in the idea of freedom (I can want, I can desire), I feared that the act of taking a risk, of daring to believe I am already free, would destroy me — worse than failure, worse than purgatory.
What risk are you willing to take when you know you have nothing to gain?
This has made me risk averse not because I fear failure, but because I don’t believe I deserve the opportunity to take risks merely for what I want for myself. Stasis is safer.
But that feeling of safety is an illusion. True stasis is unnatural and unsustainable. If you are not growing and changing then you are deteriorating. Entropy is reality.
Freedom means acting without the fear of shame for doing something wrong. Mistakes are acceptable, ironically, but misspent purpose is not.
It is a circle of intention: one must act free to be free.
