True Freedom
True freedom is allowing all phenomena to be exactly as they are. To let everything be just as it is. Coming and going, arising and passing away. This freedom is a non-interference of sorts. This non-interference is simply allowing everything without fixing or figuring out, without rejecting and without accepting. In that, there is a freedom for phenomena to just be and that is freedom also from phenomena. It strips back your pretensions and expectations that are based on faculties of memory and other functions that prevent one from perceiving the naked and raw essence of reality. In this ability to let it be, the true nature of the world shines unencumbered, as it is.
You could say: But where is the freedom to do whatever I want if I just let everything be as it is?
Some people conflate and confuse freedom with this ability to do whatever they want to do. We have to ask ourselves: is that really freedom?
Where do the choices of what you want to do come from? Some people may say they wish to eat and drink whatever they want, and that is fine; however, it often comes at a toll and to their own detriment. Then, if we take a closer look at those choices, could we honestly say that we chose them? Closer still, this choice usually begins as an impulse, an alarm of craving that directs us toward the object of desire. How could that be freedom? If we are not aware, then we are unaware, and the acting out and blind following of impulses in this way can only lead us astray.
Usually, these impulses are like old programs running on previous versions of the system. They are choices made from the past, established in youth or from family and societal conditionings. In this too, where is the freedom? Where is the choice? In this there is only bondage.
If you assume that freedom is your ability to do whatever you want and to chase after whatever you want, then you are unconsciously erecting, pole by pole, your own prison in which to live, while you dream that you are chasing open meadows, rainbows, and palaces.
True freedom, then, is seeing these cycles deeply, and cutting them at their root when the impulse arises. How does it arise? As a simple sensation. By understanding the nuances of sensation that arise in the present moment with great awareness, uninvolved witnessing, and without elaborating into stories and fables, you can undress the cause and craving. Then you can work with it before it leads you away from this precious moment of presence.
True freedom, then, is not about doing whatever you want to do. It is about undoing the compulsions and neuroses of habitual mechanisms.
Freedom is not our ability to do, but our ability to be. It is when we rest in beingness that the flower of freedom blossoms.
Only then do we free things to be as they are, radiantly themselves. Only with this type of freedom can there be an openness in which love can flourish and muster the natural flow of compassion that shines like a light in the darkness.
Just as compassion has the capacity to embrace suffering, and gratitude has the ability to appreciate that which is difficult, so freedom includes that which appears to be unfree.
Freedom is not freedom from difficulties but freedom with them.
We do not have to wait until all is liberated to experience liberation, because liberation is the recognition of reality as it is right this very moment.
