What does it mean to be free – free to be ourselves?

See the question is not so much how to free ourselves. The question is how do we, through patterns we engage in, give up our freedom? Or sense of freedom.

We all want to be free but to be totally free means that we are free to be anything. This can be a very scary place because we have nothing to hold onto, no fixed identity. That we so dearly hold on to.

I am a person who likes adventures… I am a shy person… I never likes sports… I can not finish something I start… It’s just me, I say what I think… I am a morning person… I am a relationship person… I have a hard time trusting others… 

So in order to be free we need to give up all those concepts, ideas and beliefs we have about ourselves and who we are. We have to give everything up until all we have left is the present moment and there – nothing stays. We need to say good bye to the familiarity of knowing who we are and discover it in each moment, spontaneously. 

TO BE FREE WE NEED TO STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN

So most of us say that we want to be free – and still most of us, at least a part of us, don’t want this at all. Because we are not prepared to fully give up our cage. Those bars that gives us the illusion of safety and stability, something known, something to lean against, something to rest against – fall asleep in. 

We create this identifications in our personality structure in order to feel known and safe. Even the parts of us we dislike and say that we want to change we chose to keep identified with because it gives us a feeling of being safe. It is a known place to us, a known pattern – and nothing else scares us then the unknown. 

Our ideas and identifications with ourselves, that keeps us looked into that fixed structure gives us an illusion of control. If I see myself as a person who easily gets angry, I have a hot temper, I have a sense of that I am in control when I react with anger – the familiar sense of myself. I makes sure, unconsciously, that I react with my habitual patterns. There is a safety there, an illusion that I know what will happen because I lived it many times before. We even think that we know how our partner will react to our anger, because we did this dance so many times and he/she also holds on to her/his patterns and reactions. Which enhances our illusion and gives us ”proof”.

THE UNKNOWN IS NOT ONLY SCARE – IT IS ALSO THRILLING

Leaving the cage is not only scary, it is also thrilling if we can say yes to not-knowing. It can even be very relaxing. The expansion of not-knowing, giving up our need to know, seeing that how could we ever know anyway? 

Surrender into the will of the universe is our ultimate freedom. The realization that we have no power to control reality, we can try – and we are – but isn’t it true that we never know what is going to happen? Even in the next second? 

When we see that life always happens beyond our control, it is not only scary – it turns life into an adventure with endless possibilities, we never know what is going to happen because I am free from being in a certain way.

OUR IDENTIFICATIONS ARE LIKE FILTERS OF REALITY

You relate from these beliefs about yourself, see the world through these glasses and so the world also looks like this and you think that you have proof. 

Let’s say I see myself as a shy person, I believe that I am one. Then I will act accordingly to my ideas about myself and make sure to prove them right so i can keep safe in the cage and not face change and the truth – that I don’t know and that what we are never can be up into a box. Our nature is dynamic, changing, transforming, spontaneous and expansive. 

OUR NATURE IS BY ITSELF ALREADY FREE

Our nature is free, free to be itself, free to experience itself beyond any ideas, free to be nothing and everything. And it all happens in the same moment, exact same moment. Like the mother becomes a mother in the same moment the child is born. We are free when we see that we are nothing and then we are free to be anything and it can only be experienced. 

TRUE FREEDOM IS NOT DEPENDED ON SOMETHING – WE ARE FULLY RESPONSIBLE  

True freedom is not depended on something which also means that we are also hundred percent responsible, we have nothing or no one to blame because we are not depending on it. 

This is the other thing that scares us, to be responsible. To leave our childhood and internalisted parents and step into aloneness. We want to have someone to blame, even life we blame, we want to expect. We have some many expectations on life. We want to be children and have our mother taking care of us and at the same time be free and independent, not seeing that freedom comes with responsibility. When I take 100 percent responsibility for myself I am free. 

WE GIVE UP OUR FREEDOM

We have patterns to claim our freedom, to rebel and go into reacting against that or those who we perceive have the power to take our freedom. This is all because we have not seen it yet – no one can take our freedom away. It is only us who can give it away. And we do so by reaction. We give up our power and our choices are dependent on the force against something or someone. 

Responsibility is responding and not reacting, it is consciousness. So we can not take responsibility for something we are not aware of. Which means that awareness is what is needed. And to see our ideas, to penetrate them and see reality is also awareness. Only light is needed. When we see that we are nothing – we are everything. When we see that we are free – we are free. 

INVITATIONS FOR SELF INQUIRY INTO FREEDOM:

• Make a list: Who do you take yourself to be? A specific kind of person, with certain patterns and habits and gifts and challenges? 
• Question them: And if you question them, are they still there? Still true? Or can you see that they are just ideas, concept you have created. And that you now take to be absolutely true? 
• Open up for new possibilities: Ask yourself, how would it be if it was not true? And then sense yourself. Sense your body, physical sensations and see if you can allow anything that comes up. 

• Practice to observe yourself in everyday life 

• Inquiry 2 and 2: sit down with a friend, decide who is going to start and set the alarm for 5 minutes. Inquiry into the question ”What is freedom?” as a repeated question, feel the effect of the question and then change over. If you want to know more about how to practice inquiry, read my post on ”How to practically practice Inquiry”.

To get more inspiration about what freedom truly means, read “Freedom: The courage to be yourself” by Osho, Find it here!