What Would You Give Up to be Free?

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. – Kahlil Gibran

The impulse toward freedom runs deep in us. That people have made the ultimate human sacrifices to attain liberation bears witness to freedom as part of our deepest nature.  All outer efforts to attain freedom are manifestations of a soul force stemming from our innate unbounded nature. We recognize the spiritual origin of freedom in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It seems especially important to pay attention to the assertion that “these truths….be self-evident,” since they point us to self-inquiry, a necessary and potent method of looking inward to find our deepest, truest sense of being.  Looking within when we are feeling burdened, trapped, stuck or any experience that contradicts our natural state of freedom can help us shed light on whatever thought form or belief that has us bound and suffering.  As we become more self aware, we realize that freedom from suffering is not a condition dependent or bound to circumstances, but essential to our nature, inalienable in the truest sense.

True freedom is self-evident when we come to know our true spiritual nature.  Created in the image and likeness of the Great Perfection, we have always had the inalienable right to self-determination. We are at liberty to find peace and plentitude in the very ground of our being.  

When we realize the source and course of true freedom, we may be driven to our knees as much as to the streets. We will realize that non-resistance is the most effective approach to inner freedom as protest is to the external kind. Having gained what many people in the world are still fighting to achieve, our revolution is inner evolution.  It may cost us our lives, as we have known them, to cross the line of entrenched beliefs and illusory expectations. Beyond forms, conditions, preferences is peace without condition. To be willing to sacrifice all these treasured but false ideals is to make way for the true and lasting freedom that lies undisturbed within our very Being.