Written & contributed by Daniel Alzamora Dickin
What if the desire for freedom is a psychological trap, risking the sacredness one has for that not possessed? How many people have sacrificed all they have–integrity, life–for this dangerous concept, freedom? How many people have abused nature, become sociopaths, unempathic, opportunistic criminals? How many have murdered or have been murdered in the name of freedom? Is freedom for one, a prison for another? How many people suffer daily because they don’t feel “free?”
Am I free? Are you free? Most of us would like to say, yes I am free, but the reality is many are bound to inner habits, addictions and patterns, as well as social structures that prove we are not free. Spouses, friends, family, money, law, bureaucracy–most humanity is entrenched in conditions and manipulations, often feeling victimized…we want to escape. Could the desire for freedom be escapism? To desire something that is not here and now is to ignore what we have for what we don’t have. If we do not feel free now, will we ever feel free?
Freedom that is not present in the now is a tempting illusion. How many people have betrayed ethics for freedom? How many people have abused, oppressed and even murdered to be free? What if freedom for the body, attained unethically, imprisons the soul? We must be free, not desire freedom. Desiring freedom means we are not free. If we are not free now, we will never be free. As Bob Marley said “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds.”
What I do know is what we call “freedom” is really the feeling attained by an alignment with the Primordial Origins (Spirit), attitude (Mind) and action (Body).
True freedom is rooted in Being, non-violent self-rule, born of mature responsibility. Freedom, like happiness, is felt when the egoic “self” disappears, and the perceived and perceiver merge. From here all justice is realized and peace is a reality. Responsibility is the ability to respond from a centered, timeless core to any challenge as it arises, true to the eternal essence of our loving soul, our divine virtue.
Any conditions could be considered a prison because by being in a body, we are bound by conditions. To access “freedom” we need to enter the unconditioned, formless, mystical, nebulous reality that gives rise to all form.
But show me anything that is unconditioned! All that exists, exists within conditions. The unconditioned One is a non-physical, conceptual and spiritual reality, transcendent of the physical universe. So to be free we must enter the non-existent. That is why freedom does not exist.
The truth is our neurology functions in a binary system of excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in synapses. Inhibitory signals prevent stimulation. Inhibition is necessary to function properly. All our movements come from a synchronized dance of excitement and inhibition; it is the binary code of action.
When we confront a challenge, wall, or boundary that makes us feel like we are not free, it may just be that we are not meant to be free. Ethics and Love are a form of moral and behavioral constraints that prevent injustice by inhibiting unjust behavior. Self-governance by Love’s self-eclipsing nature is the closest thing to freedom we can experience while inhabiting a body.
When I observe the essence of reality, I see there is no freedom. If atoms and molecules did not fulfill their mandate, follow their law, if they were “free,” there would be no stability whatsoever. Let’s look at free radicals; these are destructive toxic particles that damage cells. What good is freedom if it destroys that which is most sacred? Look at what capitalism, economy and democracy have done to the Earth and all life in the name of and quest for freedom.
Nobody really likes being told what to do. It makes us feel dominated, immature, and co-dependent. We associate freedom with sovereignty, self-rule but within today’s economic and political reality, self-rule is considered anarchy. We are all entrenched in economic, governmental, nationalistic, and bureaucratic manipulation. Again nobody is free. Even indigenous people living in the rainforest, free from the world of man are not free. Why? The laws of the jungle are severe, harsh, and without mercy. Also the stalking threat of civilization and greed threatens their habitats, so freedom again is an illusion.
Freedom just might be attained when we realize how we are not free and operate harmoniously within the “eternal laws” of nature and the universe. Then we can operate from a consciousness of cause and effect and attain desired outcomes and avoid undesirable events.
If true freedom is impossible until we exit the body, is prison bad? Another word for prison could be culture. Enculturation is the process of the unconditioned becoming conditioned, the free becoming imprisoned. But rather than see habit as a prison, let’s make it an art, a culture of liberation from all the causes of internal and external oppression, disease, and injustice.
The truth is that in true Love, there is no choice, there is no freedom. When we realize this, we might actually, ironically feel “free.” How many people suffer in their quest to be “happy?”
If we question the essence of these words, prison-freedom, and meditate upon the root causes, we can find true liberation. “The truth shall set you free” is conceptual medicine. It is our resistance to merging with Isness, Suchness, that imprisons us. When we manipulate, distort, and deceive what is, we imprison ourselves by alienating ourselves from Isness, events as they are without any egotistical narration. Possible? Observe that which distorts Isness and what it serves.
We have external prisons for “law offenders” and threats to society. We have a judgment system that assigns innocence or guilt. We have fines and incarceration for offenders. We have a system and people who financially profit from guilt and punishment. These are all sick distortions of the therapeutic role of how the courts are supposed to serve society. Psychological healthcare must be integrated with the criminal justice system because many “offenders” who end up in court, need not punishment, but healing assistance and reintegration into society serving the functional needs of the community.
The businesses of war, suffering, disease, imprisonment, pollution are all destined to fail and fall. So why do we continue to sustain the dysfunctional roots of our imprisonment, and yearn for freedom, without harmonizing civilization with the truly liberating nature of Mystic Law? Until this occurs, the true Renaissance and Enlightenment have not occurred. I consider myself a facilitator of the everlasting causes of Global Harmony.
Daniel Alzamora Dickin, LMT/NCBTMB
8/25/2011 – Reprint with permission
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