"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." --Soren Kierkegaard
What is freedom, really?
I looked it up and it is defined as a lack of constraints, or as freedom from something, like fear, want, hunger, pain, depression and/or addiction. Who wouldn't want that? But how do we get there?
Hint: it involves the loss of ego; hence the dizziness.
It's a spiritual pursuit and it requires a lot of work to live in freedom from constraints. There is also freedom to be joyous, freedom to be yourself, your truest Self, to just Be. That's another challenge. Life seems to be full of them.
I think that the path to freedom is through spiritual practice. What works for me won't necessarily work for someone else but we all want the same thing.
2 comments:
Sometimes being free is letting go all one's expectations of oneself... As in freedom of not letting oneself (or the people around you that matter) down. Just a thought though.
Greetings from West Africa!
Esther
Being free to be yourself is a very hard thing in our society where so many constraits are put on us. And the idea of just "being" is all but lost on the modern American consciousness I think. So many people feel they have to "be" something. The thought of just "being," existing as you are and being content with that, is true freedom and a state I aspire to but seldom achieve! I think the Quakers have the greatest grasp of this idea and I think this old Quaker Hymn sums it up well:
'tis a gift to be simple,
tis a gift to be free,
tis a gift to come down
where we ought to be
and when we find ourselves in a place just right,
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
to bow and to bend,
we shan't be ashamed,
to turn, turn,
will be our delight,
'till by tuning, turning
we come 'round right.
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